In Your Veins

Chapter 8

I get back to my car and throw the laptop into the backseat, after which I pour hand sanitizer into my hands.

Why did I take that? What's wrong with me?

I sigh, laying my head on the headrest. I eye the laptop through the rear view mirror. I'm going to keep it here. I refuse to bring it into my house. If it gets stolen, so be it.

Something in me compels me to keep the laptop safe from hard braking, though. I put a seatbelt over it, then put more hand sanitizer on myself.

What is wrong with me?

I feel sick. And not just in the moral sense, I think I'm actually sick. I feel chills dancing on my skin.

I just have to get back home. Then I'll go to bed and wake up a hundred years later where none of this is an issue anymore.

The drive back home is relatively peaceful. The quiet hum of my car's engine combined with the perfect silence inside my car slowly unwinds my taut nerves. I feel my muscles starting to relax.

Maybe things aren't that bad after all. I should just take some precautionary medication and go to bed.

But before that, I have to take several showers. I'm still somewhat in shock. This whole thing is so incredibly disgusting.

I get to my house and immediately head for the bathroom. I wash my hands, then look around, carefully.

Cameras. I have to be on the look-out for cameras.

It takes a while, but my worst fears are confirmed. I find one. It was small, tucked away in a corner I'd never notice, up on the walls of my bathroom.

In a fit of rage, I crush it underneath my heel. I don't care how expensive this was, it has no right being in my home...!

Roaming around my house, I then find another, and another. They all meet the same fate as the first one.

My skin is crawling. I have to take a shower. Good thing my bathroom is now camera free.

The hot stream of water from the shower head matches my new found red-hot anger. Who does he think he is? Who gave him the right to do whatever he pleases? If he wasn't already dead, I might kill him again. At least I can be grateful that I've been spared the felony charges.

Khiere...if you really mean what you say, and you do come back somehow...you won't be met with compassion, I can tell you that much.

I get out of the shower. The air around me feels extra cold. I should take medicine, and fix whatever's wrong with me so I can start getting my life back in order.

I find a bottle of medicine and take a pill out. I never liked pills, but sometimes you have to do things you don't like to stay alive.

With a bit of water, the pill slides down my throat. That's that, then.

I take a step and a half away, before nausea hits me like a truck. I steady myself on a nearby table and suppress a gag. I can't throw up now, I've just taken a pill! It has to stay in there to work...

My body disagrees. My body decides for me that I actually don't need medicine after all. I barely make it to a sink before everything I'd eaten before then forecefully makes its way back up my throat.

Mm. Gross. Now I have to clean this sink.

Tears make their way down my cheeks as my nose and throat sting with every new breath I take. I'm sweating, and shaking a little. That was unnecessarily violent.

I'm not taking another pill. I guess...I'll just go lie down for a while.

I wash my face and rinse the sink with soap.