Chapter 87

• Two months later
• When I clutched the porcelain bowl, it caused the contents of my stomach to come gushing out all over the porcelain bowl. Before I flushed the toilet, I had to let out a couple of dry heaves since I had a foul taste in my mouth. I stayed there for a time, leaning my head on the edge, allowing the icy air to seep into my dry skin until it became damp.
• I had imagined that this would be a one-time occurrence rather than something that would happen on a daily basis. When this first began happening to me, five days ago, I thought that it was because of something I had consumed the previous evening for dinner. After it happened to me a second time, I began to wonder if maybe I had been infected with some type of food-borne illness; by the third day, I was certain that I was sick. But even if I had been sick, which is very unlikely for a member of our species, I would have had other symptoms, or at the absolute least, I would have vomited more than once each day.