Title Defense Mechanisms Words 218 Published In issue #8 of Don't Look. Written September 2007
I threw up again this morning. I had to run to make it past the carpeting.
I was fine after that. I walked between classes. I ate lunch. I sat on the hard-backed chairs in the lab with Sarah, talking under the professor's chatter in low voices intended only for the two of us. He had nearly reached the newest part of evolutionary human biology, the part where everything went to hell, when the transitory chime sounded, and I felt the contents of my gut force themselves up into the back of my throat.
If I press my fingers into the slight swell of my stomach, right in the centre -- if I ignore the sting of my nails trying to push through my skin, I can feel a sort of hardness there. I can't explain it, but then I'm trying instinctively not to think too hard about it. I can't explain that, either.
I have a blank document up that's supposed to contain a ten-page assignment, on why the last decade's inexplicable loss of fertility in females means we're all fucked in a decade or two. But every time I try to type I feel like I'm about to throw up again, and I hate throwing up.
I didn't even make it past the carpeting this time.