Malaria

There's a certain kind of sick I get sometimes. Where I get so dizzy and delirious that it's hard to concentrate during the day. My mind will just cloud over with the inability to focus on any one thing. Thoughts will touch through the fog, and just as quickly slip away again. But the worst is at night. That same cloud that was formless and thoughtless turns colourful at night, firing random synapses and unlocking memories in new and horrifying ways, chaining together people and things and places in an acid wash of connections. Nights like this I am never sure when I am asleep or awake, whether I am dreaming or actually seeing and hearing the things around me. This one night I was attempting to sleep when I had a dream, or maybe it was a hallucination, of my best friends fighting each other over a ring. They fought viciously, with nails and teeth, trying desperately to draw blood. And they howled and snarled at each other like beasts. Until I realized the sounds were much to real. Too feral. I woke up to hear that the noises were coming from outside my window. Two dogs were fighting and making a huge racket outside. I listened until one dog finally squealed and the fight sounded as if it had stopped. My sick and delirious brain immediately took hold and I slipped back into my vivid dreams. The next morning when I went outside, I found a dog, dead, a few hundred yards from my window. Blood trailed from further along away as if it had been dragged a bit, and clutched in its jaw was a small stuffed bear, with one eye hanging by a thread.