Mundane horrors

When I was a kid, the scariest thing in the world to me was one of those face-suckers in Alien. Something that could just take over your body at will, and use you to breed and spread its young... The thought was horrifying.

Well, I've just spent the past four days dealing with a more mundane version of an invading parasite: a little thing called Salmonella. Many millions of times smaller than an alien from outer space and yet it brought me down like John Hurt at the dinner table just the same.

I had just finished reading Life On a Young Planet by Andrew Knoll, so on the one hand I had this sort of respect and understanding for the simple yet efficiently mercenary lives of bacteria. They take you over and make you do their bidding. That's theoretically kind of fascinating. But on the other hand, I had my lurching innards and the memory of that face-sucker, and no Ellen Ripley in sight. That's less fascinating.

I'm mostly better now but the memory remains. I also had a lot of strange dreams. I remember one in particular that I thought at the time would make a brilliant story about little mysterious elves that came to style my hair while I slept. Luckily, the fever broke and I came to my senses.