Epidemic.

Finding out I had SARS was the most liberating experience of my life.

I’d just come back from a business trip to Beijing. The whole trip I had people freaking out around me because I wasn’t wearing a face mask.

“You could get contaminated!” people screamed.

“You don’t want to catch SARS do you?” passengers moaned.

“Will you fuck my brains out right here, right now?” said a hot air hostess… in my imagination.

All these hysterical freaks around me, I got to thinking. Could SARS really be that bad? I’m working a job I hate, traveling all over the world but seeing no sites, having no fun. My life is based around business transactions. The world I’m living in is run by someone whom I have an intense hatred for. My fellow countrymen are dying and killing in the gulf for reasons I do not agree with. How bad could SARS be?

So to all these hysterics surrounding me, all these scared maniacs I proudly stood up out of my seat and said:

“Yes. Yes I COULD get contaminated and yes I DO want to catch SARS. So fuck you.”

I then sat back down and went to sleep, completely oblivious to what I’m sure were many comments aimed in my direction.

I woke up as the plane was landing and went through all the hoo-ha of going through customs. Then, as I was preparing to leave the airport I was stopped by a security officer and another man. The security officer spoke.

“Sir, could you please come with us?”

I was confused.

“Why? Is this about that ‘fuck you’ comment I made on the plane?”

The two men looked at each other, seeming as confused as I was. The officer turned back to me.

“Uh, no. Our equipment has picked up that you have a fever.”

“So?” I asked.

“So… I don’t like to tell you this, but… you could have SARS.”

I was shocked, but not as shaken as the two men obviously expected me to be.

“Okay, I’ll go with you then.”

So I went with them. They took me to a car. They put on their face masks, just incase I was contaminated I guess. They took me to a hospital. At the hospital I was introduced to a friendly young doctor. I became his responsibility.

He did a variety of tests on me. It took a lot of time, and I had to wait forever for my results to come in, but eventually he came to me as I sat down on a bed in a white hospital gown. His face was somber.

“Bad news?” I asked half-heartedly, the gravity of the situation had not yet set in.

“Yes.” His voice was almost trembling. His demeanor made me nervous.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting” I said, faking a smile and acting relaxed.

“Sir, I’m sorry. You have SARS.”

The words hit me hard. SARS. For a minute I was silent, and so was he.

Eventually I broke the silence.

“So does that mean I’m going to die?” I tried to sound normal, but to be honest I was feeling a bit… something.

The doctor paused. That, in my past experience had always meant bad news.

“At the moment there is not much we can do.”

Suddenly my joking about the disease didn’t seem so funny. The doctor looked at me, waiting for me to break into tears or something. Anything. I did nothing. I was numb.

“So, what do I do?” I asked, looking for some kind of guidance.

“We’ll have to keep you quarantined.” The doctor said, compassion in his voice, “Until you die.”

Completely thrown, I just nodded. The doctor and I looked at each other in silence for a while. Eventually he spoke.

“I’ll leave you to be alone with your thoughts for a while, okay?”

Again I nodded, and then I was alone with my thoughts.

THOUGHT 1: Holy shit, I’m going to die.

THOUGHT 2: This it. It’s all over.

THOUGHT 3: My life is going to end with me alone in a room, in pain.

My thoughts froze. I rewound. I was going to die in pain, all alone?

I don’t think so.

Suddenly a new batch of thoughts entered my brain.

THOUGHT 4: I’ve got to get out of here.

THOUGHT 5: I’ve got to escape.

THOUGHT 6: First I’ve got to put on my clothes.

My clothes were next to my bed, on a chair in a plastic bag. I hurriedly put them on. Then I went to the door of my room. I rushed a look through the window and then opened the door. Just as I was about to race away, I heard my doctor from about ten metres behind me.

“Hey! Mr. Rogers! Hey!”

And for some reason I stopped. I turned and looked at the man, fully clad in a suit to avoid contamination.

“You can’t go anywhere sir. You need to stay in your room. A mere sneeze could contaminate anyone around you.”

“I’m a death trap.” I said plainly.

“Yes sir, you are.” He replied.

THOUGHT 7: He won’t let me go.

THOUGHT 8: I have an idea.

“Okay, I’ll go back to my room. But, can you come in for a sec, I want to show you something.”

The doctor seemed a little befuddled but he obliged. He followed me as I entered my room. He closed the door. As he did, I turned to face his him. We met eye to eye.

“So, what was it you wanted me to see?”

THOUGHT 9: I’m sorry.

I wound up and booted the doctor as hard as I could in the groin. Even through his decontamination suit, he had surely felt it. He knelt down, hurt.

THOUGHT 10: I’m so sorry.

I tackled him to the ground and started punching him. His suit made it hard for him to fight back. I ripped at his head piece, trying to get it off so that I could knock him out. He held on to it for dear life.

THOUGHT 11: imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry.

I managed to get his head piece off. He put his hands to his face, to block, knowing what was coming.

He blocked the first few punches. The next ten connected. I stopped when I was confident he was unconscious. Quickly I undressed him. His decontamination suit, his doctor’s coat, even his pants. I then undressed and traded clothes with him. In my new doctor costume, I was ready to escape. As I left the room I turned to look at the seemingly lifeless body of my friendly doctor. It saddened me to see him like that. It saddened me that I’d had to inflict that on him.

THOUGHT 12: Oh well.

I left. In my decontamination suit no one noticed me. No one could tell I was walking death. As soon as I was far enough away I took off the suit. Now I was just some guy wearing a doctor’s coat. Ahead of me I could see the entrance of the hospital. My escape. I headed toward it, quickly. I was nearly out, then…

“Doctor! Excuse me Doctor! We have an emergency here!”

I kept walking.

“Doctor, Doctor! We need you."

I continued walking to the entrance. Surely she couldn’t be calling for me.

“DOCTOR!”

An arm grabbed me. I stopped and turned. Right in my face was a Hispanic nurse.

“Doctor, we need you. There’s an emergency.”

I couldn’t believe it. Forgetting my impending doom for the moment, my mind began to race, trying to find a way out of this. I was not Leonardo Decaprio and this was not Catch Me If You Can.

Trying to find a solution, suddenly one presented itself.

COUGH! I coughed right into the woman’s face. I couldn’t control it, I was sick.

THOUGHT 13: I just gave her SARS.

The nurse took a step back and wiped her face. She let out a disgusted noise and walked off angrily, seemingly forgetting the emergency she had. I quickly remembered my emergency. I turned and exited the hospital as hastily as I could.

Outside the air was fresh. The sun was shining and everything was beautiful. Except for the fact that I, the nurse and probably the doctor I’d beaten up were all going to die. Pushing this thought to the back of my mind I walked. I knew the hospital was about an hour drive away from my house by walking. Too far to walk. I needed to catch a taxi.

The city was busy. I figured that if I walked by the road long enough a cab would eventually come by. So I walked. And walked. And walked. The tedium of walking and waiting for a lift wasn’t getting to me however. Resigned to my fate, I started to look at things differently. Instead of taking everything so seriously I had a new perspective.

Buildings weren’t just pieces of architecture anymore. They became targets. I started looking at them and thinking of the best place to put a bomb if I wanted to take it down.

Clouds weren’t just clouds. They had become clusters of gas hiding alien ships that would one day launch an all out assault on the earth and devour us all.

Yes, death had certainly given me a new perspective, and one I quite enjoyed.

So I walked along, waiting for a taxi to come by, looking at things from a different view, when a bum approached me.

“’Ay man, you gert sum change to spare buddy?” His unintelligible words coming from a mouth that had probably spent the rest of the day around a wine bottle.

“No.” I kept walking.

He followed me.

“Come on man, you some cheap buddy, what’s wrong with you huh?”

I kept walking. He kept following.

“Mister cheap man, what’s your problem buddy, ‘ay?”

I kept walking. He kept following. He grabbed me.

THOUGHT 14: Bad move.

SARS may have been causing my end, but it had been kind enough to afford me the same power over others. So many times in my past people had annoyed me to the point where I wanted them to drop dead. Now it wasn’t just a fantasy.

I turned to the bum who had a firm grasp of my doctor’s coat. I looked him in the eye.

“Yer sum fuckin’ doctor buddy, you got no change to spare? Get real.” The bum tried to fire some kind of verbal attack at me, I think.

My eyes focused on his, I breathed in as deeply as I could and… COUGH!

“Woah buddy! Whatcha doin’? Why ya coffin on me?”

I smiled, inside and out.

THOUGHT 15: Fuck you.

I shoved the old crackpot over and kept walking. A smile was on my face. A wide one. I held the life of everyone around me in the palm of my hand. At that moment, I was God.

As I kept one eye out for taxis, I started to keep the other out for people, anyone that did anything I didn’t like.

A man wearing flannelette shirt. COUGH!

A woman with a large nose. COUGH!

A kid wearing his baseball cap backwards. COUGH! COUGH!

And as I kept on walking, I kept on founding victims. Women wearing shorts skirts. Men with moustaches. People with bleached hair. All of them covered in my germs and sentenced to a painful death. In one hour I had become an epidemic.

And it felt good.

I had now completely forgotten about looking for a taxi. I was just seeking out victims. One by one, every person I passed, I found fault in. No one was infallible, everyone was guilty. Everyone was dead.

And after hours of this, I was home. My killing spree had led me back to where I belonged, where I wanted to be all along. I stopped outside of my house for a moment and stared at it. My home. My two-storey beautiful crowning achievement home. This is what my whole life had led to. No family. No wife. No happiness. Just my home and my cat inside it.

I took my keys from my wallet and opened the door. Straight away I had Chook at my feet, meowing and making a fuss over me. I patted him once and then headed to my lounge room. I grabbed my remote control, sat down on my couch and turned on the television.

I had decided I was going to die the way I wished I had lived. Relaxed. I leant back in my couch, stretched my legs and rested them on the table. I let out a moan as I stretched. Chook came and sat on my lap.

Chook: my one true friend. My pal. My buddy. It seemed fitting that I was going to die with him.

As I rested back, he dug his claws into my leg.

THOUGHT 16: Ouch!

I tried to put it out of mind. He dug in deeper.

THOUGHT 17: Fuck! Stop it!

The stupid thing continued to dig.

COUGH!

THOUGHT 18: Sorry.