Whaddup. It’s the flu your four-year-old brought home for spring break. Are you gonna let me in or what? You’re hoping I leave you alone? You booked a family trip to Wolf Lodge Water Park? The deposit is nonrefundable?
Listen, I just KO’ed two dozen preschoolers like complimentary chips and dip at Casa Azteca, and now I want my entrée, capisce? Vis-à-vis for the next week or so, this is my house. And lemme tell you something—Michelangelo had marble. Da Vinci had paint. I have fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. And in three days, your GI tract will be my magnum opus.
Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I’m way too contagious to pass you by. I’ve literally spent a millennia evolving my DNA to inflict maximum carnage on your O-ring. The fact we’re even having this conversation means I’m already prancing through your upper respiratory system, painting the walls with flu.
What I’m saying is the chain reaction has begun. There’s no stopping the shitstorm descending upon your world. Think of me as Franz Ferdinand, the flu.
Not a WWI buff?
Okay, then I’m crappy synth music flu. Write me off as underground, then boom: I’m headlining Bonnaroo, encoring my crappy synth hit “All Who Live at Your Address Are Getting the Flu.”
I infect everyone. And everything. I’ll straight-up give your belongings the flu. I’m talking inanimate objects. Your chair. Your brown loafers. Your favorite T-shirt that always seems to fit just right. All about to come down with a raging case of flu. I out-pizza’ed-the-hut and gave it the flu.
To be clear, you’re a drunk trust-fund kid, and I’m your Malibu bonfire spreading out of control. Daddy can’t stop this flu.
It would take an act of God, whom I infected with flu, by the way, to keep me away from you. The laws of physics would have to be rewritten. The theory of relativity would be null and void. The universe as we know it would have to be altered for you to get through this week without catching me.
Get the picture?
Look, I’ll be real with you: I get no joy from seeing your family watch you suffer in such explicit and demeaning ways.
I’m kidding. That exact scenario brings me joy. SO much joy.
Aw, don’t look so down. You and I, we’re gonna have fun. You’ll see. When’s the last time you suffered vivid and utterly terrifying fever dreams? Some people pay good money to hallucinate like that.
Think of it this way. Your daughter brought me home for show and tell. I show you the fragility of your mortality by keeping you nude on the bathroom floor, cycling between fits of indescribable humilities; you tell your God she has forsaken you.
Because make no mistake, for the next few days, I am your God.