Corvid-19

Just saw a cute guy on a dating app, wanted to say hi but then I realized my mother would disown me if I was in a relationship with another man. I'm almost never attracted to guys so it never occurred to me that my parents' delusions about morality still play an influencing factor in my life even though I recently turned 30.

I made a thing

If you want to make a thing click below

@nursegracecreates. Make a thing

It was early in the morning, and still dark, when I woke up. I hadn't gotten much sleep. The night before was still a blur, but I remembered enough to get myself off the bed and into my bathroom. A patient in the waiting room had assaulted me as I walked through, grabbing hold of my arm and biting down hard. It was supposed to have been another long shift, but I was sent home after that incident. I needed to clean the wound. I opened my bandages. It wasn't as deep as it could have been, but it broke the skin and drew blood. The skin around the actual wound was bruised, and the outline of a set of teeth was evident. I shuddered as I thought of the state of the man who attacked me. He was dirty, emaciated, and pale, dressed in rags and barely able to walk. I hoped the course of antibiotics I was given would fend off whatever had him in that condition.

After cleaning and rebandaging the bite, I shuffled back to my bed, still groggy. I let myself fade out. In that state between sleeping and waking, I heard a voice speaking. I wasn't too surprised about the fact I was hallucinating; this had happened to me before and I learned it wasn't that uncommon when falling asleep or waking up. It was usually my name, but what I heard then was the word "sleep". It wasn't in the usual voice of someone familiar, but in a low, barely human growl. The content of the hallucination did surprise me, but I was too tired to think about it, so I drifted off.

When I awoke, I still felt tired, like I hadn't slept at all, so I just lay there with my eyes closed for a while. I hadn't dreamed, so I thought about the two strange events that had happened in the last nine or ten hours. There probably wasn't any causal relationship outside of the stress, but I had a pattern of connecting things that shouldn't be connected. This was usually to my own detriment. I didn't have any intention of letting this get to me like I used to, so I tried to put it out of my head. I wasn't scheduled today, so I didn't plan on getting out of the bed any time soon. It took a little longer than usual to clear out of the morning fog, but about the time I did my phone rang. I searched for it a few seconds then answered.

"Silas? How are you doing?" A worried voice asked from the other end of the line. I searched my head for a second before realizing it was my mother. Someone must have told her about what had happened. That made sense; she was one of my emergency contacts.

"I'm alright, mom. They probably made it sound worse than it was."

"Are you sure? You don't have to spare me, you know"

"No really, it's fine. Listen, I need to get some more rest, so I'll talk to you later. Love you, mom"

"Love you too, honey"

After hanging up, I lay back down, and closed my eyes. She was my adoptive mother, but more or less the real thing. Not that I would know, I had been abandoned with my grandparents when I was a baby and they... They weren't kind people, or caring people. I think they resented the obligation to raise me. Behind closed doors, it was a nightmare, but in public they were the picture of domestic perfection. Eventually, though, they went too far. My grandfather had broken my leg with a sledgehammer while I slept for trying to run away the week before. I guess his mind was starting to go at that point, but thank god he was too frail to damage it as bad as a younger man could have. My mother was a godsend after 4 years in foster care, and I felt bad brushing her off the way I had, but I needed sleep. So I drifted off again.