Thought I'd try something different and share one of my old stories. This one was published in "Morbid Curiosity," a magazine that unfortunately isn't printed anymore. Specifically the issue published in May, 2005. Morbid Curiosity was a collection of weird personal experiences, all nonfiction. They ended up publishing three of my accounts--one about my worker's comp injuries, one about exhuming graves (see October 23, 2013 post), and this one about fever nightmares. Enjoy!
A Natural (But Sick) High
I can recall being quite surprised when I first learned that many of the
body’s discomforts are actually caused by it as defense mechanisms. Pain, for example, designed to alert the body
of injuries; an extreme reminder to cease certain activities or get something
fixed immediately. Or the many symptoms
of illnesses—serving again as warnings, but also directly fighting invading
bodies. The extra phlegm which engulfs
particles in its stickiness, and then expels them, either directly, itself, or
in conjunction with two other symptoms, namely by coughing or sneezing.
And then there’s the fever, the raising of the body’s temperature to
bake the enemy germs. This is one of the
more extreme measures, since fevers can actually go too high and actually kill
the person. It’s kind of reminiscent of
the infamous quote about Vietnam
which holds, “In order to save the village we had to destroy it.”
But sometimes another phenomenon accompanies a fever, and this is the
point of my account; the fever hallucination.
I only had them a few times, and not past the age of ten or so, and my
memory of them is rather spotty and incomplete.
(For example, it is possible that one or more of my fever highs was
augmented by an adrenaline injection done to stop a bad asthma attack;
unfortunately no one in my family can remember for sure.) But the vestiges that have remained are still
oddly intense and clear, over twenty years later.
For the best remembered fever high, I need to explain a little
background first. Since I or someone
else in the house was allergic to all furry animals, we couldn’t have the
typical dog or cat as a pet. Therefore,
we had to make do with fish, hermit crabs, salamanders, newts, and even insects
and bugs. The latter were mainly
represented by wood lice, the common critters also called, “armadillos,” or,
“pillbugs,”; they’re the tiny, segmented, many legged bugs which curl up into a
ball when they feel threatened. They
were easy to keep, as they required no exotic foods, didn’t bite, and weren’t
extremely disgusting or disease-spreading like flies or cockroaches. Anyway, I kept them in empty margarine
containers packed with dirt, leaves, and pieces of wood, and occasionally would
run them through mazes that I made with Legos.
Then the sickness hit, accompanied by the fever. I awakened a few hours after going to
sleep. I was hysterical with fear;
terrified that some nameless persons or entities were going to come into our
house and murder my pillbugs. I went
downstairs and talked with my mom and dad about my acute worries, and somehow
they were able to convince me that everything would be okay, and eventually I
was able to go back upstairs and get back to sleep. As I write this I’m aware of how silly and
absurd my fears sound; I’m confident that the day after it must have sounded
incredibly stupid and paranoid even to a seven or eight-year-old. But, at the time, it made perfect sense. It’s weird, too, because while I liked the
wood lice, I wasn’t that attached to them.
When they died I just picked up a rock and got some more—it didn’t have
the same impact that the death of a fish or reptile did. I don't recall even naming them. So the wood lices’ part in my delusion is
bizarre. Why I wasn’t concerned about
the safety of myself or my family is beyond me.
My heat-addled brain sure thought their tiny lives were vitally
important and valuable that night.
The second fever incident was not as specific, but just as (if not more)
terrifying. Once again, it happened at
night, while I was either trying to go to sleep or perhaps awakened from
sleep. It felt as if some tremendous
force was pressing against me, causing my hands to be pushed open. I perceived some nameless and malevolent
power exhibiting its strength before me.
For this one I didn’t even have the energy to get out of bed. I just lay there, feeling utterly
insignificant. This fear of being
overwhelmed was like nothing I’d experienced, before or since. It was simply raw and hopelessly
intense. I felt so worthless and weak as
to be beyond thoughts of a suicidal nature.
Years later, when I first read some of H. P. Lovecraft’s horror stories,
I found that they struck a chord. His
accounts of people struck dumb with terror at witnessing huge, powerful, and
impossibly ancient god-like beings seemed similar to how I felt at that
time. After a while the feeling must
have passed enough to allow me to fall asleep again.
I talked to other people about these experiences, and some of them
mentioned having fever highs, but they usually consisted of them feeling weird
but not necessarily afraid. The Pink
Floyd song, “Comfortably Numb,” apparently describes such an event, with hands
described as feeling like balloons, and other strange feelings which were
neutral or even positive. I myself place
value on the fever highs because the intensity of emotion was an experience,
but I can’t say that I’d like to repeat them.
If the fever hallucinations had been just trippy yet happy, or even
simply interesting and amusing, maybe I’d feel differently. But, this argument is probably moot, since
this phenomenon seems to affect mostly children.
I’ve never taken chemical hallucinogens like LSD or magic
mushrooms. Partly this is because of
concerns about suffering negative health or legal issues. But I think part of it also stems from the
negative fever experiences. What if the
powerful, impossibly evil (yet absurd) entities that my brain concocted took
the opportunity that the drugs provided to haunt me once again? I think an experience like that would be
somehow worse as an adult.
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