As far as I know I was one of the first infected here in Mexico City. It was near the end of January of that first year. Daniela and I had gone to a picnic in Chapultepec on a Saturday night, and we were both bitten to shreds. By Monday I was calling out of the contract job I had at the time to hang over the edge of my toilet the whole day, sometimes from one end, sometimes from the other, sometimes stretched from the toilet to the basin of the tub. By Friday I had lost 3 kilos from the nausea and vomiting and was subsisting on whatever drops of Electrolite would pass through my system between trips to the toilet. I had even switched from the zero calorie to the regular, desperate for the sugar. I was already confident in my IUD- it was new since November- but this seemed to confirm more concretely that it wasn’t a pregnancy. In a dark little spot of my brain I felt glad to lose the weight of Christmas dinners and all the rosca de reyes, just before the tamales in February. I could lie in bed and listen to music or a podcast or even walk outside for a bit, but more than a few moments at my desk and I was back to the toilet. Daniela was fine.…
Originally published on August 15, 2024 in Issue 9 of 45th Parallel. Winner of the Pandemic-Resistant Cities Science Fiction Writing Contest.