NADIA KULIGOWSKI An extract from Preparatory Hybristophile

Catherine,

With your prescription I’m giving you this thought diary. I’m aware the following weeks you are not in my care will be difficult, so it’ll benefit both you and me if you provide updates of your thoughts and feelings within this diary at least once a day.

Regards, Dr.

Kaitlin Reed

Dear Doctor, I think I am dead. Well, that is to say a ghost … I wail pitifully. I wake everyone up in the middle of the night going downstairs to the kitchen. I’m deathly pale. People want me to leave the house but the most unnerving thing is I’m one hundred percent sure the blood in my veins is one degree above freezing, to the point that … that the word zero haunts my dreams like a grey ghost flickering like snow on my shins. Wait! Should I talk more about how I’m feeling? Will that be a waste of time? With the increase of my dosage I’m finally feeling something. Whether it’s less, I’m sorry, I’m not sure, but it’s like I’ve felt cold, real actual cold now. I stepped off the bus today and felt a feverish warmth in my insides; all I could taste and smell was this sweet manufactured almond flavour kissed by paracetamol. I actually managed to thank the driver, although I still stammered. He said, “You talk funny,” and yet I didn’t fall into tears like a burst vein. Then the cold turned my limbs to glass and began to freeze, the frost glittering as it began to climb my wrists. I can’t feel my saliva, but I’m starting to get my hearing back, which is a blessing after all. I think.

I think I’ll always feel like everyone’s looking straight through me and it can’t be fixed. That’s so stupid. All that’s so stupid. I’m sorry. What I mean is, I wish instead these pills made people not look at me at all. Maybe I don’t. But not really. No, not at all. I just don’t like being looked at.