Mugamb's Mysterious Odyssey

With a deep breath, I opened the door to the doctor's office. "Welcome, young man," he said in a raspy voice, "I'm sure you have many questions."

"What do they look like?" I asked. I was referring to the people who were quarantined from the rest of society, which is why no one had seen them for weeks. "Are they sick? How so? What are the symptoms? What about my family?"

"It's difficult for me to answer any of these questions," he responded slowly. "You're going to have to ask them yourself if you want any answers."

"I don't understand how I can do that," I said. "I haven't even seen my family in over a month!"

He tapped his pen against his desk and sighed. "If you want to find out what's causing the plague," he began, then stopped and continued after a moment, "if you want to know what's causing the plague, then you must go there and see."

"Go where?" I asked. It was obvious that he wanted me to investigate more than just my own family; this entire conversation seemed illegal. Just thinking about it made me feel uneasy. Perhaps it was my imagination, but could this doctor actually be implying some sort of criminal activity? I didn't want to find that out by staying here any longer.

The doctor leaned forward on his desk and stared at me with dark eyes. The whole room seemed eerily silent now; even the cardinal on his shoulder had stopped chirping and was simply staring at me with its beady black eyes. "Anywhere you wish," he replied in a low voice, "but if you try to go farther than that, you will die."

That gave me pause. Looking around for any signs of an exit, I asked him if there was any way at all that I could get past this invisible boundary keeping people from suspect areas of India. He leaned back in his chair again and clasped his hands together behind his head with a smile as wide as the Cheshire cat's in Alice in Wonderland.

"Oh yes," he said in his raspy voice laced with evil glee, "there is one way."

And before I had time to react, he'd whipped out a syringe and stabbed it into my chest right between two ribs without warning! The needle was cold at first but quickly heated up as red liquid began coursing through my veins faster than lightning splitting a tree in half! My body felt like it was burning alive inside, like all my nerves were shriveling up into nothingness while my skin bubbled like lava erupting from a volcano! In seconds I felt lightheaded and dizzy as darkness swallowed me whole -- it was over almost as soon as it started!

As soon as my eyes opened again, everything looked muted and blurry through my tear-filled eyes as though looking at reality through a dense fog or blanket of smoke or something similar. Even though everything looked duller around me, I could still make out shapes and colors faintly through the mists surrounding me -- was this what people meant when they said they saw things clearer when their eyes were full of tears? After rubbing away my tears, things started becoming clear again; whatever happened before must have been some sort of illusion because now everything looked much sharper than before!