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Common Cold Research Center (F; contagion)

Common Cold Research Center

by Lady Gallatea

 Hayvenburst Common Cold Research Program

The Hayvenburst Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Hayvenburst Institute, is conducting a study on the spread of the common cold and the various factors that affect cold and influenza epidemics. This study is looking for healthy volunteers to participate in the study. Volunteers must be willing to agree to a twelve to twenty-four hour time commitment and a confidentiality agreement for the duration of the study. All volunteers will receive $250 as compensation for their time. If you are interested in participating in our study, please contact 750-555-3159.

 *

When Helen Hearst saw the flyer on the jobs board of her college dorm, she thought she’d hit heaven. Her bank account was running low and she’d needed some quick cash to buy a book for class, but she thought she’d be serving coffee at the local dining hall — not indulging in her favorite sexual pass time.

See, Helen had an odd sexual kink. She was into sneezes, especially those that came from a cold. She loved seeing other people catch colds and loved catching them herself. It wasn’t out of masochism — she just wanted to be able to spread her cold to others and watch them catch what she so freely gave out.

It didn’t take Helen long to call the number and set up an appointment for that Saturday. When she arrived at the research building early Saturday morning, she was carrying a duffle bag with some overnight clothes and a book. She itched with nervous energy and her sex was already aching with desire.

The building was relatively isolated on campus and she was the only one nearby when she entered the glass double doors. There was a man at the front desk. His light brown hair was brushed neatly back and he wore a nice suit.

“Hello,” he said genially, smiling brightly at her. “Welcome to the Hayvenburst Institute. How may I help you?”

“I’m, uh,” she stuttered, “Helen. I’m here for an appointment? I’m a volunteer for the common cold research program?”

“Yes, welcome!“ he said, his smile growing wider. “Please, right this way. We’ve been expecting you.”

“Thanks.”

Helen followed him down the hall and around the back to a small, sterile room.

“Please take a seat,“ the man said, gesturing to the soft plastic chairs. He then held out a clipboard. “Fill out these forms as honestly as you can. The more we know, the more comfortable we can make your stay with us.”

Helen took the clipboard. “Okay.”

“When you finish, just put the clipboard and form in that slot over there,” said the man, pointing at a small book slot in the opposite wall. “Someone will be by to collect you in just a bit.”

“Okay, thanks,” Helen agreed.

He left her alone and she looked curiously at the form, filling out what she could. Most of it was pretty standard — asking for her name, address and phone number, her medical history and how often she got sick. They asked her about her habits when she was sick, like if she went to work or if she stayed home. Then they asked her if she covered her mouth when she sneezed and if she preferred tissues or handkerchiefs. The questions got even stranger after that, as they started asking her about her sex life and if she had any kinks.

Helen dutifully answered each question as honestly as she could, though she started getting a little nervous when she filled out the last questions. What was this place and why would they need to know about that sort of thing? Then she signed the last page, consenting to the confidentiality agreement and the mysterious procedure they would put her under.

She slipped the clipboard, form and all into the slot and sat down, waiting for a nurse to come. She wondered what procedure it would be and if it would involve needles. She hoped not — she hated shots. As Helen waited, she suddenly began to feel drowsy. She yawned and her eyes slipped close and before she knew it, she was fast asleep.

When she woke once more, her head felt floaty, the top of her nose ached, and she didn’t recognize the ceiling of the room she was in. She jerked upright and looked around her.

The ‘room’ was actually a subway car. It was old but the seats had recently been replaced and everything had been cleaned, probably sanitized. She was alone in the car, but as the door opens, she found she wouldn’t be alone for very long. Sure enough, several people boarded the train in that moment.

Helen was deeply confused but stayed where she was. She had been in the Institute, waiting for the experiment. Perhaps this was it? Or maybe she was on her way to the place where they would be doing the procedure?

Another woman came and sat down in the seat across from her, a scarf wrapped around her neck and a soft hat covering her head. She was young looking, probably just a little older than her, and had long dark hair and a lovely round nose. Helen shivered as she realized how cold it had gotten in the subway. Her bag wasn’t with her, so she didn’t have a sweater to throw on, Helen noted as she shivered.

Helen peered around them curiously and quirked an eyebrow at the woman. “Are you a volunteer too?” she blurted out, rubbing her arms to try and contain the warmth through her long-sleeved shirt.

“Volunteer?” the woman repeated in an odd voice. “No, I don’t right now, though I was in the Peace Corps during college. I’m on my way to work.”

“Oh,” Helen said, sinking back into her seat. She worried if she should have a ticket to ride the subway and if she should get off and find her way home, when the subway started moving. Too late.

The car sat in silence for two minutes before Helen noticed something. Several times in the last few minutes, since people began boarding the subway, she would hear punctuated coughs or sniffles. A couple seconds after she made the observation, a man down the way sneezed messily into a handkerchief.

Helen carefully eyed each person and one-by-one identified that each person was sick with a cold. Everyone except her and the girl sitting across from her. This was most definitely the experiment, so why was the girl across from her not aware that she was a volunteer? Or was she told not to give it away?

She sat back and thought it over, trying to puzzle out what it all meant, when the girl in front of her wrinkled the tip of her nose and rubbed it with a single finger. Helen’s curiosity was immediately piqued. Did she have a cold too, but was only just coming down with it?

Helen’s attention was immediately trained on the woman as she let out a single, damp sniffle that wrinkled her whole face with the short inhalation. It was followed by a longer rub to the side of her nose and then to the bottom.

Time lapsed and Helen watched as the woman’s nose became drippier and more ticklish. The subway car never stopped and the air never stopped recycling as she breathed in every sneeze and cough that echoed in the quiet car. It was so quiet that Helen could hear every sniffle and just watch every wrinkle of that beautiful nose.

The woman didn’t have any tissues or handkerchiefs on her, so she was soon reduced to wiping her nose on her cold, stiff fingers. She would start by pressing her damp nostrils against her knuckles and wiping along the edges of her fingers until she could sniff dryly against them. Eventually though, her nose was too wet and full for that, so she had to use the full flesh of her palm and the back of her hand to catch the drips.

Helen watched, wide-eyed at the woman’s unabashed wiping right in front of her. The sniffles grew ever frequent, from every couple of minutes to every few seconds. There was a hell of a runny cold in that woman’s nose and it wasn’t going to be letting go over her any time soon.

“UhhHhh!” The woman gasped and Helen held her breath in anticipation. Was this it? “UHHIiiihh….iiihhhHHHhhh… sddddniiiiiiifff!… IihhhHhhIIIITTT'CHHOOO!” After several false starts and one desperate sniffle, the woman sneezed openly, point-blank, right into Helen’s face.

As Helen inhaled the wet germs, she smiled and couldn’t help but stare as the woman groggily recovered from the sneeze, wiping her abused nose once more on her sleeve. That was easily the best money and cold she had ever gotten.

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O//phelia’s kind of a mess when she’s sick.. but she’s doing her best❤️

I tried one of those border-less Comic like formats on this one :3

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Yeaaahhhh I wrote a second part to that sick assassin-fic... this is even worse from a contagion and mess-view, so if you don't like either of those, don't read. Seriously. 😉

(the plot actually makes no sense whatsoever, but I kinda made it up as I went just to have more excuses to have her sneeze everywhere. There's some unsanitary noseblowing into things that are not tissues or handkerchiefs too. Generally dripping and sneezing on stuff and people. Also, since she is an assassin, there is a murder too, but it's not explicit. Link to first part is at the bottom if you missed it. It takes place pre-cell phone era.). So yeah, I think that warning/explanation should do it, lol.

Enjoy the filth, my fellow freaks. 😈

Femme Fatale part 2, female, cold, mess + implied contagion)

“AaaaGTSSHHuh! Aah-AAAESSCHHuhh!”

The assassin’s breath hitches and then she snaps forward again, almost rhythmically giving in to the sneezes.

“Hah… aaTSSSHHH! AaaTSSSHHH! Aaah-TSSSHHH-TSSSHHH-uhhRGSCHuhhh! AaaaRGGSSSHHHEW!”

She is a strikingly attractive woman if you disregard the excessively symptomatic cold that she is currently suffering from. This is the most intense fit of the cold – so far, but this record will be beaten long before the day is over – and she is giving herself up fully to it. Each sneeze expelled from her itchy nose enters the world completely uncovered, and everything within the spray zone is continuously getting showered with droplets, snot, and countless viruses.

The sneezes finally begin to taper off, but her nose is throbbing. It feels like tiny pins and needles endlessly pricking at the inflamed mucus membranes. Her chest is full of congestion as well, but the cough is nowhere near as annoying and persistent as the sneeze attacks. She is so sick it’s almost comical. But she has a target to get to, so she’s not laughing. Not one bit.

“Oh goddamnit,” she croaks, voice drenched and husky at the same time. “Should take out whoever gave me this cold, too. As a… ahh… AAGTSSSSHHHH! Bonus. AaaaGTSSSHHH! AaaayISSSSHHHEW!”

She can’t do that of course, not only because it wouldn’t be very smart to kill people willy-nilly when you’re meant to move in the city incognito, but because she doesn’t know who infected her with this nasty, drippy cold.

She grabs a handful of tissues from a nearly empty box and blows her nose, which in turn certainly isn’t anywhere near empty. She’s not as stuffed up as she was last night, but instead her nose won’t stop running. It’s not going to be a walk in the park to carry out the assassination if her nose won’t behave. She only has a short time window to get it done, however, and she has never failed to do a job.

It would have been easier yesterday. She was sneezing a lot then too, but she could have held them back if necessary. She just didn’t give a fuck where her germs ended up. Today, oh today is a very different story. She can’t hold back these sneezes. It’s simply not possible. Her nasal passages are burning relentlessly; even when she’s not sneezing, her body wants to sneeze. Her nose is so sore and so itchy, and it has taken on a red shade that almost looks unreal. It looks like theatre makeup, as if she’s an actress playing a character with an overly obvious cold. It’s very… on the nose.

She blows her nose as hard as she can, then leans her head back and breathes slowly through her mouth. There’s a crackling sound in her sinuses every time she tries to get any air through her nose, and each time the urge to sneeze flares up again.

She spends the morning in her hotel room, sneezing and blowing her nose, resorting to the soft bath towels over tissues, and she can’t waste the one handkerchief she has because she knows she’s going to need it later.  

After lunch – a cup of tea with honey and some fruit she didn’t really want – it’s time to get ready to go outside. There is no way she’ll be able to hide the redness of her nose, so she just does her best to soften its glaringly sickly appearance.

***

She heads out and hails a cab, sneezing the moment she slides into the backseat.

“Bless you, ma’am,” the driver says, almost automatically, then he actually looks at her face and cringes slightly. It would be amusing if her nose wasn’t such a bother right now. “Uh, drugstore or doctor?” he asks, assuming that someone this visibly sick cannot possibly consider going anywhere else.

She says the name of a street known for its expensive stores. Clothes, mostly. He gives her a doubtful glance that she endures without snapping. Her throat hurts, and her nose is stinging, she’s going to sneeze again the moment she opens her mouth and she’s so tired of sneezing.

“Well, I guess you know where you want to go,” he finally says and begins to drive down the street.

She looks out the window without really seeing anything, her entire focus is on the pounding in her nose, which is transferring to a pounding in her head. Each time she breathes, congestion moves in her nose, sometimes audibly. She’s still annoyingly congested, but it’s looser today, much more likely to dislodge during one of her powerful sneezing fits.

She sniffles, which intensifies the twinge in her nose and her breath catches in her throat.

“Hah-! Ahh… aaaGTSSHH-ESSSHHHoo! RIHSSSHHOOO!”

Specks of mess and spray hits the window, but most of the fallout rains down on herself, because she bent forward more than before, her stomach muscles clenching.

“Bless you,” the driver says, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “Didn’t your mother teach you to cover your mouth when you sneeze?”

She sniffles and meets his eyes, cocking an eyebrow in an arrogant expression that she knows her general appearance largely undoes.

“She did not,” she replies.  

He chuckles.

“Fair enough.”

She actually smiles a little, almost in spite of herself. So far he’s the only person who’s had the guts to point out her bad sneeze habits instead of just glaring at her, and she respects that. Not enough to keep her germs to herself, but still.

There is a reason she won’t just get a tissue or handkerchief and cover her mouth and nose when these itchy sneeze attacks burst out of her, but it’s not something she’d like to share. Either way she could of course still turn away when she sneezes, but she has found that sneezing unapologetically straight ahead is a good way of showing dominance without anyone realising that’s what you’re doing. All of this are of course only excuses. The truest truth is that she can’t be bothered, besides, someone else went out with a contagious cold in order for her to get sick in the first place, so why is the burden of respecting others’ health on her?

She sneezes again. This time all over her purse. This time the placement of the mess annoys her a little.

***

She steps out of the cab, pays – adding a fairly large tip, mostly because he showed some guts – and turns to look at the clothing store. Her target always goes here once a month – on the 15th, so today – to have a new suit tailored. It’s one of his eccentric traits, but otherwise he appears not to have many, well, not for the unnecessarily rich, anyway.

It’s not at all uncommon for uptown wives to shop clothes for their husbands in this store, so she will blend right in.

At least that was the plan, but that was before she caught this very attention-drawing cold. The first minute or so, her nose is burning but not giving any indication that it’s going to cause any trouble.

All she needs to do is get close enough to prick him with a poisoned needle. He’s having a suit tailored, it could easily be brushed off as a misplaced pin. A brief sting that’s momentarily annoying – if he notices at all – and he’s already dead. It won’t happen for several hours, and by then he would have had supper and most likely a cocktail. Plenty of situations where he could have ingested something deadly, by accident or not. And she would be out of the city by the time anyone would start to suspect anything.

She is attempting to move closer in a slow, inconspicuous way, stopping and looking at random pieces of clothing, attempting to look completely focused on this task while keeping an eye on the target.

She holds up a shirt, pretending to look at it, when the need to sneeze strikes her again, suddenly and impossible to fight even if she wanted to. Her head snaps forward with a strong, wet sneeze, showering the shirt in a cascade of virus-heavy droplets.

“HaaAAIISSSSHHHH!”

It’s sudden and loud enough to draw the unwanted attention to her, including from her target. It is cold and flu season and it’s not uncommon to hear sneezes and coughs when you’re out and about, but she can feel that what’s about to hit isn’t a couple of stray sneezes. That one wet sneeze was merely the prelude to one of the long, helpless fits she’s battled with since she got back from the restaurant last night. She’s going to keep sneezing until her body is too exhausted to keep at it, and while she doesn’t care what she sneezes on, it’s not a good idea to draw too much attention to yourself from your target and people interacting with them.

“AAHH-TSSSHHHEW!”

She sneezes again as she quickly makes her way to the other end of the store and into one of the fitting rooms.

“AEESSSHHH-aaaGTSSSHH!!”

Two rapid sneezes explode out of her and spray rains all over the mirror, distorting her reflection.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and sneezes again, full force, hoping that will put an end to the itch, or at least to the fit.

No such luck, and this is about as many sneezes as she counted on getting away with, if she doesn’t stop soon she can kiss this operation goodbye, and that would be one snotty kiss.

There are a few items of clothing left in the fitting room, someone was too lazy to put them back, and she groans inwardly, but no part of her hesitates. This isn’t about her comfort and preferences right now, it’s about not fucking up a job.

So she buries her whole face into the pile of clothes and sneezes into them over and over, praying that this will muffle the sneeze attack enough that no one pays further attention to her. Her whole body convulses violently as she tries to contain the sound of the sneezes pouring out of her, one right after another after another.

It muffles the sound into wet softness and no one not standing very close to the fitting rooms would hear her, even though she’s suffering through one of the most intense, almost painful, sneezing fits she’s ever had.

This goes on for several minutes, and she is a flushed, damp-nosed mess when it finally begins to taper off. Her nose is streaming and there is so much mess all over the now-soaked pile of clothes she sneezed into, it’s quite disgusting. There’s a knitted scarf there as well, not part of the pile but hung over a hanger, and she grabs it without hesitation, puts it to her throbbing, dripping nose, and blows.

It takes several thorough, wet blows before she has gotten rid of most of the contents of her aching nose. When she has, and is as sure as she can be that the fit is indeed over, she wipes the mirror with one last remaining dry spot of the scarf and makes sure she doesn’t have snot on her face. The makeup is mostly gone by now, not much she can do about that right now, but she can do that much at least.

Then she walks back out, leaving her virus-contaminated mess behind in the fitting room for the next unlucky patron to discover.

Her target is getting ready to leave the store. This is not going to be elegant, but as long as it gets done…

She walks in a brisk pace towards the exit, and everyone who sees her would agree that she looks like she’s blindly trying to get away before her cold has her caught up in another sneeze attack, not like she’s targeting anyone.

She bumps into him on purpose, and before he even turns around she pricks him with that needle that has been hidden in her pocket the whole time.

“What the…”

“I’b so sorry Sir, I didn’t bead to… ahhh…”

The hitching is not fake, she really does feel her nostrils flare as another sneeze begins to build, this time likely triggered by the strong cologne that surrounds him. He too can tell it’s real, and he quickly says;

“No harm, no foul, Miss,” and turns away from her lest he gets a faceful of her cold. He avoids it, but even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have had time to sicken him, because he’ll be dead before midnight.

She heads out, needle safely back in her pocket, and she hears him grunt to the tailor:

“Did you really remove all the needles? I could swear I got pricked!”

Then she explodes with a desperate, spraying sneeze just as she walks out the doors, sneezing right in the face of one of the uptown wives who’s coming in to buy her husband a birthday present.

Rather than getting angry at the beautiful stranger who presented her with such an obviously contagious shower, this woman stops, slowly wipes her face, and cracks up in an unladylike grin. Her husband always rather enjoys it when she’s afflicted by sneezy ailments, so if she’s lucky, she can gift him something much better than a tie.

***

The cold-ridden assassin heads back to the hotel, where she packs her things, disposes of the needle, and then takes a nap. She’s exhausted, but she has to meet with one of her contacts in a bar later before she leaves the Big Apple. Her hope is that this nap will make her feel better… but she will wake up disappointed, nearly immediately in the throes of yet another messy sneezing fit.

***

“Whisky on the rocks,” she says. The bartender looks at her, seemingly enticed by her voice. It’s a sultry voice under normal circumstances, but with the rasp of the cold, it’s downright seductive. He pulls himself together, most likely aided in this endeavour by her watery eyes, flaming red nose and chapped upper lip. She’s wearing makeup, of course, but if it didn’t make much difference last night, now it makes even less difference. She must have sneezed several hundred times since early morning. Before this cold is over she’ll easily have sneezed over a thousand times, if she hasn’t already, which is absolutely ridiculous to imagine.

This is not the place to draw attention to herself with her overwhelming, streaming cold. This is not a restaurant she’ll never go to again or a clothing store she has no business at in the first place. This is a place that she has to frequent when she visits New York, where she meets with contacts that gets her jobs, and it’s also a place where undercover cops like to go to infiltrate the underworld. While most are obvious to a trained eye like hers, there are some very good ones too. They’d just salivate if they’d manage to catch her.

There is no way of knowing if anyone would remember her target interacting with a very symptomatic cold-ridden woman mere hours before dying unexpectedly from unknown causes, but she doesn’t want to take any chances.

The drink she ordered is placed in front of her, and she takes an uninterested sip. It’s cheap stuff, probably watered down too, and it’s rough on her sore throat. She shudders, albeit mostly from the fever chill that has slowly started to creep in.

The bartender goes back to tending the bar, and she takes another sip, casually surveying the patrons.

But before she’s even halfway looking through the room, the itch in her nose intensifies again. Much as she dislikes holding back or stifling her sneezes, this is not the place to draw unnecessary attention to herself.

She curls her hand into a first and presses her knuckles hard agaist her nostrils, almost as if she's physically pushing the sneezes back in. Even with her knuckles essentially plugging her nostrils shut, the need to sneeze refuses to go away. Tiny pinpricks dance from the tip of her nose into the very depths of her sinuses. She holds her breath and presses even harder, feels the sleek leather of her glove now technically inside her nose, and simultaneously feels the heat from her inflamed, damp nose through her glove. Whether she has a fever yet or not, her nose is feverishly hot to the touch.

A cross-eyed stare has long since filled her watery eyes, perfect eyebrows knitting together as her eyes narrow, closing little by little no matter how hard she fights to keep them open and keep the building sneeze at bay. She has to sneeze so desperately, but she can’t do it here.

Get yourself together, she orders herself inwardly but even with her extensive training and experience, in the end, she is still human, with all the flaws and weaknesses that entails, and she must give in to her body’s physical needs.

“Mmkkggghhh!”

It doesn’t sound like a sneeze, at least she can pride herself on that, but it’s not soundless. It sounds like something between a closed-mouthed hiccup and a contained gulp, and she doesn’t know if it hurts the back of her throat or her sinuses and nose more. Her whole head feels like it’s filled to the brim with snot.

She fights another sneeze, trying her hardest to suppress it, but this one is too strong, and her head bobs forward – she’s still pressing her fist against her nostrils, but the pressure from within is too much to withstand and torrents of snot shoot out of both nostrils.

Enough of this. She’s had enough. She wipes her nose and then her glove on some napkins by the bar, leaves them crumpled up next to her barely touched whisky and pulls out a bill from her wallet. She makes eye contact with the bartender who comes over.

“Anything else for you, ma’am?”

“No. I was supposed to meet someone. He’s not on time.”

“Would you like to borrow our phone in the back? Ensure nothing has happened?” He lowers his voice to a near-silent whisper. “You’re being watched.”

She pretends to consider, while equally discreet looking around. She notices that a man is watching her from a table near the window, slowly smoking a cigarette. It’s not the man she’s here to meet, and it’s possible that he looks at her considering soliciting her for sex, thinking she’s a hooker. But it’s also possible that behind the veil of smoke, it’s a cop’s eyes measuring her.

“Yes, I would, please,” she replies, and the bartender shows her to the backrooms.

“Back door?” she asks, pulling another bill out and slips it into his hand. It’s a big bill so it probably makes up for the cold she hands over with it, but if it doesn’t, well, that’s not her problem. He could always decline it, and he doesn’t.

“Right there.”

“Thank you.”

She slips out into the back alley, and her nose is burning from holding back for so long, tortured by the cold as well as the dense smoky air in the bar. She manages to hold back until she’s at a whole different street. Once she’s out of sight and earshot of the bar, however, she inhales sharply and barks out four unrestrained, harsh, much throatier sneezes into the chilly November air.

“AaaRRRGGSSSHH! ARRSSSSHHHUH! HAARSSSHHHHOO! Hah-RAH-SSSSCHoo!”

Her nose is running with renewed enthusiasm and, knowing she’ll have to get rid of her entire outfit before she leaves the state anyway, she brings her gloved hand up to her face and blows her runny nose directly into the smooth leather without breaking her stride. There is a flood of contagious mess spilling out between her fingers and into her palm. She then pulls the gloves off and drops them into a trashcan, still without slowing down. Her head is pounding with congestion, how that is even possible considering the copious amounts she just rid herself of, and a fever chill runs down her spine.

Tonight she won’t sleep at a luxury hotel, it’s more likely to be one of those seedy motels where they ask no questions and you can count on hearing a few gunshots and a lot of cockroaches through the night. But the way she’s feeling, any bed will be a good bed tonight.

She reaches a bus stop and takes out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She puts the cigarette between her lips and lights up.

Mistake.

The first inhale stings her throat and her lungs, and she coughs. She’s not a heavy smoker like so many others, and doesn’t have the infamous smoker’s cough, but this cold produces a lot of mucus and it’s a wet, congested cough, leading to a tired sigh that sounds a lot like a moan… which turns into another sneeze.

“Ughh… ghhyESSSSSHHHoo!”

Her crimson nostrils crinkle as she sniffles, showing a glimpse of her septum, glistening with moisture. Her nose is so hopelessly sensitive that there is very little she can do to control it; her breath hitches again and her whole upper body jerks forward with the next sneeze. And then she inhales sharply and sneezes again.

“Aaah-TSSSHH! Aahh-TSSSSHH! HAH-TSSSHHHU! AaaKTSSSHHH! Aaah-ESSSHHEH! EESSSHHH! HATSSSHHOO! TSSSHHH-heh-ESSSHHHH-ahh-ISSSHHH!”

She’s stuck in another one of those seemingly endless loops: sneeze – gasp – sneeze, over and over, as the prickle in her nose refuses to let up no matter how many times her body tries to comply with it. This is the itchiest, wettest, and by far the sneeziest cold she’s ever had, and that says a lot because colds do tend to make themselves very comfortable in her nose.

When the fit eventually slows down, her eyes are streaming and her nose is dripping. There’s not much left of the cigarette, even though she only got that one drag. The wind got most of it. She drops it on the ground and crushes it underneath her heel. What a waste of smokes.

She pulls out a napkin that she vaguely remembers picking up at the bar before she left, blows her nose as much as she dares – the napkin is delicate and her nose is full of the cold – and wipes her nose and mouth before throwing it away. She sniffles, a thick, snorting sniffle that shifts the congestion that somehow still lingers up her nose. She blinks and wonders if she’s going to erupt into another one of those ridiculously intense fits, but while looming nearby, the sneezes seem content to stay put for now.

She sighs and lets out a wet cough as the bus pulls up. The bus is not full, but there are quite a few passengers already. Her nostrils, so irritated that they quiver in protest against the simple rush of air as she moves to step aboard, are so red they’re almost a warning sign at this point, cautioning people to stay away from her virus-dispensing presence.

Her breath is already hitching again, nostrils still quivering and flaring, and a gleaming trail of mess is visible on her upper lip as she pays for her ticket. The bus driver looks tired and resigned; he’s probably been sneezed on before. But he won’t be by her, at least, because the building sneeze turns out to be a false start and she exhales in frustrated non-relief when the immediate need goes away.

It quickly returns as she makes her way down the aisle, however, and she’s only a few rows down when another sneeze bursts out of her, as before completely freely, leaving a cloud of contagious mist in the air. Another sneeze, and a third, increasing in intensity and volume for each one.

The bus is still idling as some passengers are stepping off at the back door, and that’s a good thing because she can barely keep her balance sneezing this violently.

A man is reading the newspaper with a grim look on his face. She doubts the death of her target is the reason, it’s unlikely to have made the news yet. Tomorrow’s paper, more likely. But she can’t tell for sure; the headlines are blurry because her eyes are filled with tears. Her sinuses are tingling, it’s like being stabbed repeatedly inside her nose by the tiniest daggers, is it any wonder she can’t stop sneezing?

“Haaa-GTSSSSSHHHOOO!”

The ferocious sneeze sends a wealth of spray rushing into the air, and she can see a plethora of virus-filled droplets sprinkle the newspaper. She has a feeling the majority of the passengers here will arrive at their destinations carrying a bit more than their visible luggage.

Finding an empty seat, she sits down, sneezing another haze of spray all over the head of the attractive young woman in front of her before she sits down, sniffling back some mess that tried to escape the confinements of her battered nasal passages. Her elegant nose is currently trying to accommodate a deluge, and while rather prominent, it doesn’t have that kind of capacity.

She searches her purse and finds her handkerchief, just simple white cotton, remarkably unremarkable. She knew she was going to need it eventually. She brings it up to her stinging nose and starts emptying it of its snotty contents. One thick, wet, gurgling blow after another until she’s somewhat able to breathe freely, then she wipes the remaining moisture from her fire-red nose and chafed upper lip and puts the handkerchief back into her purse. 

“Aaah-DJISSSCHEW! EERGTSSSHHH! HATISSSHHOO”

And then she sneezes again, turned towards the aisle. The heavier drops of mess lands on the floor but there are plenty of finer droplets forming a virulent mist that is hovering lazily in the air, waiting to attach to someone else’s mucus membranes and turn them into a sneezy mess too.

She should probably feel bad about that, but she’s a contract killer with a high death count, forgive her if she doesn’t care all that much if a cute little secretary or a post office clerk gets the sniffles.

***

By the time the bus gets to her stop, well outside the city, she must have sneezed at least two dozen more times, mostly in singles, doubles and triples, but with one breathless fit of seven in a row as well. At this point she’s getting a more persistent cough as well. Her forehead is hot to the touch but she’s shivering in her coat, which is perfectly adequate for the season. So she knows it’s not the coat. It’s her. She’s running a fever.

It has started to rain, and a foggy, dreary, rainy walk to the motel she spotted not too far away isn’t going to be fun.

Coughing, she grabs her small suitcase and her purse and walks off the bus. She can almost hear the sigh of relief from the rest of the passengers that the plague-carrier has left the immediate vicinity.

“AAAGTSCCHHHahh! Ah-rrSSSSSHHoo!”

It’s ridiculous, I can’t stop sneezing, she thinks and wipes her runny nose with one bare hand. She regrets throwing away her gloves. Surely, she could have kept them until tomorrow.

Well, too late to fret, pointless to regret.

***

It’s a longer walk than she estimated, and when she arrives she’s soaked through and switching continually between coughing and sneezing, no longer bothering trying to wipe her nose free from the nonstop stream of snot. It wouldn’t be that noticeable either way, considering how soaked with rainwater she is.

The clerk looks up at her pathetic appearance, at first not sure if he should say something about it. This isn’t the kind of establishment where you ask your patrons too many questions, and he suspects that it includes inquiries into their health.

She sneezes generously all over the desk, and it’s no longer a mist or droplets, it’s splashes and splotches. If contagion was a person, she would look like this.

“A very good evening to you too, ma’am,” the man says with a healthy dose of sarcasm that she ignores.

“I need a room for the night,” she says.

“Name?”

“Jane Smith.”

It’s one notch above Jane Doe, but it’s good enough for him. He likely serves a lot of Jane and John Smiths here. He simply hums and jots her name down in a book, then produces a key.

“Room 8. Fresh sheets, towels, and shower with hot water.”

Gee, no expenses spared on this luxury, she thinks, thinking about the bathtub and the bubble bath in her suite at the hotel, but she takes the key.

“You look like you need one,” he says. It would be an inappropriate remark anywhere else, but it’s not out of place here, and she doesn’t care either way. “Checkout at ten tomorrow,” he says and goes back to the pocket western he’s reading. There’s a half-full bottle of cheap bourbon on the desk next to him.

“I’d pay extra for that bottle,” she says, and she realises to her dismay that her teeth are chattering.

“I bet you would,” he replies, eyeing her up and down, and she knows that if she hadn’t been so hideously contagious, he would suggest a roll in the sack as his price. She doubts she’ll appeal to his knight in shining armour-side, if he has one at all, so in her mind the drink is a lost cause, but he surprises her. “Oh hell, you look like a drenched cat. Just take it, get warmed up,” he says and pushes the bottle across the desk.

“Thank you,” she says, and there is genuine gratitude in what’s left of her voice.

Then she heads out to find her room.

***

She didn’t have high hopes for her room, but for the second time this evening she’s pleasantly surprised. The sheets are indeed fresh, so are the towels, and the room is small but someone has cleaned it since last guest. The bathroom is tiny and there’s some rust in the shower drain, but the surfaces have been wiped clean (if she could smell anything she’d smell the lemony scent of cleaning products, but her sense of smell has abandoned her for the time being) the water is clear, and more importantly, warm. Not lukewarm, but hot. She quickly strips off her wet clothes and steps into the shower, letting out a deep, congested sigh of relief when the warmth engulfs her.

It remains to be seen if she’ll have the company of cockroaches or rats tonight, but for the first time since she decided to stay at a cheap motel tonight, she thinks she might actually get a good night’s sleep.

She fires off three loud, insanely messy sneezes in the small space and the echo is deafening, enough to have her wince as she wipes mess from her nose and lets it rinse off with the water.

If she’s lucky, the cold will be better tomorrow. The emerging cough and the increasing fever seem to indicate otherwise, but she might not sneeze as much, which would be a relief in itself.

A girl can hope.

She’s leaving the East Coast for California tomorrow, sick or not. She has another target to get to. A film producer who ticked off the wrong actor. At least this killing doesn’t have as strict a time window, so she’ll have a few days to recover from the cold before she gets back to work. 

She reaches for the shampoo and sneezes messily all over herself. The hot water washes it away… but her nose is itching so much, she just knows there’s still more where that came from.

“AaaaRGGSSSHHHHuhh!”

Plenty more.

***

(link to first part below if you missed it)

[agoodsfpage]

Guys, that dream made me horny so I wrote an entire fic. LOL

Mess warning, contagion warning. It's disgusting. Just sayin'. Also, I don't know when it takes place, but it's pre-cellphone era at least.

Femme Fatale (female, cold)

She is a timeless beauty, wearing an expensive, classy dress and diamond jewellery and high heels. Despite her carefully applied makeup there are visible dark circles around her eyes, and her nose is so red it nearly matches the bouquets of burgundy roses that decorate the tables in the lavish Manhattan restaurant on this Valentine’s Day.

Money or not, Valentine’s Day or not, the waiter thinks this woman has no business going out tonight, for her own sake and for everyone else’s. But he works at a high-end restaurant and insulting the patrons is not something he wants to be accused of doing, so he shows her to her table, pretending not to notice the droplets of spray that hits him when she sneezes twice in rapid succession without covering.

“Hehh-ITSSSHHuh! EhhhISSSHHew!”

“Bless you, ma’am,” he says in an impeccably polite tone, to which she gives no response whatsoever. She doesn’t apologise either, she merely sits down with a blocked-up sniff. He hands her the drink menu and she takes it just as she sneezes again, spraying the air between them with more virus-filled droplets. Some land on her own chest, some on the menu, and some remain airborne, floating in the dim light like a bad omen. The waiter keeps his poker face, but this time he refrains from blessing her. It doesn’t seem to faze her. She swipes a finger underneath her inflamed, damp nostrils before flicking the drink menu open and giving it a cursory glance.

“Dry Martini,” she says. The thick, wet congestion aside, her voice is several octaves lower than usual and has a rather sexy rasp. The waiter of course can’t know if this is due to her very obvious cold or if it’s authentic, but it’s a very distinct and very sensual voice.

“Excellent,” he says, and leaves. Her lipstick-coated lips form a smirk as she crosses her legs and leans back. Oh yeah, she bets he thinks it’s excellent, to get to put some distance between himself and her visibly contagious person. Not that she can blame him, but if she must be out dragging this cold around, then she doesn’t care who catches it.

She wants to light a cigarette, but the cold has left her throat so raw and irritated that she decides against it.

While she waits for the cocktail, she surveys the area discreetly, as is her habit. The prickle in her nose, a persistent sensation that began as a feathery tickle two day earlier, becomes stronger, and for a moment she thinks she’s about to sneeze again, but then it backs down.

She sniffles thickly. On one hand she needs to blow her nose, on the other, she has attempted it several times today and the congestion is like a brick wall deep within her sinuses, with nothing coming out no matter how hard she blows, which makes it a waste of time and effort.

She is not a woman who likes to waste her time and effort.

The waiter returns with the Martini and asks if she would like to see the menu. She replies that she’s waiting for her husband to join her.

She hopes that the man she’s waiting for isn’t going to be late. Or worse, get cold feet and not show up at all. That would certainly mean she has wasted her time tonight, especially when she’d much rather stay home, make herself a whisky with honey and sleep off this dreadful viral infection.

She coughs. It’s a wet cough, but even if her chest sounds like she would want to keep coughing until it’s clear, it’s not a persistent and uncontrollable cough. Her nose is still the worst affected by this cold, mercilessly teased by the urge to sneeze. Congestion scraping against inflamed nasal lining. Stinging the back of her throat where it’s currently still more likely to trigger a sneeze than a cough.

She sips the Martini and wills her date to show his face before she decides to call it a night and leave. It would be his loss, either way.

As if she manifested him, a well-dressed man approaches her table. She looks up and their eyes meet. When he sees how sick and contagious she looks, despite the makeup she took great care to put on, he stops, hesitant. He looks like he considers turning around and leave the restaurant on the spot. She will not have that. Not tonight.

“Sit the fuck down,” she growls, and there is a dangerous spark in her eyes that, even more than the threatening tone, convinces him that escaping is not an option right now. He swallows, schools his features, and gives her a bright smile.

“Hi honey, I’m so sorry I’m late, got stuck at the office again.”

“It’s alright darling, you’re here now,” she replies, and she knows her facial expression matches the character she plays right now; she’s done this before, she’s a good actress.

He sits down and puts an envelope on the table between them. It looks like an envelope that could contain tickets, perhaps to a Broadway show, or plane tickets to some exotic destination. She knows it doesn’t contain either of those. She gives him a bright smile and a discreet nod. His eyes, predictably enough, wander to her cleavage. While she’s not overly endowed in that department, she knows what to do with what she has, and this dress beautifully accentuates her feminine curves.

His gaze is probably even more drawn to it because her chest is heaving, and he is so focused on that view that he doesn’t realise that the reason for this enticing movement is because she’s about to sneeze. Not until she actually does, and then he makes a grunting noise in surprise and disgust as droplets from the uncovered outburst spatter all over the tablecloth, the flower bouquet, the envelope, and the cleavage that he just admired.

She is so stuffed up that there’s almost a naturally half-stifled sound to the sneeze, but the spray, teeming with infection, is certainly not bottled up. The look of absolute horror on his face is brief – he remembers his place before she needs to remind him – but undeniable, revealing a germaphobe who will probably spend the rest of the night washing his hands and guzzling juice with Vitamin C.

It is, or should be, at least, painfully obvious to anyone within sight or earshot that she is sick with a particularly nasty headcold, that she is a disease vector of some magnitude, so his denial is almost adorable when he says in a pleading voice;

“Are you allergic to the flowers? I can have them removed…”

She sniffles. It makes a crackly, squeaky sound that sounds like the hallmark of cold-ridden misery.

“Don’t bother, it’s not allergies. I have a cold. A real fucking doozy of a cold,” she replies, rolling her eyes before picking up the envelope. She opens her clutch purse and puts the envelope into it. She sneezes twice openly into the air to the side of the table while she does, to the dismay of the other waiter that has the misfortune of walking by with the dessert for the table next to theirs at that very moment. He doesn’t acknowledge the watery-sounding sneezes, even though he felt the spray on his hand and knows the Tiramisu he carries has most likely been contaminated as well.

She doesn’t apologise this time either, she simply turns back to the man and opens her mouth to say something, but her cold gets ahead of her and she sneezes again.

“Uhhh-GTSCHhhh!”

He watches in horror mixed with fascination as the spray mingles in the air, he tries to subtly back away from the small droplets lest they rain down on him, dooming him to the same awful cold.

She sniffles again, a sopping nasal sound that sounds like some of the abundant congestion is loosening, threatening to spill out of her irritated, twitching nostrils if she doesn’t sniffle it back.

He has no desire to see that, so he reluctantly pulls out a handkerchief from his inner pocket and offers it. She looks at him like he’s insane.

“Put that away,” she says. “I’b dot taking adything that’s yours.”

His gaze momentarily drifts to her purse, and she rolls her eyes.

“Dot persodal belongings,” she clarifies, presses her fingertips against the left side of her nose and inhales sharply through her right nostril, then switches sides and repeats the action. He’s not sure if it really helped pulling the imminent flow back into her suffering nose, but the thick snorting sound indicates that it did something, at least.  

“Here’s what happens next,” she says in a low voice that requires him to lean forward to hear. He doesn’t want to inhale the air she exhales, but he doesn’t really have a choice here, now does he? “You are going to order a cocktail. Snrrrrfff..! Ugh… we’re going to sit here, drink our cocktails, and talk, like couples do. You think you can gather at least some acting chops to pull that off, or should I walk out right away?”

He smiles. It looks almost genuine.

“Of course I can, honey.”

She returns the smile and puts a hand over his. He smiles even brighter and tries not to think about her touching her runny nose just now.

“Better,” she says. “Then, when they ask us if we’d like to order, you tell them that we’ll just pay for the drinks and then head home, because I’m under the weather.”

She sneezes again, once again right into the air, all over the table, all over both of their hands, and he can swear he feels it on his face as well.

“That’s dot eved a lie,” she says, “this cold has by dose all… ahhh… aaaGSSHHIEW! All raw and itchy, and I think I have a fever. Oh, stop looking like that, you know as well as I do that if you catch this, it’s the least you deserve.”

Her words are critical, but her face conveys deep affection, and anyone seeing them from some distance would assume they’re filled with Valentine’s Day emotion.

“And then?” he asks. He’s smiling too, but he can’t wait to get away from this rendezvous and this woman, who is stunningly beautiful with her shapely body and cascading mane of hair, and on any other night he wouldn’t mind inviting her to his hotel room and fuck her. But not when she’s so full of cold that it’s overflowing.

“Thed we leave together. We walk to the corner. I take a cab. I don’t give a fuck what you do or where you go frob there. I’ll be in touch whed it’s done. Questions?”

“Will you be able to, uh, carry it out?” he asked hesitantly. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but you don’t sound well at all.”

“I’b sure you’ve worked through a cold or two at sobe point in your career, too. It’s the sabe fucking thing. I’b a professional.”

She straightens up, and that hazy pre-sneeze expression creeps into her elegant features little by little once again. Tears form in the corners of her eyes as they narrow, ever so slightly smudging her makeup, but rather than ruining it, it’s only making the smoky effect even more dramatic. Her quivering nostrils, intensely red around the rims and blending into a lighter red and then shades of pink the higher up the bridge you look, flare helplessly, and some moisture glitters blatantly underneath. Her lips have been slightly parted the whole time because she’s so stuffed up she can’t breathe at all otherwise, but now it’s not just to breathe, but to gasp for air to fuel yet another germ-filled eruption.

The inevitability is spellbinding, and he can’t hope for any mercy, any chance of her at least turning her head away from him and sneeze on some other unlucky patron or staff, and if she hasn’t covered a single sneeze yet, the idea of such courtesy must seem pointless to her.

She hangs on the edge of the nasal explosion for several torturous seconds before she snaps forward, much more forcefully this time, as if she’s no longer able to contain the sheer power of her illness.

The sneezes – three in a row this time, deep, heavy, messy sneezes – burst out of her one right after the other, once again spraying all over the table, the flowers, her chest, and him.

She’s not a silent sneezer, but she’s not particularly loud either, and the only people who really notice her continuous sneezing are those sitting closest, and they in turn try their hardest to ignore the provider of their near-future cold and at least pretend to have a pleasant dinner.

This small fit of sneezes was the snottiest yet, and some clear mess is trickling out of one tortured nostril. Some flew out of her nose with the second sneeze and is now glittering in her cleavage like unconventional jewels.

“Bless you,” he says in a resigned tone. He can almost feel the viruses invading his body at this point. “Still declining my handkerchief?”

She gives him a look and takes out a fresh Kleenex from her purse and gingerly dabs the mess off her face. He’s astonished to find that she carried tissues with her the whole time and still just unleashed these brutal cold sneezes everywhere.

“Ugh, I think I’b getting sicker,” she groans in an even thicker voice as she wipes her cleavage. She doesn’t blow her nose, but that’s probably a good decision because the tissue already looks like it’s at capacity.

He bites his tongue, but she notices.

“I cad still do by job,” she says.

The waiter approaches, after giving her a discreet glance as if to discern if the coast is clear or if he’s going to be subjected to another virus shower.

The contract killer with the terrible cold smiles at her company.

“Hodey, why don’t you have a cocktail and then we can decide what to order? Snrrrrffff…”

[agoodsfpage]

goddamn, on friday my company had a huge meeting that i and some of my coworkers didn't need to attend, so my natural laziness kicked in and i skipped it. i have no idea what happened, but it seems like everyone who did go came into work this morning with a nasty head cold, that kept me well and truly distracted the entire working day.

[agoodsfpage]

Sneezy woman at formal event trying not to draw attention to herself and the fact that she should have stayed home tonight

[agoodsfpage]

someone coming down with a terrible cold, led by their friends into a photo booth at the mall.

maybe their friends have dragged them here, or maybe they've irresponsibly come to the mall on their own volition, not wanting to miss out on the fun. but they have been sneezing nonstop every couple minutes, directing their sneezes off to the side, catching each subsequent sneeze loosely into a raised hand.

the only purchase they've made was a small travel pack of tissues, which they've gone through one by one, absolutely soaking the tissues with each messy, spraying sneeze, wiping their running nose on them until the tissues are completely drenched.

but they have no alternative - their nose is running incessantly, and the sneezes keep coming, so they hold onto the pack of used tissues.

at one point, one of their friends ushers them into a photo booth. at first, they protest - they've blown their nose so frequently that it's become noticeably redder than usual. all in all, it's quite obvious at a glance that they have a cold. but their friends insist.

so they sit, crammed tightly in the small, contained space of the photo booth with the others, trying hard to fight back against a tickle in their nose. they set their tissues off to the side, out of frame. as the photos start, the others pose for the camera, but all they can do is sit there, their breath hitching desperately, trying their best to hold back a sneeze they feel building. each bright flash of the camera only seems to intensify the tickle in their nose; they franticly rub their nose in between shots, trying desperately to keep themselves from...

it's mere seconds after the last photograph has been taken that they explode forwards with a wet, completely uncovered "hah- hah- hhAHH - hhd-HAHH'TSCCHhiIIEWW!! HDDT'KTTSCHIiew! hehh... hehh - hEHh - HIIIH'TTTSCHHIIIEEEW!, misting the air in front of them with millions of contagious droplets, which linger in the air like a cloud. they sniffle wetly, wiping their dripping nose on the back of their hand, and bite back a sigh - it felt so good to let those out at last.

their friends bless them jokingly. when the roll of pictures prints out, their friends pass the photos around, laughing about how they look in all the photographs - their nose even redder under the bright flash of the camera light, their gaze unfocused; their eyes half-lidded, their jaw slack, their eyebrows creased in itchy desperation.

they might've held back successfully, but every photograph betrays just how badly they needed to sneeze.

all the while, they hitch and hitch, catching more wet, contagious sneezes in the palm of their hand. unfortunately, they hold their hand too far from their face to catch all of the spray - some of which lingers, hanging in the air of the enclosed space of the photo booth. the rest of it gets left on the roll of photos when they pass it back and forth.

as they grab their tissues and shuffle out of the photo booth, they sniffle wetly, already feeling another tickle begin to settle in their nose. they've left plenty of their cold behind for the next unsuspecting visitor to the photo booth. (and when their friends wake up with the same runny nose and itchy, spraying sneezes a few days later, they'll have the photographs to remind them just who they caught it from.)

[agoodsfpage]

Commission for anonymous, Sue Storm has a sneezy cold!

[agoodsfpage]

Purely self indulgent fluff, feat. cold denial!tsun!Hazel and amused!caring!Tibor. 

@kushami-hime this is what I meant 🍣

[agoodsfpage]

“I thidk by cold’s gettidg—ehh-heh—worse!” Followed by the tickly-est, highest pitch sneeze, the kind that sends spray everywhere. 

[agoodsfpage]

3 page comic for @megachurch-fete

NSFT: p2, p3

[agoodsfpage]

"This Is Morgan Winters, Barely Alive on GLNS News!" (2/?)

Gecksfield was the kind of town that you passed through on your way to somewhere else. Sure, you might stop for some lunch at one of the several competing diners that sat along the main street. But then, you might just as easily decide that you're not that hungry, actually, and could probably hold out until you reached your destination. When a research company performed a survey of the Gecksfield schools, they found that, when asked what they would like to be when they grew up, 82% of children in Gecksfield responded 'In a different city.'

This was the city that Morgan Winters found herself in. She wasn't even from here, and every day she found herself asking what she did to deserve this frozen wasteland, and how soon could she move on.

She was trying to cut back on asking herself such things, but as she stood staring at the nurse that was loudly blowing her sore, red nose into a damp and mangled tissue, she couldn't help but wonder if the abattoir her uncle worked at, in her hometown, was still hiring.

The nurse herself looked like a state, and Morgan couldn't help but take some pity. Her long red hair was a mess of tangles and knots, her nose was one of the sorest reds Morgan had seen since college, and the weary-looking bags under her eyes did little to help the situation. Morgan was willing to bet that, for all the talk of health-consciousness that this woman was about to give her, she was this clinic's very own Typhoid Mary.

"Ugh..." the nurse wiped her nose, and gave a thick, wet sniffle. "Morgan Winters, is it?" she asked, with a voice so hoarse it sounded like it was being activated by the tiniest crank in the world.

"Um... Yeah, that's... that's me" Morgan said, somewhat off-guardedly. She hadn't been expecting this. Sick patients, sure that's one thing, but not this. "This is my PA, Molly. She's the one you would have spoken to on the phone"

"Hi!" Molly said with a big smile and a tiny wave. Sometimes Morgan suspected that Molly should have actually had Morgan's job. She was a pro at the whole 'forced politeness' thing. Of course, there was every possibility that Molly was just being genuinely polite, but something about that idea just didn't gel with Morgan's own outlook.

"Right, yeah, well... ndice to meet you both at last," Nurse Halloway said, standing up, and extending a hand towards the pair.

Molly stepped forward, in an attempt to shake the nurse's hand, but Morgan put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. As she did so, Nurse Halloway's eyes became fixed on something above the pair. Her eyebrows pinched together, and her nose began scrunching up. "Uh... uh-t'SHIEW! heh-eh'SHIEW!" she sneezed twice, reeling the hand back to cover her hand and mouth.

"Sorry," she mumbled, as she grabbed another tissue to blow her nose again, speaking into between blows. "As you can see..." blow "...we've had something of a..." blow "...of an outbreak here" she blew a final time before dropping the tissue into the trash can by her feet, which had long filled up.

"That's why we're hoping to get this report done today, and out there as soon as possible," she said. "It's getting a bit out of hand," she said, with a conspiratorial whisper. Though, that could have just been her sore throat.

"Oh yeah, wouldn't want it to get out of hand now..." Morgan muttered as Derek wandered in with his camera. She sighed and gave a nod. "Okay, well, we can probably do some shots of the clinic itself, some sick patients. I'll get a couple interviews with one of the doctors, I guess. Get a talking head thing going outside. What else, what else?"

Derek piped up. "Got some clouds coming later. You want me to get started on some exteriors, while we still have the light?"

"Yeah, yeah, go for it," Morgan said, waving him out, still thinking. She snapped her fingers, causing Derek to swivel around by the door. "Maybe when we head back to the studio, we can go via the office. Get some footage there. Whole 'office hygiene' angle."

"Yeah, sounds good," said Derek, as he left the room

"Alright, Molly, how does that sound?" Morgan asked

"Mostly good. Of course, all the doctors in the building are pretty busy at the moment, we may need to get the interview with someone else."

"...Someone else?"

"ih...D'ISHIEW!" the sneeze rang out from beside them both.

"No," Morgan said, simply. "No, we're not doing that."

"Doig what?" the nurse asked, already reaching for another tissue.

"Oh, come on," Molly interjected. "She'll be great! We chatted a ton on the phone, she really knows her stuff!"

"Molly!" Morgan hissed. "Look at her!"

Nurse Halloway was blowing her nose, frustration, and weariness worn across her face.

"Oh, it's nothing a bit of makeup won't fix," Molly said with a wave of her hand.

"Molly, do you hear yourself? We cannot put this woman in front of a camera, it's not fair on her!"

More importantly, Morgan thought, it's not fair on me who'll have to sit across from her.

"I'll do it..." the nurse said, her voice muffled underneath the tissue, which she closed her eyes and sneezed into again.

"See? She doesn't mind, Morgan!" Molly said with a smile. "Let me go get the makeup kit from the van!"

Molly bounded out of the office, leaving Morgan alone with the nurse.

"I promise I'm not contagious..." she said, with a weary, if friendly, smile. Outside, the two could hear, as the receptionist launched into a short sneezing fit.

"Yeah. Okay." Morgan said.

---------------------------

Morgan let out a shiver as she stepped outside the clinic. Inside Molly was helping the nurse prepare. By the van, Derek was setting up the tripod to get some exterior shots of the clinic.

"You got a cigarette?" she asked, as she approached him. He shook his head.

"You know I quit, Morgan. Why do you keep asking me?"

"Force of habit, I guess"

"Well, see, that's the problem, isn't it? What are you doing out here?"

Morgan sighed and looked back at the clinic. She shuddered to think of how long she'd spent in there already. "Think I needed some fresh air."

"Alright," Derek mumbled and returned his attention to the tripod. "You want to do your little intro thing now? Before I start getting these exteriors, I mean..."

Morgan considered it but shook her head. "I dunno, Molly'll probably have us set up for interview soon, so I--"

"It's no problem. Power of editing. We can get a little done now, we can shoot the interview, finish it off after, then cut 'em both together. It'll be seamless."

Morgan raised her eyebrow. "Wait, do you do our editing, too? I thought we had other guys for that."

"Oh, no. I just used to dabble. No good at it myself, but I know enough to know it's doable"

Morgan looked at the entrance to the clinic to check if Molly was on her way. She gave a quick shrug of her shoulders. "Sure, why not, then?"

It took the pair a short while to set up. They'd been working together for a long time, and were already aware of one another's patterns and preferences, so it was relatively easy to get Morgan on her mark and framed with the physician's behind her.

"Okay, we ready?" she asked, brushing her hair back from a particularly strong gust of wind.

"Yeah, just give me one... moment..." Derek muttered, as he carefully adjusted with some settings, and made sure the shotgun mic affixed to the camera, was pointed directly at Morgan. "Alright, we're good to go"

"I'm outside Upper Gecksfield Surgery and Clinic. Around this time of year, this building is packed to the brim with people suffering from colds or flu. Just this week alone, over a hundred people in this community came to this clinic, exhibiting cold symptoms. So--"

Molly stepped into the frame, waving her down. "Morgan! We're ready!"

Morgan sighed as she turned around to face Molly. "How was that?" she asked Derek, behind her.

"Wait," he replied, "was I supposed to be recording?"

Morgan spun around.

"Kidding!" he said "That was perfect. We can get the rest when we're done with this," he said, nodding at the building.

"Right..." she replied. "Let's get this over with, then"

---------------------------

Nurse Halloway was looking a little bit better when Morgan arrived. Somewhat. Her nose was still glowing red, but Molly had really done a great job of helping Halloway look ready for the camera.

Molly clearly noticed the nose, because she tsked, and walked back over to the nurse.

"You really gotta stop rubbing that nose for a little while, okay?" she said, grabbing some concealer and applying it gently.

Morgan couldn't be bothered to explain to Molly that the nurse probably knew more about what she should or shouldn't do than Molly herself did. To be fair, given how many of the staff the nurse had clearly gotten sick, Molly might have had a point.

As Morgan's attention turned to Derek's positioning of the camera, another "Duh...d'tISHIEW!" rang out, and Morgan's attention was swiftly turned to Nurse Halloway's mortified and embarrassed expression.

"I am... so... sorry" she managed, after a few seconds of silence.

"It's okay!" Molly said, with a beaming smile. "Happens to the best of us!" she added, as though nothing, in particular, had just occurred. She placed the concealer down on the table and nodded. "That should be enough for now. We can... we can get going" she said.

Now that Morgan could see her a bit closer, she could see the smile that Molly always wore was still there, but the confidence behind it had vanished.

"You still want us to do this interview?" she asked

"Mhmm-hm," Molly said affirmatively.

"Right," muttered Morgan. "Here goes nothing..."

[agoodsfpage]

“This is Morgan Winters, Barely Alive on GLNS News!” - Part 1

Hey!  Posted this here and on the forum. Those of you who know me there will know this will not be the first time I've posted the first part of a story, promised to deliver more, and then abandoned the project within, like, an hour, but trust me, guys... I'm going to finish this one this time. I can feel it in my bones.

Anyway, something about the concept of a news reporter catching a cold has been weighing on my brain for just the longest time so I bring you this first part, in which our news reporters does *not*, in fact, catch a cold yet.

There is a little bit of sneezing and illness stuff at the end, but this is mostly about setting the scene, establishing some characters. I feel like actually having some kind of plot is a nice minimal standard to achieve with storytelling, but this might be why I'm always too lazy to finish telling them. If I do fail to post the second part of this one, my next story will just be called 'woman with a cold who is sneezing' and will just be about someone, like, going to various places.

With that in mind, do feel free to remind me to pick this up if you actually really want to see where this story (kind of inevitably) ends up going.

And, excuse the poor formatting. It is not my strong suit.

"...and despite facing calls to resign, the counselor has confirmed he'll remain in his post. From GLNS, this is Morgan Winters, back to you Alex."

   Morgan yanked the earpiece out from her ear as quickly as she could, and ran a hand through her long black hair.

   "How was that?" she asked Derek, from behind the camera, who gave a simple thumbs up in response. "Good," she said. "Now get me out of here. It's fucking freezing, and these old government buildings never seem to have any heating" "We got a taxi waiting for you outside to get you back to the studio" he replied, as he rewound the footage. "Think we're going to end up back in the van, though, if you ask me. Molly just took a phone call from the boss. Suspect she's going to be looking for you any minute now"

   Morgan rolled her eyes and sighed. "Of course she is. What now? World's tallest scarecrow just collapsed? Local teen gets tongue frozen to lampost? Or are we going to interview the mayor's husband again, and hope he's sober enough to string together a full sentence this time?"

   Derek shrugged. "I don't commission 'em, Morgan, I just film 'em. You'll have to ask her." "I'll have to avoid her, more like. I'm going to the office. I have a mountain of work to catch up on. I don't have time to do some twee interview with Farmer Dan about Potatofest '22, or whatever they want from me." "You do what you want. Taxi's that way, though. Next to the van" Derek replied, smirking, pointing to the east side of the building, and not taking his eyes off of the footage.

   Morgan sighed and made her way to the city hall car park. She spied her taxi from across the road and started to walk towards it when she heard her name in an all-too-familiar and all-too-cheerful tone of voice.

   "Slow down, Morgan" Molly called out, from behind her. Morgan closed her eyes, silently cursed her luck, and turned around to face Molly, who was dressed in a garnet-red beret, that (in Morgan's humble and, admittedly, uninformed opinion) badly compliment her curly, silver-blonde hair.

   "I am so sorry, Molly, I almost forgot to wait for you," she said, forcing herself to smile. "That's alright, I'd just disappeared to make a quick phone call" Molly replied. "From the station," she said after a slightly uncomfortable pause. "Oh, they're always bothering us while we're busy. Well, I best be going, I need to get back to the--" "Could you do me a favor, Morgan?"

   Morgan gritted her teeth, her green eyes lightly glazing over as Molly carried on.

   "You see," Molly continued barely registering Morgan's expression, "the public health department just got in touch. It's that time of year when colds and such things are going around, you see. So, the department was wondering if we could send a reporter down to a local physician's to do a quick cold and flu safety report"

   Morgan shook her head. "No, Molly, no, absolutely not. I told you, I'm done with these... nothing reports. I'm a serious journalist, alright? I have a degree-- two degrees! Two degrees, I have a Bachelors in Communication, and a Masters in Media and Journalism, okay? I should be covering far more serious topics than this. Health- public health isn't even something I know anything about. Can't you ask Alice to do it?" "We did ask Alice to do it!" Molly replied. "And?" "She can't" "Why not?" "Caught a cold."

   Morgan rolled her eyes. "Well, what about Steve or Michael? They should be grateful for any work at this point, to be honest" "No, look, the department wants *you*. They've seen you! They think you have a really down-to-earth personality and a great presentation style. Perfect for delivering this kind of message."

   Morgan paused. "They asked for me?" "Yes" "...and they think I have a great presentation style?" "Absolutely" "And a down-to-earth personality?" "Yeah, maybe. Anyway, look, if you do this, there's sure to be some more work coming your way. Good work, too. Not these fluff pieces, not these interviews with outraged retirees. You get to do what you want." Morgan really thought about it. "...No more local food and culture festivals?" "No more anything, just pure you." "...Fine. Fuck you, but... fine." Morgan replied. "When do they want me?" Molly looked at her watch and looked back up at Morgan. "Half an hour ago."

--------

   It was not often that Morgan got to visit the more affluent side of town. She lived pretty far from here, and the people who did live here were wealthy enough to keep the cameras away from their neighborhood. While she wasn't thrilled about this assignment, she couldn't help but gawp at the mini-mansions, and luxury restaurants that lined the streets.

   Still, all the money and lawyers in the world couldn't keep out the common cold. Almost every face she could spot from the van, was adorned with a red nose, or a tissue pressed tightly against it. Morgan shifted uncomfortably in her seat, as she turned her head towards her phone. She was really starting to regret this.

   After a short drive, in which Molly had to negotiate with an incredibly congested toll-booth operator, the van pulled up outside the district's medical center. Derek scrambled out of the van to get the equipment ready, while Morgan and Molly went inside to meet the nurse they were going to be interviewing.

   "Hey," Morgan said approaching the receptionist at the front desk, who was busy scribbling some notes into a pad. "Morgan Winters, I'm with GLNS news. This is Molly, I was told you both spoke on the phone about an interview?"

   The receptionist looked up from her notepad and something instantly struck Morgan about her appearance. The long, wavy red hair, Morgan had already noticed from a distance. The bright blue eyes were distinctive but didn't immediately catch her notice. No, Morgan's attention was right away drawn to the sore, red rim that ran around the woman's nostrils, that was accentuated by the sudden and thick sniffle she gave.

   "One moment..." she muttered, barely managing those precious m's and n's that would have lent clarity to what she said. She casually reached over a small PA system on her desk. "Ndurse Halloway? GLNS are here" she muttered, or something to that effect, at least. Some tinny, staticky voice gave a robotic reply, and the receptionist looked back up to Morgan. "Just take a seat with the oh-others... ih-ISHIEW!"

   Morgan was grateful that the receptionist was able to grab a tissue. Still, she would have liked it all the more if the receptionist had actually managed to bring it to her nose, some time before letting out the surprising sneeze.

   "Ugh... 'scuse mbe" she mumbled, using the barely touched tissue to blow her already sore nose. "Was the last one standing up until I came in this m-mordi-ih...it'SHIEW!" she sneezed again, clearly an aftershock from the previous sneeze, but this time, thankfully, with the tissue ready to catch it.

   'Last one standing...' Morgan mentally repeated with a degree of exasperation, before directing Molly to sit beside her in the waiting room.

   "We better make this quick, alright? I'm already regretting every second of this..." she whispered to her assistant, as the woman beside her, blew her nose for the fourteenth time. "Why, what's wrong?" she asked "What do you mean, what's wrong? This place is gross. I feel gross. I want to go back to the office, where it's... I mean still gross, but less gross than this" "Oh, hush. Don't worry about it, it's just a quick interview, bit of filming of... doctor-y things, and we can do the V/O back at the studio" "I don't know how you can be so calm about this" Morgan snapped, as the man next to Molly launched into a coughing fit. Molly simply shrugged. "I'm not bothered. I had my flu shot" she said, confidently. "Do flu shots protect against colds?" asked Morgan Molly paused for a moment. "I mean, yeah, of course, they do. They're basically the same thing. Wouldn't be much point in a flu vaccine if you're just going to get a cold anyway, surely!"

   Morgan was skeptical, but before she could open her mouth to object, she heard her name called from the reception.

   "Ms. Widters?" the receptionist asked, holding a tissue to her nose as she spoke. "Ndurse Halloway will see you both dow..." she managed, before sneezing three more times into the tissue. As she pulled it away, Morgan winced at how sore and red her nose was starting to look. At that point, Morgan realized that there was nothing she could do to protect herself. From the moment she walked into the health center, she was a dead woman walking.