Like an alien parasite it besets me within.  I feel as though I am host to an alien metamorphosing from egg to disemboweling life form within but a few days.

Vexed have I been, since Saturday morning, with a kind of evil dwelling inside my body, some malevolent force seeking to overthrow my physical self with malignant aches that leave me weak, shaking, and barely able to function.

With it comes the most vile, the most ghoulish of ailments.

Unable to stomach much more than paltry crackers and plain bread, each consumed with but a bit of water, I still find after these trifling meals my body grapples with unnerving sickness that wells up within me and is tasted in the back of the throat as much as it is felt in the recesses of my belly.

And oh the headaches.  Were it not for other symptoms, I might at this moment rush down the street to the emergency room and demand immediate removal of the ice pick within my skull.  Nary a moment goes by without it poking and prodding and stabbing and sticking every inch of my brain.  The anguish easily makes me wish for an unexplained cranial explosion to relieve the pressure.

Meanwhile, I visit the bathroom with unusual regularity, never certain at any one time whether I shall kneel and worship at the porcelain altar or sacrifice my soul to the devil that assails me so unrelentingly.  In either case, my only prayer would be one asking—nay, pleading for mercy.

And still the ever changing beast remains.