Flare visited me last Wednesday. He hadn’t been around in so long, I’d not quite forgotten him.

I assume the day dawned dark and stormy for when I woke up I was surprised to see it was already 8:30 a.m. From the darkness of my room, I’d expected it to be at least two hours earlier.

As is my habit upon waking, I went to flex my hands. This time they refused.

They were not only stiff, but painful, and worse, swollen. And as I came to full consciousness, I realized the rest of my body felt the same.

I contemplated the door to my bathroom. Normally, it is only a hop, skip and a jump away. This day, as I moved through the fog toward it, the ten feet in distance became agonizingly longer.

Outside I could hear the raindrops falling on green grass that, at present, was growing faster than I was moving. I knew without looking that the accompanying sky was a dreary, dark gray.

I made my way to the kitchen, to the medicine curio, to down the magic formula that obviously wasn’t working.

I then stepped down to my office; perhaps I could at least catch up on some emails. But the words my eyes saw on the screen did not completely make it to my brain.

Then when the shivers hit, I gave it up. Instead, I backtracked to my bed to wait out the fever my visitor had so kindly awarded me. I knew then, without a doubt, that Flare had arrived with all his fanfare.