A/N: I've been sick for the past coupladays. Being a temporary invalid, I took it upon myself to write a story for sick people. There aren't enough of those, no way. Uhuh, no sirree. Anyways, it's not self-insertion… The only reason that it's another girl is because it would be pretty awkward if it was a guy. Yeah. Awkward… NOT THE POINT! The point is, I need a life. And some male chars. (I have plenty of them, but they aren't fanfiction) Whatever, whatever. Ignore the sick person please, just scroll down or something, because I will probably talk for hours bcuz I'm sick an' all. Just read the story…

D/C: like my dear friend the Orange of Doom has said. Only Smeagol or the owners themselves would presume to own the Matrix, and they wouldn't be writing fanfiction, would they?

Fever!

My name is Angelina Jolie.
Not.
I am sick. Really, really sick. I have strep throat, influenza, and I've swallowed a chicken bone. I haven't swallowed a chicken bone, but it feels like it. Breathing through my mouth hurts my poor throat, and my nose is so stuffy that I can't breathe. Thus my predicament. I can't talk, I can't breathe, and goodness knows I can't sleep. And to top it ALL off, I'm having women's problems. I'm in a really bitchy mood. Could you tell?

The name's Clarice. Put 'er there. I don't have time to make small talk though, I have to deal with the menagerie.

There are four dogs at my house. (I live in the American West, and unless you're in the heart of the city, you have a frontyard and a backyard.) In addition to that, there's two cats, a bird, and a mouse. We have peacocks and peahens running about the front yard. They're not ours; they belong to our loco neighbors. But for some odd reason, the twits think that our yard is the roost, so what can we do?

Occasionally, a peahen'll wind up on the roof or in the back yard. Peahens are ugly. They're vicious and ugly. Don't give them mirrors cuz I'll bet you that'll only make matters worse. Note: peahens and a zillion animals is not normal. Like I said before, we have loco neighbors. Our zillion animals is due mostly to the fact that my family is intent on being kind hearted. If my poor father sees an animal, he has to have one. Which translates into poor Clarice.

As I've said, I'm sick as a dog and I just got a call from my dad few minutes ago. 'Go feed the pets,' he said. 'Go pet the dogs,' he said. I don't want to move. I feel like hammered dog poo. Whatever that means.

Anyways, poor sick Clarice has to climb out of her nice warm bed and go check on the animals. Not that I hate them or anything, but they can be a nuisance. Except my kitty. She never does a thing wrong.
~@~
Clarice woke up with cramps in her groin and throat. Her nose was so stuffed up she couldn't clear it with mere sniffling. Her eyes were bloodshot, and, in her own words, her throat felt like a bloody lump. She stumbled out of bed a few hours later and checked on her family's various pets. She promptly returned to the room and spent several hours on the internet doing sod-all, diddlysquat. Of course, to her it felt like her life's work, surfing through various sites as per her addiction to DSL. Or was it LSD?

Whatever her addiction was, she was more than annoyed to hear her first the outdoor dogs and then the indoor dogs, barking wildly. Two beeps alerted her to an opened door and two more to a closed one. The indoor dogs fell into even more of a frenzy, but went silent with whines. This was absolutely not natural.

Cursing, Clarice tumbled out of her room, her eyes bloodshot and flashing. She was sick, she was tired, she was annoyed out to hell. She stomped across the house as best she could, being terribly sick, and she glared at the dogs in their pens. They whined back at her.

Feeling that she had shut them up nicely, she turned out of the hallway and into the kitchen. To her utter surprise, a tall white man in a long white trenchcoat stood about five feet in front of her.

Shit, I'm hallucinating again.

Clarice turned back around and looked in on the dogs. She walked back into the kitchen to find ­two tall white men in long white trenchcoats. She spun in place, closing her eyes and putting a hand to her forehead. She glanced at the bird. There was still one of him. She checked on the dogs. Still two of them. She felt like she was going crazy. Clarice wanted to go back to sleep. This was just too much. And suddenly, an undeniable urge surfaced…
Cough.
She coughed and hacked like to spit up her lungs. She only thought about one thing, coughing. She saw the floor and the table, her feet and the hems of her pajama pants. Slowly, however, the world began to turn grey. Grey blotted out all other colors and was swiftly followed by black.

Clarice fell to the floor, limp. Her body still racked with coughing, but her conscious mind had disappeared.
~@~
To be sure, we never expected to find this place. The Merovingian gave us an address, he gave us a time, he gave us a name. We showed up, and we got landed with a sick teenager.

At first, we simply phased through the fence, scared the everliving daylights out of the two wolfhounds, and walked in through the back door. There were two more dogs, but we glared them into whimpering submission. Easy enough. Then we made our way to the kitchen. We heard a lame attempt at stomping, so we hid. We didn't see the stomper at first, but when she walked by again, we had stood up. The girl must've thought she was seeing things, because she turned away. She came back, and we stood next to us. This made things worse. She spun around, fell into a fit of coughing, and passed out.

We left her there, coughing away. We dug about through several rooms before we found, quite to our dismay, a student id. The picture held the smiling face of the sick girl and the name matched our assignment. We hate germs.

~MnI~

And so begins the tale of Clarice, named after my beloved, but injured laptop. For some reason, she shall remain sick for the duration of the story, although I myself am feeling much better. Reviews would be like cookie dough. Mmm… cookie dough…