More Pills

The pills kept the fever down, as Sue Storm went about her day. They eased the pain of her wounded leg, the aches of her post-workout body, the hungry rumbles of her stomach. The nurse took her temperature, changed her dressing. The children told her about their day, showed off their latest artwork, asked when they could come home. Sue Storm didn't have an answer for them. She was still waiting to hear back from the rest of the team.

Better living through chemistry. It was so easy, so breathlessly simple to slip into the habit. H.E.R.B.I.E. even helped her calculate the dosage from her varied pills, so that when she went to sleep that night it was in a deep, narcotic haze, unassailed by the erotic dreams of Porkum and his cock. To wake, drowsy and languid, and take her first pick-me-up pills with a cup of coffee. The caffeine helped chase away her hunger, her need.

A few days of that, and she hardly thought of Porkum's bonbons. The heroine went through the motions of life. There was a pill for almost everything. If she was up, if she was down. If she was hungry, if her stomach was upset. The complex biochemistry of her new routine had her in daze, sometimes for hours at a time, but with a pill and a glass of water she would rouse herself into a burst of almost frenetic activity, only to fall back into her languor again. Her mind stretched like a rubber band, sometimes impossibly sharp, other times utterly dull, unthinking.

Perhaps it was Porkum's chocolates that had pushed her to such rapid use and ****. Perhaps it had been the exposure to that radioactive extradimensional element that had pierced her leg. Sue Storm wasn't sure. All she knew was that she lost herself in her new routine. Porkum's gifts were intercepted by H.E.R.B.I.E., and in her current state she actively avoided any mention of the mutant pig-man. She lived in denial of what had happened to her. Focused on her own body, blind to the steady weight loss as she ate less, her trim frame becoming somewhat gaunt and lean.

Until nurse Jenkins pointed it out.

"Susan," the nurse said. "We need to talk about your weight. You've been losing too much, too fast. How much are you eating?"

The Invisible Woman blinked.

"I just haven't been very hungry lately. Maybe it's the infection?" Sue said, and dropped her eyes to the bandage on her bare thigh. The Invisible Woman wore only a one-piece Fantasic Four-themed swimsuit, with a soft fuzzy white robe.

"Or the medications you're taking are interefering with your appetite," Jenkins said. "I'm going to recommend something to stimulate your appetitie. And I want you to eat something tonight, okay? Chicken breast, rice, greens. You need regular meals."

"Yes, you're right, of course," Sue Storm said.

That afternoon, a package arrived from the pharmacy which normally fulfilled Sue Storm's prescriptions. The outer label declared itself an appetite stimulant. The big plastic bottle had big pink pills. Everything about the label seemed kosher. H.E.R.B.I.E. delivered it along with Sue's evening pills as she tucked into dinner. One more pill among the rest.

Sue Storm could not have been aware that the prescription had been intercepted and replaced. H.E.R.B.I.E. was not programmed to compare the pills in the bottle that arrived to the real thing. The Invisible Woman blithely swallowed her pills with a glass of water, as she tucked into a modest dinner of seasoned chicken breast and baked asparagus.