Human Guinea Pig

In my second year of uni, I was stony broke. I was living on 25p packets of noodles, caffeine and bad sex.

I donated sperm, which gave me a much needed cash injection. But the money ran out, as money tends to do.

I looked into blood donation, but there's no financial compensation for that. I went anyway, and dragged Joey with me. It would've felt mucky to consider it and then not go ahead, just because I wouldn't get paid.

Point is, I was on the look out for ways to make money.

After our obligatory cup of tea and biscuit, the nurses shoved some leaflets in our hands, and saw us out with a cheery wave.

Joey punched me on the arm and told me we should go out. "We'll get drunk faster, now," he said. "Lower blood volume, see. Pretty sure I read that somewhere."

"One round," I said, rubbing my bicep. "And you're buying."

It's never just one is it?

I was stumbling home, drunker than I'd any right to be, given my shallow pockets, when I pulled that leaflet out and stared at it with bleary eyes.

The address on it wasn't very far away, and even pissed up, I'd spotted that this was a paid gig. A drug trial. Why not?

I don't know why it happened. Maybe they shouldn't have given me the shot while I was drunk, or so soon after donating blood. All I know is, I woke up the next morning thinking I was still out of my tree because I was floating on the ceiling.

Joey almost fainted. Once he got over it, he thought it was a hoot. I missed a whole day of lectures because I was bobbing about up there. It took a while to figure out how to make myself heavy enough to come down again. Then he got analytical. "If you're making yourself less dense," he said, munching on my cheap noodles, "then you should be able to walk through stuff, right? Like Terminator." His eyes gleamed. "Mate, you're gonna go viral. We could make a fortune."

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Word count: (excluding note): 366

Submitted on: 18th April at 22:42

*Quick Author's Note*

First, and most importantly: thank you for reading!

A Year of Stories: I'm writing a story every day this year. This one makes an 109 day streak since the 1st January. I can't believe I've come this far! I'm collating them all here.

Behind the story: The prompt I used - You're a student in a drug trial, which gives you some funky abilities.

Prompts: If you'd like to have a go at my unofficial April Challenge (Fucked Up Fairytales) I've linked it at the bottom. If you'd like some more prompts to get your creative juices flowing, I've posted a list of prompts for April, and I've linked that as well.

Thank you

Thank you again! Especially if you are one of the people who has been staunchly reading these daily scribbles since the start of the year. I see you, and appreciate you 😁

I do my best to reciprocate as many reads as possible. If you leave me a comment, that makes it much easier.