I have a recurring thought related to my habit of daily vitamin consumption. It is not a dream, since it only happens while awake, and can't properly be called obsessive since it only occurs at specific moments, prompted by a specific situation, nor is it intrusive or ego dystonic.
I take vitamin D pills daily, since apparently I have levels of vitamin D defeciency that are typically accompanied by "the gout."
The pill bottle from which the pills are dispensed is itself unremarkable, about the size of a baby's fist, and comes with say 200 or so little gelatinous orbs of pure unadulterated vitamin D gout-preventing power.
The problem is the bottle always seems to last longer than it should. I take 2 or 3 a day, so a bottle of 200 should last no more than 100 days, but I find it stretching to more than half a year.
Something mysterious and unsettling transpires when the bottle is roughly between 1/4 and 1/3 empty. During this time it replenishes itself through some occult power, I know not how or when. Does it happen in the middle of night, a new pill budding from the sides of the ooze-covered bottle like some wet cave wall? Or does it happen just as I am about to shake out a pill, a new one popping humbly into existence to take the place of its departed compatriot?
I find myself wondering, half hoping half fearing, whether this time the bottle will actually just last forever, whether a tiny miracle has occurred, localized in the bathroom cabinet that is slowly detaching itself from the peeling wall above the sink, and the to-all-outward-appearances generic pill bottle has in fact been transformed into a glorious pill bottle of plenty.
But when do I check? If I check too soon, greedily turning the bottle upside down expecting a neverending stream of vitamin D balls, will I spook the magical force that surely scorns the light of reason and day, frightening it away, perhaps even ruining it forever? But what if I never check? Perhaps it is instead my lack of faith that prevents the transubsantiation from occurring in the end.
These thoughts are my fleeting but constant companions each night as I take my pills. What if tonight is the night? Their power is not diminished by their regularity.