Post by Clementine on Sept 6, 2014 15:24:31 GMT -8
It wasn’t too long before the outbreak became a bit of a problem. She tried to sing her song mostly to the old and feeble, but in the end it started to spread anyways. It took her a while to put two and two together. It wasn’t until she finally saw the Marquis leave one alive that she began to understand that only hers went through the change. For a while she didn’t stick around long enough to notice what they did after. She’d sneak up behind and rap them on the head, takin’ what she needed and leaving them none the wiser. But then one day there was a fast one and she couldn’t get the slip on him.
When he saw her she knew she had to bring him below so he wouldn’t talk. She mainly kept him unconscious, waiting until someone came home and gave her an idea of what to do with him. She knew the Marquis would likely kill him and misunderstand her hesitation, but there was something about his face that seemed familiar. She stared at his small lick of a pale mustache above his lip and spent the better half of an evening trying to open and shift his eyes so the blue part showed and he looked awake.
By the next day his skin was covered in pox, making him look like a red version of Biscuit. It was rough and bumpy to touch, covering every part of his body except right under that pretty mustache of his. For some reason, her urge to tell the boys had disappeared and she moved him to the back cellar of an abandoned home where she didn’t think they would look. Keeping ‘im out was tricky, but after a while she realized that he didn’t have much sense when he was awake anyhow. He kept talkin’ to a woman that wasn’t her, calling to his mom and the like. During the day and when she had family business she told Biscuit to see to it that he didn’t leave.
He never actually tried, just laid there and slept. She kept sneakin’ back to watch him and occasionally put a paste made of cracker and water in his mouth. His skin has started to peel until he looked like he coulda been her cousin. It shoulda been disgustin’, but she was captivated by the beauty of it all. She had heard a bit about the inbred Italians who like to watch things die, but it seemed less strange to her now. We are so enthralled by things when they’re perfect and whole but we can’t handle seein’ the pieces.
After the seventh day she went to visit him and found him done bein’ alive. She started to cry and then told biscuit to eat him so the rest wouldn’t see her bein’ all sentimental. All she kept of the fella was his ring, and after a while she lost that too. It wasn’t until other people started turnin’ red that she realized she had a problem on her hands. Those that had the fever were put together in tents to keep them away from the healthy folk, but they often had a doctor nearby. She ended up havin’ to feed her blood to the doctors so they could sneak her folk that had been already infected, but even the doctors didn’t last real long before she had to find another. It was hard to reconcile all of the bodies that were piling up on account of her. She kept havin’ to remind herself that everything has to eat and someday a bigger animal would likely make a feast outta her. It didn’t always help though, especially when the little ones died. And eventually the family would find out..