The Treacherous Fever

My darling,
It is an infection, human-based, source unknown. Blood boils. It's an intricate, stinking virus that crawls in through the eyes, ears, and mouth from a source least expected. Without fail, it leaves the victim in a state of selfless, helpless, absurd euphoria, but lest something gives, it threatens to tear apart mind, body, and soul.
It will strike those in royal garb as quickly as those in rags.
It is the very reason for life; yet gone wrong, its intention is to mercilessly rip from its feeble prey every trace of purpose; to annul pleasures past and present.
It's a strange and dangerous symbiosis.
It is eloquent, daring, delicate, vile.
You will yearn for it, fear it, loathe it, need it; like a dastardly addiction it pounds through to the quick of you until you are unaware of who you are or what you are or what you're doing.
It can seem haphazard in its choice of targets, or it can seem dreadfully premeditated.
It is lewd, earthy, fleshy, and it is chaste, pure, unmarred.
There is no cure, save escape from this mortal coil and yet..and yet, legends exist of the disease reaching with omnipotent fingers past the grave to see its life cycle to completion.
It has been known to drive its victims to destroy, to scar, to torture; and its fatalities are innumerable.
It makes heroes out of cowards, martyrs out of skeptics, madmen out of scholars. Sinners out of the virtuous. To fight the poison is futility, and makes the moment of surrender infinitely sweeter, immeasurably more dreadful.
There is nothing logical, nothing predictable, about the treacherous fever..

Dark, snarled hair spread across the pock-marked, unceremonious desk in the bare room. So fixated was the disheveled figure on the connection of shaky pen to paper--such a sight she was--that an observer would have surely only felt vague surprise if they'd seen black ink drip from the very pores in her concentrated, soft brow, to mingle with the white, dry, salted tracks on either side of pale cheeks.

The birds were singing at her through the window, so charmingly.

From her chapped lips there oozed a melody; halting, soft, but still there. She loved to sing, and always had. Almost as much as she loved to write.

The only sounds that existed were the scratch scratch scratch of her beautiful quill, and that lilting, sweet hum, the one she couldn't get out of her mind if she tried.

She was at peace, save for a strange longing in her core. It was a good day, though she couldn't tell you why.

Then abruptly, she was ripped from her small wooden chair. It toppled and fell. She thudded against the rough floor and her trance fell away as she looked up with obscure eyes at the looming shape above her. She did not release her pen. I must finish my words, my thoughts, I must.

But the words came out garbled, nonsense.

"You useless, idiot lunatic! I've stood here and called you a dozen, bleeding times! Are you so daft you can't hear anymore?! And for the thousandth time now, STOP that godforsaken keening. You sound like a strangled old duck." The shape's deep voice secreted distaste, dripped cruelty, and it confused her. Who was this person, to intrude so suddenly on her in her private quarters?

"—not doing that again! Give that to me." The voice was still speaking, and now the figure held out a burly hand expectantly. She stared at it vacantly, and after a beat a joy leapt into her throat. She reached for the outstretched flesh with her own empty hand. Before they touched, the figure roared in anger and suddenly, suddenly she felt a smack as her skull hit the iron bedframe behind her. Her ear was pounding, her neck wet. She clutched at the burning pain with both hands; empty hands now.

"Don't play smart with me, silly, stupid madwoman. Look at that desk, what a state it's in. You don't ever learn and you won't, will you, Eve? Will you? Where did you get this?" There was no response. "Ah! I don’t know why I try. I'm surprised you have even the sense to heal, still." Eve? Her eyes glazed over. What is happening to me? Where am I? She was hazy; unaware of another knock on the door; of the awful creak it gave in the agony of old age, as another figure was granted access into the miserably dim, windowless room and the first figure turned and spoke.

"Towels again. Lots of blood this time. She's lost the capacity for coherent language again, today. Yet, look: the happy idiot still thinks she can write. How did she get this?!"

The second figure stammered. "I-I don't rightly know, sir. I'm always sure to take the cutlery away after each meal. It wasn't--" An inhuman cry broke the hushed conversation. It was disregarded.

"My patience is wearing thin. Don't let it happen again." The second figure dipped and made hasty, clacking footsteps that faded into the quiet.

Eve? Eve? Eve? Her thoughts were an incomprehensible loop that kept looping for the desperate sake of comprehension. Her head throbbed, and the longing in her core raged.

"WAIT!" The word, rusted and ugly and needy, came from her broken lips, and her red, wet hands grabbed at the shadow's trousers. WAIT!

The leg she'd grabbed for quickly, harshly kicked off her weak clutches. "What?!" said the voice in naught concealed disgust. Her face crumpled.

Love me, her core cried. She was whisked off her feet and her heart fluttered, twisted and thrilled at the support, at the touch; and her mind cleared enough to know it was something strong that held her. But the strong figure was pushing her towards the cracked mirror hung on the closest wall to the desk, not towards salvation.

"LOOK!" It hissed in her ear. "LOOK!!!" She looked, at the distorted image. Black eyes gazed back. Dirty tendrils of raven fell everything, and all was cracked, broken across the face where the jagged fault lines of glass ran. "Now, who in their right mind could love that??!" She shook her head and shut her eyes tight and screamed. Her feet kicked and she cried with a sorrow that cannot be, will not ever be exceeded. The figure released her roughly, and her hands caught the splintered edge of the desk. When she opened her eyes again, she was met with paper; a stack of it, pure and white and blank, and mangled with the deep scratches of a sharp object. Her head lolled, and first came the thud of her knees against the dark floor, and then the thud of her head and shoulder, against the dark floor.

And then silence. And then, laughter; odious and strange. She felt sour air fall across her face as the heavy door shrieked angrily in its hinges, to shout at her as it slammed shut.

The dark grew darker, and the darker grew darkest, until there was nothing.

When Eve awoke the next morning, she sat at her desk, and murmured a sweet, broken tune. How the birds sang through the window at her, so charmingly! It was a good day. She could not tell you why.

R.Allison