Sickly Mansion
By Scarlett Mercurio-Corao
𝓒h𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 1
On the long drive Alex sleeps, his head on my lap as the car abruptly halts. Alex groans as a tall mansion comes into view. I stare down at the cobblestone steps and watch Aunt Meg and Aunt Caitlyn murmur about a goat having it. Then they both embrace Alex in a tight hug.
“I missed you,” says aunt Meg, her voice sounds like jagged sandpaper waiting to be smoothed. Her teeth are also yellowed in age.
“I’ll show you to your room,” a European man with tightly pursed lips says, gritting his teeth as he gestures to a spiral staircase. At the top of the tower are two twin beds with my luggage neatly stacked on top. I peer out the window and see a bloody man, standing over a dead goat.
𝓒𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 2
“What do you think he wants with the goat?” I say.
“Don’t know. Probably for the meat,” Alex says. The cold stone tower gives an ideal view of the small village.
“Someone’s coming,” Alex says. And sure enough Aunt Meg enters, accompanied by Aunt Caitlyn.
“Want to come to the goat farm?” they say. Then we exchange looks of fear, then nod. The journey is not easy. Thorns snag at my pants and vines and threaten to trip me, but the pasture is full of buttercups and freshly mowed grass. Strangely, half the population of the goats have a blue tag on their top left leg.
“Take a free soap,” Aunt Meg says, as she hands me and Alex a brownish soap.
“Thank you,” I say.
I fire a dirty look at Alex. He says, “Thanks,” a little bit red in the face.
“Welp, I am going to take a shower,” he says, stumbling out of the thorny path.
“Me too,” I say, hopping back.
After the shower I find Alex on his bed asleep, his dark slick hair wet. I climb in my bed and doze off and dream of a strange voice being strapped to an unfamiliar bed in a lab and having a sudden urge to hurt everyone in it. And then I realize it’s not a dream, it’s reality.
𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 3
Alex is beside me. I lunge toward him, resisting only by the blue band strapping me to the bed. I am wearing the same blue band as the goats. A man wearing dark blue gloves, glasses and a mask injects me and Alex with a serum and the room starts spinning out of focus. I wake up panting.
“It was just a bad dream, it was just a bad dream” I whisper and sit up as far as the blue bands allow.
“Pssst, you awake?”
“Yeah,” he says, emerging from his thin blanket.
“Ouch,” a needle pierces my shoulder and the room starts spinning again. My eyes flutter open and the room comes into focus. Alex is blankly staring at a spot on the wall. A large portrait of Aunt Caitlyn slides forward, revealing Caitlyn herself with her jagged nails and thick, straight hair. She looks almost normal, but a green fire dances in her eyes.
𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 4
“You both had a mild case of XNXS. XNXS was given to you by a goat that made your soaps, but you both got vaccines and are free to go; however, you may be wondering why you got it. We planted it in your food and it backfired. Now you are both genetically modified and therefore will always spread the virus, even if you don’t have it.”
She walks out of the room as Aunt Meg says, “The man that killed the goat wasn’t trying to use it for meat, he was trying to kill it because it had the virus and he didn’t want it to spread but there were too many goats and we couldn’t kill all of them so we marked them with the band so we could get them vaccinated once we got one. They will never be the same, and even if they don’t have it they can still spread it. That is all the information you need to know.”
She walks out of the portrait and it slides behind her. I exchange a look of fear with Alex as the same green fire dances in his eye.
𝓣𝓱𝓮
𝓔𝓷𝓭
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