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This is something else I did.
I kinda liked it. Needs editing maybe.
I suppose i'll submit it to Disk's thing.
Tell me what you think?
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When sister contracted the molting disease, we knew it would take her life. As I carried her coffin yesterday, I hadn’t any need to cry. I did that when the last glimmer of life left her eyes, so her last breath of life leaving her lips was not so painful.
By the flickering light of our whale oil lamps, she displayed to me with a grin what would soon become her shame, a leaf of dead skin peeled from her back. She let it go and it floated on gentile drafts to my mother, who looked upon it in horror and dismay. She took sister by the hand to bring her to her room, but a thin layer of epidermis broke and slid from sister’s hand, leaving but a soft shell in mother’s grasp.
With another day, sister had shed entirely her pale skin. The pallor with which she had always appeared was shed on to her bedspread in tiny white feathers, leaving blotchy raw skin in its place. Her lips were dried shut. She went to grab a pen from her bedside to put her thoughts in to words, but the touch of the feather on her raw skin made her cringe in pain.
On the second day I could not bring myself to peer in to her room. Her pained wails echoed down the stairwell and hallway, out of the windows, and followed me wherever I went.
I brought her lunch on the third day, for mother was tired of traversing the stairs so constantly. Sister seemed to have scales, each flake of peeling dermis hardening to a crisp but brittle hardness. As she moved to take from me her provisions, her body let off sickening crackles, and she winced but held her pained wails until I could scurry out from near her. My steps crunched the hardened carapace that had fallen to the floor.
Mother told her on the fourth day that the only way to make it better was to remove each and every hardened flake from her body. I watched from outside of the room as Mother plucked daintily away at the skin and Sister wailed at each and every one, growing quieter and quieter each time. I could see each flake add another year to Sister’s young eyes.
By night on the fourth day, I could see muscle and bone tissue begin to show beneath Sister’s skin. Her heart beat visibly like that of a horse. Mother promised she’d never leave Sister’s side. If Sister still had lips, I think she would have smiled.
The boy she used to see visited on the fifth day of her illness. Maggots had begun to set upon her, as chunks of muscle were shedding from her bones. The boy’s first foot in the door crunched with sickening volume, and the boy fled before he could utter a single greeting, or afford a single glance at his once-beloved. Sister tried to blink back her tears, but her eyelids were no more.
I can’t be sure, but I believe it was about the sixth day when Mother fell asleep. As she slept, a spider climbed up to Sister, and entered her mouth. Unable to move, Sister could only watch as it spun a web in her mouth. It crawled out only as she entered the ground for burial.
Mother continued to feed her even on the seventh day, when her pancreas began to show. Whenever a fly would alight on sister’s fragile frame, she would shriek in agony as they picked away at her body, both the living and dead parts. She shrieked until she coughed up her vocal cords, which had fallen out. This didn’t really disturb the spider.
By the eighth day, it had been two days since mother’s last sleep, and four days since her last meal. She collapsed in a pile while leaning over sister, crushing her brittle exposed ribs inward. Sister could only whisper moans as mother tried to pick herself up. I’m not sure whether it was luck or misfortune that caused no ribs to pierce her vitals.
Mother looked almost as skeletal as sister did. As the ninth day of sister’s illness crept upon our weary home, Mother collapsed in a heap on the floor. Her chest rose and fell, and rose and fell, but rose never again after that. I hadn’t the strength to carry her out.
Sister’s eyes ground against bare bone to look to me as I entered with her food on the tenth day. Her skeletal grin betrayed the hurt and age in her eyes, which followed the dribble of water I was pouring in to her ever open oral cavity. I watched as her esophagus expanded to accommodate this nourishment. I realized there would be no escape for her from death. I bade her farewell, and left the house to find the coroner. She and Mother were rotting together by the time I returned.
I carried Sister’s casket to the funeral, closed out of courtesy for the guests. I stole a final glance inside at my emaciated sister. Her eyes and skull could never give me an accusing look in return for my abandonment. Her glazed upward stare, grinning but not at me, hurt just as much.
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Sister, now that we're grieving
Our fingers will falter
Our lungs will be leaking
All over each other and without even speaking
We'll know that it's over and smile and go greeting
Whatever comes next
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