The disease I was talking about is a psychological disorder and the sores were meant to represent areas in which the victim scratched himself. Though, I suppose, I should have explained that better. As far as common practices go for the 1300’s they were mostly a combination of what modern medicine would consider as ignorance and superstition. Due to the Plague wiping out most of the civilized world at the time it’s a bit hard to find actual evidence as to how they originally attempted to treat it.
Thank you for your review and I will be sure to look more into any practices that were around at the time, and perhaps beat a dead bush and try to give the pompous character a bit more of a personality.
Short Story / Musame
So many hapless, shapeless deities baffle my mind. I hear their voices even now as I write my dying thoughts down upon this paper. I don’t know what has become of the man that was once known and revered by all he encountered, but he has surely come to some informal ending along the passage of time. I am not him, of that I am sure. I don’t know if perhaps he is one of the voices carried in through the open window into this quiet den, but perhaps I fancy that he is.
My name, formerly, was Doctor Jake Rahnok. I was of a dying breed in my country, a doctor with a purpose other than money. I sought to identify and treat an abnormality in human psyche, one that caused its patients to believe that there were bugs under their skin. The inspiration for this specific field of study came when a long-time friend of mine, Lucas Birchild, came to me under some strange conditions.
Lucas had torn away most of the skin covering his forearms and still was avid that there were minuscule life forms living within the tissues of his body. Due to the long ride to my home my dear friend had caught an infection that would, at a later date, kill him. Grief stricken by the loss I turned away from my common practice, helping to heal the psyches of soldiers from the war, and begun researching the phenomenon that made people believe they were inhabited.
My studies carried me great distances. I traveled from the uncharted North to the Far East. From Asia to the heathen lands of Siberia I investigated and treated those who had become compelled by this oddity of insanity. It wasn’t until I received notice that a boy in India had come down with the disease that I was finally confronted with the horrors of the reality behind the disease.
The humble village looked more like the homeless gathering places in my homeland. Crude homes made of twigs and dirt sufficed as the living dormitories for those who called the village home. The tropical rains fell so regularly that the huts had been saturated to the point of mold.
Women in the village sat outside of their homes wearing nothing more than faded skirts. The toiled over cookery or crude instruments meant to clean laundry. Their bodies were burnt through and through by the hot sun that mercilessly shone down upon the world in times when the rain finally abated.
As I passed the women looked upon me with gorgeous eyes and offered their hands out as if I were a savior of sorts. Never before had I seen someone with such pigmentation hold emerald green eyes, let alone an entire people. The populous of women aroused me, a part of my body claiming a need for human touch. My vows to the robe prevented me from falling prey to the carnal desires, though.
My guide, a cripple with some sort of deformity on his left shoulder, explained the women to me as I walked through the village. He claimed that the faeries of the forest had cursed these people for the removal of an ancient, honored tree and so they were forced to live impoverished. Their eyes were made the color of jade so that they would know that the world possessed riches that they would never have.
The grim fairy tale was only one of the unsettling factors I noticed as soon as entering the village. Something that bothered me to my core was the state of malnourishment these people had befallen. The women’s breasts, at times, looked like deflated balls hanging from visible rib cages. Their eyes were sunken into their sockets.
Yet, everywhere I looked rats ate freely upon food. My kind host, a man whose name sounded like Musame, explained this cultural oddity as he saw me stare at a large, freshly killed boar being ate upon by rats.
The primary deity in the area demanded that people allowed the rats to eat first to ensure that there was no poison in their food. The god feared that the faeries would poison animals meant to be hunted so that the men would all die, leaving the women without a means to fend for themselves.
We finally made it to a hut at the end of the village. It had been encumbered by brightly colored flowers plucked from the rainforest. Hues of golden trestle hung above the doorway. From inside came a retched stench.
“It is here that you will find Malik,” the man nodded to the door. “But I will accompany you no further. The faeries have cursed this child from birth. It is only now that the disease has worsened.”
“Thank you,” I said and rummaged through my pocket for a coin to pain the man with. He looked at the coin and shook his head before stumbling away.
I ducked into the tiny hut and saw first three young maidens. They were not so poorly nourished as the others. Their beauty was befuddling. They were doing a slow dance about the hut while an old, blind mind sang softly.
Upon my appearance the girls stopped dancing and made their way to the door. The old man remained where he was, slowly singing a song in their native dialect. His eyes, stark white in their lack of pigmentation, fell upon me. He offered a toothless grin.
“You have come to see Musame,” he said in amazement.
“Yes,” I nodded. “I have come from afar to see this boy. May I entertain his company? I assure you I will be kind.”
“It is not for him that I fear,” the old man said. He pointed a long, bone thin finger toward the back of the hut. There was a curtain of beads blocking the rest of the home from view.
As I approached the curtain the old man spoke again. “You will not leave this place with your soul,” he warned.
I pushed aside the beads and stepped into the darkest room I have ever been in. I could see nothing, not even the hands before my face. It made no sense with the holes in the ceiling and walls, but I dare say that the darkness of evil in its purity had forsaken all light here.
The scent from outside was stifling here. It filled my nose and caused my stomach to churn at great lengths. A whispered breath could be heard over the sound of something moving through moist tissue.
A candle came alight and I saw a child no more than seven lying in a pool of filth and blood. The boy shook out the match and looked upon me with eyes that seemed to swim in their sockets. All over his small, malnourished frame were bulbous sores. The stench was so intense that I was forced to cover my nose with my kerchief before proceeding deeper into the room.
“Are you here to see them?” the boy asked. His English was poor, his accent thick. It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. I nodded my head, not wanting to taste the stench of his death.
The child offered an arm. A wound so swollen that it looked ready to pop at a moment’s notice hung just below his elbow. A sound could be heard from inside the wound as he held it out. A bit of a sloshing noise that unsettled me to my very core, barely loud enough to be audible came from the pus-filled wound.
The boy slipped back into his native dialect as he continued to speak. I, being educated in many worldly languages, was able to piece together what he was saying. His voice was faint and weak. It weakened my heart to see a child in such a dire state.
“It hurts me when I breathe anymore,” the child sobbed. “I’ve twice tried to stop, just to stop inhaling. I was not able, though. My body seems to want to live on even though my heart and soul wants to go to the next life.”
I knelt at the foot of the child’s make-shift bedding and frowned upon him. My hands desired to touch the sore, but my fear withheld my touch. “What caused this disease?” I asked.
“I was hungry, too hungry. My mother told me that it was a sin, but I refused to listen. So when I saw a dead rat outside of my home I ate it,” the boy said. “This angered the gods and they gave me this disease. Things are living inside of my body. Terrible things that speak to me while I sleep live under my skin.”
“You contracted this ailment from a rat, then?” I asked. The scientific side of my mind took this information with haste. It seemed a necessary part of his sad tale. There were many diseases running rampant that originated from rodents. Perhaps this was not a psychological disorder at all. The more I looked at his hopeless eyes the more I began to believe the child had some kind of plague.
“Yes, the rat I ate was a messenger of the gods and now my entire village is being punished for what I have done. You have come to this place to help me, yes?” the child’s voice seemed strained by our short conversation.
“Yes.”
“Then do me a favor, one greater than any of your medicine ever could give me. Take my life, kind stranger. Strangle from me the last bit of my existence so that I may face the wrath of my gods once and for all.”
“I cannot,” I said and stood.
Musame reached out and grabbed hold of leg. His tiny, bone-thin fingers wrapped around the fabric of my pants and held fast. “The others in the village that have caught my sickness all died in the first couple of days. I am forced to live and watch as those that I love are killed by my wrong doings. If you had a heart you would kill me.”
“I cannot,” I repeated.
Musame died the next morning. His illness finally overtook him. With his dying breath I believe he cursed me. For now I am on board a ship heading back to my homeland and my arms and neck have been all but swallowed by the sores. Within the bulbous abominations I can hear tiny voices. They speak in hushed whispers in a language long forgot.
I implore all of those that read this piece heed the warnings that I overlooked. Musame was not just a child, but a visionary of sorts. I know not if the disease that is killing me gave him these visions, or if there was already such a great power in him.
His village was all but destroyed by the time I left. The last I witnessed die was the cripple. He took me down to the docks and crumpled to the ground. From his mouth came an explosion of clear fluids. His entire form seemed to be depleted before my eyes as I waited for the ship.
Had these wounds, these scars given unto me by the gods themselves, been visible when the ship came to dock I surely would have been turned away. They have come quickly, within the last couple of hours. The fear that accompanied them is burning my eyes out of their sockets.
You, who have taken the time to read this tale, should warn the world. The year 1347 may very well mark the end of all mankind. If this disease makes it all of the way to my homeland I am sure that my people will be destroyed by gods for whom they know not even the name.
Musame . . . I shall see you on the other side.
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quaintfungus reviewed Version 1 -
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divya reviewed Version 1 -
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sleeplate20 reviewed Version 1 -
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Cowboycoalminer reviewed Version 1 -
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“So many hapless, shapeless deities baffle my mind. I hear their voices even now as I write my dying thoughts down upon this paper.” Cut down upon this paper. It’s wordy and amatuerish. Be sure the first sentence is strong and clean for that is the first thing an editor catches.
“They speak in hushed whispers in a language long forgoten” Great sentence!
Over all I liked this piece. A bit wordy in places. Try to write more for the common man in simple sentences.
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gabefleming reviewed Version 1 -
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October 24, 2006
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DKSP reviewed Version 1 -
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Very well written and gripping. I am no medical professional, but I know I had heard of a disease where people thought there were bugs under their skin, and I didn’t remember it causing sores. You obviously know more about it than me. I remember reading something about how people found wierd hairs or fibres growing under their skin, and in one bizzare case they were reported to actually move around or something. The article said that there had just, for the first time, been given funding to a program on researching the disease. Makes me think of the beginning of “A Scanner Darkly” (not the movie, cuz it sucked). But I digress. I felt like your character could have possibly sounded a bit more like he was from 1347. I wouldn’t really have been able to guess that that was the date of the story without you telling me, although I had a feeling that it certianly wasn’t modern. Felt around 1800’s. What was it like being a man of science and medicine in 1347? Aside from that issue, again, well done. Maybe the narrator could have more of a personality.
AtlantaCarter reviewed Version 1 -
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This is an attactive story, though it starts slowly. As the doctor began telling about himself, I started getting distracted. Once he gets to the rainforest, things start picking up and become engrossing.
I wonder if it would be possible to put more of the action from the end at the beginning, and then tell the history. I don’t mean to give away the end, but maybe you should talk about the god with no name, or the ship that he’s on as he dies…just something to grab the reader earlier.
There is on technical point. You mention that he is there to find Malik, but then he’s looking for Musame. Who is Malik?
wRitEhAnDman reviewed Version 1 -
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Quite an interesting tale, but alas I am not as versed as I should be in said world history. Nonetheless your descriptions are effective and the plot is simple enough to follow. Nonetheless I would have liked a little more backstory on the doc (like his humanitarian pursuits) as well as this mysterious condition and his further analysis of it due to his experience. But that could just be personal preference.
Watch for minor grammatical and punctuation errors (“grief stricken” should be hyphenated) as it can alter the definitive content of your sentences. Also ”...into the darkest room I have ever been in” doesn’t need the ‘in’, besides, ending a sentence with a preposition is bad grammar (or so I’m told).
Beautiful passages like: “the darkness of evil in its purity had forsaken all light” pull this piece together and truly serve to overthrow any notion of linguistic weakness I’d like to see more of these.
Still, a compelling human-interest piece…
cursorblock reviewed Version 1 -
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This was amazingly well done. I really enjoyed the attention to detail and the interaction among the characters. The take on the Black Plague was terrific drawing us more and more into the mystery of it all until the final and shocking ending.
One thing that I tripped over:
-leaving the women without a means to fend for themselves.
This line implies that the women would not be able to fend for themselves if the men were all killed. Wouldn’t they only be able to fend for themselves if all the men were killed? Just seemed a little awkward (but it just might be me and the way I interpreted this).
Great piece! Thanks for sharing it.
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