Consequences

            Exhaustion gnawed on the edge of Marie’s mind but she pushed it away for the thousandth time in the past twenty minutes. Not yet, a fragile voice from the center of her being pleaded desperately every time her eyelids fluttered a little too close to darkness. When the labored breathing from the small body lying in the bed in front of her turned into a heart-wrenching wheeze that pulled at her heart, the fragile voice became a thunderous command.

She couldn’t close her eyes. Not yet.

Not when she had so few precious hours left with her child, her whole reason for living.

Anger, desperation, and misery flooded her veins like a poison, slowly killing her as it flowed from her heart out to every inch of her being.

Anger hit her brain first, and she pounded her fist into the thin blue blanket until desperation took over and she clawed at the sheets; as misery sunk its lethal teeth into her heart, her body stilled and her head sank to the bed, her hands flung out about her.

Soft, warm fur nuzzled itself into her palms, teasing the sensitive nerve endings at her finger tips. A wave of anger rushed through her once more and she sat up, pulling her hands away from the small kitten that belonged to the hospital as if it were the carrier of some infectious disease. Marie picked up the scrawny ball of fur by the scruff of the neck and tossed it out the door, muttering something about the cat being a spawn of Satan.

She couldn’t help it. No one had been deaf to the rumors floating around the hospital, including Marie. It is said that death followed the cat wherever it went. Mrs. Norcot, she died of a heart attack with the seemingly innocent feline curled next to her side. Mr. Beaumont passed away just last week, no one really remembered what it was he died from, only that the cat was seen slinking into his room around four in the afternoon and wasn’t seen again until he passed through the legs of the nurses coming to take care of the cooling body.

They called him Thanatos. The god of death.

Tremors took to her spine and traveled up to make the hairs on her neck stand on end.

She wasn’t going to let him into her son’s room. Marie ran her fingers through her tangled hair as she sat herself into her previous chair and closed her eyes. Common sense told her that there was no point in prolonging it, that death was inevitable for a child so sick with pneumonia, but she wanted to believe that there was a chance for her son to be able to live.  

As her eyelids lifted and her gaze focused on the small hospital bed and the frail inhabitant, she could feel deep in her bones that she wasn’t alone.

“He is dying.” The sage voice came from just out of sight.

            “I know.” Marie’s gaze turned to the old woman standing at the foot of her son’s bed. Her voice was hollow, her expression was flat, and she showed no signs of surprise at the sight of the stranger.

            The woman was poorly dressed, especially for the recent cold weather. She had a gold nose ring and many more studded along her ears. Strings of feathers, shells, and small flowers were braided through her long black hair. She merely stared at Marie, her dark stare boring into Marie until she felt as if the woman could see her very soul.

            “The god of death will come for him when the sun next rises.” Fresh tears ran from Marie’s tired eyes as the weight of the words settled into her hollow heart.

            “I would do anything--" she looked into the woman’s eyes, her own pupils dilating until the normal green was a deep charcoal black, “�"anything to be able to save my son.”

            “Anything?” The woman gave the mother a grim toothless smile. Marie nodded her head with conviction.

            “There is one thing.” She held up a knotted finger, twisted with age, the nail sharpened to a blood red point, “But you must be prepared for the consequences.”

           

            Sunlight filtered in through the cheap plastic shades, illuminating the mother sitting dutifully next to her child’s bed. Her eyes were not focused on the child but on the animal lying lifeless at the end of the bed. The stranger was gone and all was silent. Until the steady rise and fall of the heart monitor next to the boy slowed to a dangerous level and the even beeping turned into a high pitched wail.

            Nurses flew in from the hallway; even their trained masks couldn’t hide the saddened looks on their faces as their eyes took in the sight of the mother, holding on so tightly to the pillow in her lap, weeping soundlessly, the pale, drawn face of the small boy, and the motionless cat stretched out with an empty feline grace.

            Those few seconds of wailing seemed to span lifetimes before the sluggish beeping returned, a zigzagging green line mimicking the steadily beating heart.

            The nurses gasped, rushing to the boy, but none were as fast and as joyous as the young mother, who jumped onto the bed, pulling her son to her chest and cradling him, elation deafening herself to the nurses half-hearted tries to persuade Marie into letting go of her son.

            Everyone was so blissful in seeing the young boy recover that they didn’t mention the dead cat. Most just didn’t want to think about the possibilities of what might have happened that last night, what the love of a mother might trick her into doing. Some claimed it a miracle or a self-sacrifice of sorts from the small feline friend.

            So the cat was forgotten more or less, except for the occasional faint whisperings of one nurse to another that neither would freely admit to.

 

            Two weeks later the boy was given leave of the hospital with no unusual side effects except for a slightly irregular heartbeat. Marie was ecstatic. Beyond ecstatic.

            Her son was going to have the chance at a normal life. He was going to be able to go to school and make friends. He would be able to fall in and out of love. He would be able to be an aggravating teenager and perhaps, one day, a loving father. He would be able to live.

            All in good time, she had to keep reminding herself but she couldn’t force the smile from her face any better than she could force the image of the dead cat from her mind or her dreams.

            This morning she had woken up to a particularly frightening dream, her sheets tangled around her sweat-soaked body, her heart beating like a war drum in her chest.

            But when Marie got out of bed to grab a glass of water to rinse the acidic taste from her mouth, she found her sandy haired son at the table, a giant bowl of Fruit Loops in front of him, and she couldn’t help but shake the remnants of the nightmare from her shoulders.

            “First day of school, buddy. You excited?” His form of a reply was scooping up a huge spoonful of brightly colored Os and shoving them into his mouth while nodding animatedly.

            “All right. Finish up, and we’ll get going.”

            With the whole breakfast deal over with, the two strolled down the streets hand in hand. Marie couldn’t help but remember the many teary-eyed walks from home to the too-bright hospital and back where her son almost lost his life. She smiled as the boy jumped up onto a bench in front of a small strip of hole-in-the-wall shops. A poster hanging on the glass door of an unusual shop caught her eye.

            With a cursory glance at her child to make sure he wasn’t wandering too far off, she stumbled up to the poster, finding herself staring at a cartoon version of an old woman with piercings along her ears and a single one on the side of her nose.  Strings of feathers, shells, and small flowers were braided through her long black hair. She caressed a crystal sphere with knotted fingers hosting pointed scarlet tinted nails.

            In bolded black letters the words COME SEEK THE GUIDANCE OF MADAME MELANTHA: psychic readings, tarot cards, palmistry etc. hovered above the caricature. With a backward look to see that her son was sitting alone at the bench, Marie opened the door and jumped at the brightly jingling bell.

            “Hello, my dear one, how may I help you?” A middle-aged woman asked from behind the cash register with heavily accented English.

            “Um… I was wondering if Madam Melantha was around?”

            “In the flesh and at your service. Which, may I ask is what? A good-looking gal like you probably isn’t in need of a love horoscope. Perhaps a palm reading?”

            “Wait�" You’re Madame Melantha? B-but you don’t look anything like the poster.” In her shock and confusion, Marie didn’t particularly care about sounding rude.

            “Oh, that,” the Madame let out a tiny laugh. “My nephew got a bit carried away when I asked him to draw a gypsy for the poster out front. You’d think he’d have a little bit more respect for his own culture.” She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “Teenagers these days. Anyway, is there anything I can help you with? A love potion or a pendant to ward of evil spirits? You seem new; I will offer a 15% discount.” Persuasion flooded every accented word.

            “No thank you, I have to get my son to school. The poster just caught my eye.” Marie ducked out of the store, calling to her son to hurry up.

            She had walked past that sign every day her son was in the hospital. But how, she thought to herself, how strange it is that the woman on the poster was the copy of that woman in her son’s room. Marie waved the thought away as she watched her son run to her. He was alive now, that’s all that matters.

            “Alright, grab my hand so we can cross the street.” She felt her son’s small hand slip into hers as she stepped off the curb. Suddenly, he pulled his hand from hers with surprising strength, causing her to turn towards him still standing on the curb.

            “What are you doing? We really don’t have time�"“

            “Are you prepared for the consequences?” His voice morphed into a hiss, more animal than human.

            “What?” She took a step closer to the curb, fear running its cold fingers down her spine.

            Her son’s eyes opened wide almost as if in terror. Marie shook as she watched the pupil’s of her son’s honey colored eyes elongate into the cat eyes that haunted her every dream.

            “Say hello to your son for me.” It was her child’s sweet six-year-old tone again, but at the same time it wasn’t. It felt wrong. It was old, ageless.

Marie, so petrified, couldn’t scream. Screaming required oxygen, all of which was knocked out of her lungs as the small hands housing inhuman strength pushed her out into oncoming traffic.

            Horns blared, people screamed, birds cawed. The crunch of metal colliding with metal covered up the last dying wail of a mother who had killed for her son and paid the high price.

            No one paid attention to the small boy walking down the street humming a soft tune. So the boy was forgotten more or less, except for the occasional faint whisperings of one passerby to another that neither would freely admit to.

Author's Note

wrote this for a short story unit in my English class. I might send it in to my school's writing book "The Triangle". but i'm not sure. What do you think of it?

Reviews

[Natalie]

I found this an engaging read, but I was hoping for more of an explanation in the ending. The gypsy needs to explain somehow "a life for a life" in some way. And incidentally, why did she and the cat both die? Don't get me wrong, I think it's good. But I'd work out the kinks and put some space between the time that has elapsed.

[nono]

This is nice and I wonder what your grade was? I hope nothing less than and A+ because this is just it well it blew me away and it seems everything came straight off the page! Keep it up!