Pestilence Cacophonous

By Veronika Kremennaya

WARNING: this piece contains scenes that readers may find disturbing!

A sudden bout of snow rendered the cloudy Sunday morning of the town Peuga more than happy to stay at home for the day. Denizens took to their residential comforts, while fishermen who couldn’t quite stand their wives that day took to the icy shell of Lake Peuga, named after the town situated just along its coast. They chuckled among themselves at the locals, thinking them too weak to handle the worst of the Hriebet region’s weather.

One such fisherman tugged on what was his catch of the day, a Kellrin, a rare and fierce spawn to find in these winter months. The adults, often reaching the size of grown men, often took their winter rest in the deepest recesses of the lake. Few saw them, and fewer brought them to shore- yes, there was no doubt in his mind that this was the catch of the winter. His fishing partner dropped his rod for the net and helped pull the beast from its slumber. His enthusiasm got dashed only when the child-sized fish that lay on the boat deck could only be described as having a complete and utter disinterest in basic survival. It did not flail, it did not gasp for breath.

“Maybe it wants to be salted?” the fisherman holding the net joked.

“Is it long dead?” the other asked, alluding to all manner of disease and parasites. Despite the lack of life, there was little chance their hook could cement itself so deeply without a fight, and he could have sworn he felt one. They vowed to take extra care in checking the fish at home before eating, but such a catch couldn’t be left to waste in the half-frozen waters. They settled the oars over either side of the boat but as they set a course back toward the dim lights of Peuga, the massive fish flailed with such ferocity that neither man could prevent its reentry into the icey deep. They reached out in a panic, their only reward being their faces splashed with dirty brown water, murky and sticky like fat, reeking of rotting greenery, a color so unlike how deep blue the waters appear from the surface.

They wordlessly looked toward Peuga. The dock’s fog lights beckoned them home. The two men felt sick to their stomachs. 

A familiar doorbell stirs Talia out of an old dream. Despite living here her whole life, it only just occurred to her just how many years have passed since she’s heard it last. Maybe her guest is late, maybe he’s being punctual, but she doesn’t bother checking. Instead she opens the door to apartment 418 and greets the man clad in full hazmat gear like an old friend. She leads him through the warm living room, seating herself back in the couch she just awoke from and inviting the man to take a seat in the adjacent couch. The identical couches are no doubt at least twice as old as either of them. A wooden table with a slightly concave surface carved by ceramic mug bottoms stands between the two couches. An old television stands in the corner before them. 

The reporter takes his seat and makes idle talk as he pulls out a simple notebook and pen from his canvas bag. The usual things. Her name. He goes by Badram. How she’s doing. How old she is. Formalities, things he can compare with earlier reports to make sure he’s receiving an honest story.

“Have you lived here long, Miss Talia?” The young reporter clicks his pen, looking at the woman sitting to his right. Talia’s relaxed hands bring a hot mug of tea to her lips with no particular hurry as her tired eyes remain fixed on the reporter’s glasses behind his suit’s plastic visor.

“Born in that very bedroom. Or so my parents told me.” she says, pointing to a door.

“Does anyone else live here?”

“I don’t keep company.”

“In the other apartments, maybe?”

“I wouldn’t know. But I’ve yet to see anyone arrive who wasn’t gone by the end of the day. Hooligans, tourists, reporters.”

“Right. So, may I ask what happened here, Miss Talia?” he asks while still recording her previous answers.

“I’m sorry? I couldn’t understand you.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Must be the lack of human contact.

“Please forgive me! I’ll speak louder.”

“You’ll be clearer without that suit covering your face. I’ll make you some tea. Do you have tea back where you came from?” She brings her empty mug to the kitchen.

“Tea isn’t that common in territories north of Bellohn so no. Miss Talia, I’m already liable to lose my job, at best, by meeting you here like this. Getting this suit was trouble enough, I’d rather not dig my grave any deeper…”

She splits the remaining boiled water from her kettle between two mismatched mugs and reenters the living room before continuing, “If you’d like, we can talk on the balcony. It’s nice out. Feel the frigid Peuga sunlight on your skin. You know what the authorities say, the air’s probably fine.”

“Probably? Hah!” He relents, following her to the modest corner balcony, with the left separated from the neighbors via a balcony divider, from which the smooth plaster railing wraps all the way back around to the door. Here stand two chairs draped in woven blankets with a small glass folding table between them. He squeezes past the table and railing to reach the far chair nestled in the corner between the apartment wall and the divider. Taking a seat, he looks out at the lake and surrounding town.

Peuga sunlight must mean the calm before and after every storm, because seeing it paint the blue landscape with soft gold is like nothing a southerner has ever seen. Two of the three other gray housing blocks can be seen from where they sit, pillars of concrete and plaster standing amidst a field of snow stretching for miles over the bumpy hillside like a soft mattress. In the center of town stand the docks, shaded by those far hills. It’s all enough to forget about the chill, if only for a few moments. He drapes the blanket on the chair over himself and removes his hazmat hood and sets it on his lap before graciously accepting the mug she prepared for him. Mug in gloved hands, he looks out at the landscape once more. Yep, still gorgeous. 

Talia sets her own mug down on the table between them. He eyes the unfamiliar drink in his hands: a warm brown tinge complimented by the inviting smell of herbs he doesn’t recognize. The steam rises in rare leisure, untouched by any stray breeze. He downs the drink before he can stop himself.

“Thank you, that was quite nice. And such an unusual aftertaste! You’re also correct, this is all quite beautiful.” he says. He throws a confused glance at his phone and sets it on the glass table.

“It is.” Talia says.

“Is this something you… still enjoy looking at? After everything?”

“Yes. There will never be anything more beautiful.” She glances over the landscape, but her gaze freezes over something at the docks.

“Is it alright if we continue?” he asks.

“Yes, please.”

“Right. So, can you tell me more about what happened here? Am I right to assume you have something new to share, seeing as you called out to us and not the other way around?”

“Of course. Here? Nothing, I merely live here.” A brick wall of a response, sarcasm falling flat from years of not speaking to others. Or maybe the reporter’s a bit dull. Regardless, she hoped for more than a few minutes of small talk and tea-sharing. She sets her mug down, and the reporter picks his pen and paper up.

She recalled the dreary Sunday afternoon back when she was 15 years old, of the snowstorm that blotted out the sun so quickly that the afternoon left many nursing colds. Her younger brothers were two such victims. They ran home after getting caught out along with the rest of their classmates as they ran laps around the four major housing blocks for physical education, ran home before their mama and papa ever got word that school was canceled soon after. Mama sure was furious, but their sniffling, shivering faces compelled her to pull down the family’s thickest comforters from the closet and sit the boys down in front of the television in the living room as mama made tea.

No live television could penetrate the white winds, so tapes had to do. One film turned to two and soon three, and the entire family found themselves hovering around the living room, making tea and bringing more napkins to clean the boogers from each brother’s nose.

As her papa washed dishes and looked over the sink counter at the boys on the couch, his wife watched television with them from a safe distance. Talia worked on homework at the dining room table. In reality, she snuck peeks at the television.

“Oh? Where do you want to go?” papa asked.

“What? We aren’t going anywhere in this weather.” mama said.

“But you just said you wanted to go somewhere!” Talia shut out the rest of the petty argument. No doubt about their earlier dinner plans, which Talia assumed were canceled thanks to the weather and her brothers.

A crash. Quiet, no doubt a part of the film’s background, as one usually finds new things with each rewatch. Another. A wail. A scream. Banging on the walls. The air around them soon erupted in a cacophony of distress that drowned out the television. Furniture screeched against the wooden flooring above, the walls quaked with what felt like the end of the world. Surely, they all believed, every wall would come down around them.

When Talia looked to her papa, he was no longer standing over the sink and was unresponsive every time mama called his name. His legs convulsed on the ground littered with broken dishes. Talia couldn’t hear him. Did he even make a sound?

“Talia! My little sheep, can you hear me? Take your brothers to your room!” Shaking hands held Talia’s face. Mama’s wavering cries broke her out of her thousand yard trance, but failed to motivate the strength to fight through this paralysis. Talia’s inaction led her mama to drag her up by her shirt and shove her away from the kitchen, at which point she grabbed her crying brothers by the hand, desperately trying to ignore the awful retching behind her. Her brothers cried out for mama and papa.

When Talia looked over her shoulder, her mama’s hand gripped her throat while the other frantically reached and knocked over every knick-knack they owned as she tried the apartment’s front door but seemed unable to open it. A trail of coffee-brown liquid poured without end from her mouth and nose. It stained the well-walked carpet and smelled of rotting lake water. Talia locked the bedroom door.

A hand on her shoulder startled her- her brothers stopped sniffling, their hands instead wrapped around their throats not unlike their mama moments ago.

“Collem, please let me go, please–” she begged. The youngest of the two brothers pulled at her shirt and arm, begging her to help them in some way, to comfort them, but she blanked. Every fiber of her being screamed when instead of words, the same rot frothed and spilled from Collem’s mouth onto his socks. He pulled his hand back, covering his mouth in an effort to stop the torrent. Talia bolted into the bathroom, locking the door behind her and made herself small in the corner under the sink.

There was no relief from how quickly Collem stopped banging on the bathroom door. Before long, the apartment fell quiet enough to call out from her dark corner.

“Collem? Jeof? Mama? Papa?” She could barely hear herself.

“Collem? Jeof? Mama? Papa?” She repeated. Name by name she called, ignoring her tears, but all she heard was mayhem through the small window above the shower reverberating on tile and wood. She placed a small stool that mama saved from her brothers’ inability to reach the toilet in their younger years below the window. Her eyes just barely peered over the frozen windowsill. Orange lights burned through the milky air that swirled around the fourth story. A gust of wind lifted the white curtain and revealed a scene out of hell. 

Choking townsfolk stumbled over a trail of bodies in the snow, either adding to the road of flesh or collapsing in a pile of limbs and brown gunk raised at the docks, like the largest fishing boats in the ocean let loose their most impressive mountains of rotting fish upon the shore. Standing upon that mountain, side by side, were two fishermen she didn’t recognize. Their heads snapped to her and she nearly tripped when she jumped off the stool.

She shut the window and stuffed every towel grandmama ever gave them in and around every door crack and waited for the inevitable, for each towel to stain brown, for her bare feet to feel soaked grout between each square white tile. 

The tile is cold, not wet. She thought of her mama and papa.

The tile isn’t wet, it’s cold. Jeof and Collem sniffling.

The tile is cold, not wet. How long did she have?

The tile isn’t wet, it’s cold. Please. Please let me live. 

Talia curled up into a cold little ball on the floor and before she could realize, she was no longer repeating the mantra in her mind.

A headache was all that plagued her as she peeled her sleepy self off the cold, and thankfully not wet, tile. Her shivering fingertips burned as she pried open the frozen window, just a crack, enough for immediate relief as fresh air filled her lungs… and recollection. She turned to the sink mirror, seeing nothing but unsoiled disheveledness on her school uniform. The same thing her brothers were wearing when they–

No. It was just a dream. She fell asleep in the bathroom, like an idiot, instead of doing the rest of her homework. She searched every rack in the bathroom, refusing to look at the towels stuffed into every crevice between wall, door, and floor. But she didn’t need to. Her panting echoed off the barren walls. Wait. She put her ear against the other door that led to the living room.

“Hello?” she called against the wood grain.

… Nothing but the fresh rush of wind and a dripping sink faucet.

She stared at her two fingers that gripped the door lock. She should go. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe she could still leave, and find Auntie Marla. She would know what to do. The image of her family standing outside the door, of stiff corpses waiting to drown her, flashed in her mind. Her fingers slid off the lock. No. Auntie would find her. How she wished of waking up to Auntie Marla’s singsongs, then her head wouldn’t have ached so much when she woke up.

A thirst boiled up from within her. There was no telling how many hours or days passed since then. The day seemed just as light despite feeling like an eternity passing by was the only way for the hell to end. Things were over, for worse, but auntie would find her, there was no doubt. She has to. She only needed to wait things out, wait for her name to be called. Just… wait. Her tongue rolled over chapped lips at the thought of auntie’s plum juice, from the few plums uncle Han always brought back from work in the south. Was he getting plums down south when everything happened, or was he home? Was he… still at home?

Plip. There it was again. The sad drips of their leaky faucet. She pulled the hot water handle and lapped at the stream like from a water fountain, and left it on full blast to warm up the small space. The mist, while cold, felt oddly pleasant on her face and hands. She drank more, a dog trapped in the desert, before her stuffy nose left her unable to breathe comfortably while drinking. 

The water turned to sewage-colored muck in a flash, spraying her face and hands at the last second as she shut off the water. A voice called out as she frantically wiped her hands and face down with her uniform.

“Talia?”

She stopped. That sounded like auntie. Ear against the door, hand on the door lock.

“Talia, my sweet little sheep, I’m here. Come out.”

“Auntie!”

As soon as the word escaped her mouth, an overwhelming sickness forced her to bend forward and slam her forehead into the door as both her arms wrapped around her torso. Her cries were cut short by gurgling and a flooded windpipe. Her eyes trailed down as the coffee-colored fluid flowed out of her mouth without stop, onto her uniform and onto a growing puddle on the floor. Muddy tears forced their way down her cheek and the more she blinked, the more the dark doorknob blended with the wooden door. Her sweaty fingers fumbled at the door’s lock.

I can’t breathe!

Her fists banged on the door in a panic, any thought of opening it lost to her as coherent thought hid in some fearful recess of her mind, out of sight and out of reach. The walls turned dark as she keeled over.

“You’ll see them once more, sweet Talia.”

“It was after this point that you woke up at the Allen Containment Center set up a few miles southwest for victims of the event, correct?” Badram asks.

“…Yes.” Talia says.

“Right.” He flexes his writing hand a few times in a circle before setting the pen down on the glass table with a clink. He checks his phone again. “Well, Miss Talia, your story seems to line up with much of what you’ve already told other news publishers. Were there maybe some things you forgot about?”

“No, I’m quite certain that’s all. Forgive me, I wasn’t intending to mislead you…” Her tone shifts naturally between conversation and apology as if she were talking directly to his face, but Badram hasn’t missed the fact that her gaze remained locked onto the dusk-blanketed docks.

“It’s quite alright, please don’t apologize! It’s difficult remembering such events after nearly two decades have passed, and…” his voice trails off as he looks at his phone again.

“Your boss has been calling you, hasn’t he?” 

“That’s what I thought, but my phone’s…” He looks up to see Talia’s eyes staring directly into his, “… been dead before I ever got here.”

“Lonely places make us think up company. Especially someone young like you, who’s practically married to his phone because of work and life. Perhaps it’s a sign you miss home. You should answer the call, once you’re able to.” She offers a smile.

“Sure. I’ll call him once I’m home.” He looks off at the horizon. The sun isn’t even grasping at rooftops now. “Perhaps I’ve overstayed. Thank you, truly, for inviting me and um… I’ll bring my notes back to my boss and see what we can do about maybe writing about you again?”

“The pleasure is all mine.” She takes both of their mugs and heads inside. Badram follows behind, hazmat hood and bag in hand. As she washes the mugs in the kitchen, Badram waits in the living room, sifting through his notes for anything he might have missed in this once-in-a-lifetime interview.

“Out of curiosity, who cleaned the apartment after… everything?” he asks her as soon as she exits the kitchen.

“Cleaners employed by the Allen company. Part of containment procedures, in order to provide a safe place for me to live here.”

“Are they forcing you to stay here?”

“No, I wanted to. The Allen folks were surprisingly easy to convince. Everything I knew lived and died in this town, and I want to be with them when my work here is done. That being said, you best be careful with how you look on your way out of here.” Talia nods to the hood in his hand.

“Oh! Of course. Thank you.” He attaches his hazmat hood, securing it just the same way as it was when he first arrived. “I’ll take my leave, then. For the record, I really am sorry for your loss. And that I’m a few decades too late to offer you anything more meaningful.”

Before exiting through the front door, he reaches out a gloved yellow hand, and she shakes it with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Thank you for your concern but believe me, you’ve helped me more than you know.”

Talia leans over her balcony, listening to the sputtering of the reporter’s car between sips of hot tea. He’s working on it right below her, but it doesn’t seem to want to start. He drove hundreds of kilometers to get here, in some southern-built car that’s woefully unprepared for Hriebet snow, and then he just leaves it just outside the parking garage of her building? Tourists never change. She chuckles at the thought but ultimately, the sputtering is a nice distraction from the usual dead silence of Peuga and one she hasn’t heard in oh, so long.

He eventually figures out a way to get the car moving again and Talia thanks the Gods for that- she was about ready to head down there out of pity. The engine struggled but worked, and Badram followed the one road in and out of town that he took to answer her call. Her eyes trailed after the car up until it disappeared behind the neighboring apartment block.

She lets out a deep sigh and smiles to herself, honestly for once in these last few decades, and looks over at the docks where the two fishermen stand side by side, still watching her just like back then.

That’s it. Her work is done.

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