Break the Fever
It makes you thirsty.
Content notes: Flash Fiction Horror inspired by prompts provided kindly by M.P. Fitzgerald (Early 2000’s, Argument on a bus, a fever.)
A marshmallow shaped figure slipped through the pooling crowd of bodies as exhalations rose in steamy clouds above the cold-weather travelers. The girl sweltered beneath her puffy white coat as she made her way toward the bus, fishing the coins from her pocket. Clink-clink-clink. $2.50.
She pulled at her scarf, beneath her jacket the school uniform stuck to her sweat slicked skin. There was no room to sit or rest. She stood awkwardly in the aisle surrounded by semi-recognizable strangers, slippery hands gripped tight to the nearby post as the bus finally moved.
She tried not to fidget, but being late put her on edge. Her bag bumped against the knees of the seated woman next to her, who tilted her auburn framed face to the side and furrowed her brows.
“Uhh— you okay? You look…”
The girl mopped the sweat from her forehead with her loosened scarf as best as she could, but the effort was futile. Fuck. There was no room to shrug off her coat.
“Jussstalilsssick…” her words came out all pushed together at once, hiss-like and weak.
The red-head replied with a weak smile, averted her eyes, and pulled her knees further away from the damp teenager that was beginning to shiver in place.
This is bad. Getting across town was already a long enough trip without the delays, but with a fever too…
Across the aisle another girl in a familiar uniform sat, brand-new camera phone lifted to capture a photo of her sweaty peer slouching against the pole.
“‘Suuup,ssssssindy,” the feverish girl slurred out with a lopsided grin.
“Are you fuckin’ high?” Cindy curled her lip and her long, hot-pink nails tapped rapidly over the keypad.
The overheating girl laughed, but it came out as a wheeze. All her moisture sat trapped under the coat against her skin; her parched tongue dragged over the cracked seams of her lips. She’d never liked Cindy. Stuck-up bitch.
“Whereyagoing,ssssindy?”
Puffer-coat eyed the map of the line overhead before dropping her eyes back to Cindy with as much weighted judgment as she could muster and a barely repressed smirk. Hypocrite.
She watched Cindy turn as red as she felt inside and couldn’t help but let her own face split into a full grin. It just wouldn’t do for a good-girl like Cindy to be caught coming down to a neighborhood like this, all the way across the city from the giant stone spires of their church, in uniform and all.
“Ugh, as if I’d tell you— stay away from me you weird junkie freak.” Cindy stood and pushed through the crowded aisle, bright-blonde extensions disappearing as bodies pressed forward to fill her seat.
Puffer-coat didn’t follow, just let out another raspy chuckle as she wiped the blood from where her lip had split. Holier than thou bullshit.
The bus was moving too slow, the sun now dipping toward the horizon. Fuckfuckfuck.
Eventually the crowd thinned as the end of the line approached. The sick girl now sat slumped over a pair of isolated seats near the rear. The heat inside her was reaching a peak.
She groaned aloud as another wave of arid heat scorched her lungs, the bus interior blurred as her brain struggled to think through the pounding scream of dehydration. She was too late. The fever needs to break.
Cindy was one of the last passengers to depart, just a few stops from the end of the line. The feverish girl slunk off the bus quietly behind.
It only took half a block for Cindy to notice she was being followed, the scrape of the other girl’s weak steps echoed through the alley she’d chosen as a shortcut. Cindy paused, turning to face her pursuer.
“You? What the fuck, are you like, stalking me now? You really are some kind of crackhead!” The girl clearly had an opinion about drug users— other than herself, if her current location was any indication— but her whining held an undercurrent of fear.
“Whereyagoing,sssssindy?” The sick girl paced slowly closer as Cindy backed blindly toward a corner.
“Ugh! What’s wrong with you!”
“Jusssstalilssssssick,ssssindy…”
“Get away from me!” Cindy held her phone out like a weapon, but it was too late.
The other girl gagged, a violent retching sound as her mouth yawned open and her stomach convulsed. She coughed for a moment before something fell from her throat and splattered to the ground in a mound of dark brown ichor.
Cindy stood frozen in shock, her phone fell from her hand knocking loose the decorative rhinestones. She watched the other student sink her fingers into the wet mass and squeeze. The squelching sound of the act hit Cindy’s eardrums and sent her to her knees, hands over her ears as she tried to keep her own lunch contained.
The feverish girl dragged her dark stained hands over her mouth, letting the fluid seep into the cracks of her parched skin. Yes.
It was too late, too dark. The fever had gone too far. The fever must break.
She couldn’t hear Cindy’s shocked gasps, barely registered the other student cowering as the bones in her jaw and back began to shift and loudly snap into their natural locations.
The heat subsided only slightly as her body lengthened. She slunk forward until there was no space for Cindy to flee, though the other girl seemed too panicked to recall that option.
Cindy’s panicked breaths filled the space between them with warm steam, a small oasis in the cold, dry night.
The changed girl closed the gap, her new lanky figure caged Cindy in effortlessly as she leaned in to whisper one final message.
“Ssssindy…”
A small whine escaped Cindy, she tried to scuttle away only to realize she was already against a wall, surrounded by grotesquely long arms.
“Pleasssse,I’msssso…thirsssty.”
The fever must break.
I wanted a mask on while reading this
I like this piece