IGNATIUS The Colors of Rage

Chapter d Seizures

As soon as they disconnected, Nansen rushed away with Iggy in his arms. The others of the house crowded the lobby and were watching through the windows. This increased the need for a speedy escape. They had even less self-control than Baine. Simply a few moments in Iggy’s bloody presence could cause them to lose their minds and forget who they are. They’d be nothing more than moving shells for the virus controlling them. Driven to drink blood until the host is dead.

Iggy couldn’t remember how they made it to the upstairs bathroom, but he did recall coming back into himself somewhat while in the shower. Still completely dressed, cold water splashed down on him from the shower head. The cleaner he became, the heavier he felt. His skin felt grimy, even though it wasn’t. The violation was so dirty. He was numb inside and out with the exception of disgust. His shivering mouth felt sloppy and his speech was slurred. “I saw her by the wall…” he whispered. “She...” 

Nansen peeked inside from around the frosted glass door. He inhaled the air and nodded. “Alright, now I can stand to be with you.” He turned off the water and stepped inside. His fingers wiped the dripping wet hair away from Iggy’s face and his hands pressed firm against his cheeks. The shock, sadness, and worry were all too visible in his eyes, even in blindness. “Why would she do that to you?”

“I… I…” Iggy couldn’t clearly reflect on what had happened. He was in more shock than anyone. 

“What were you doing outside?”

Iggy groaned and cupped his hand over his eyes, jerking his face away from Nansen’s hold. “I wanted to see the flowers-”

“Flowers?!”

“I can’t see their colors at night. I wanted to see them once in the light… and I saw them! The grass was so green. I could smell it. The birds! The sun!” His throat tightened. “I won’t regret it… even if I lose all of my sight for it.” 

“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” Nansen murmured. He pulled Iggy’s hands away from his face and looked directly into his unclouded right eye. Tears dribbled out of his own eyes and a frown dipped the corners of his mouth. Then, he sniffled and looked up at the dripping shower head. “Hot showers always make me feel better… Maybe it will make you feel better, too.” He straightened up in front and ripped off Iggy’s damaged clothing. He turned the water back on and stepped out, leaving Iggy naked beneath the pattering waterfall of hot water. His back shadowed against the closed shower door. “When she attacked you, did you scream?” he asked.

“No…” Iggy covered his eye with his palm. “When I saw her, it felt like I had seen her a thousand times before, as if I knew who she was. Then, I awoke and she was on top of me…” He wrapped his arms around his sides and hugged himself tightly. “She was licking my face… biting.” He cringed and became nauseous. In a flurry, Iggy threw himself out of the shower and heaved his guts into the toilet. Empty and wasted, he let his chin sit along the edge. He looked up at Nansen, barely. “She said, ‘what a blessing it is to have such a flattering deformity.’”

“Iggy.” Nansen sighed and dropped his chin. The tips of his fingers caressed the swollen lumps and cuts along Iggy’s face. “Maybe there is something we can do. Maybe we’ll be able to save your eye and you’ll be able to see again. You never know.” He flung a towel over him and lifted him up off of the bathroom floor.

Regardless, Iggy had no will or strength. “I’m scarred either way,” he said. His heart beat rapidly, but he didn’t feel any blood flowing through his limbs. 

They came to his bedroom, and he easily laid down in his own bed with his black blanket drawn up to his chin. There, he could feel that at least half of his face was completely wrecked. Scratched and cut, puffy from the bite, and red from the antibiotics. On the back of his head a lump was growing and the pressure ached inside of his skull. 

Nansen was the closest thing to a doctor that Iggy had, and now he calmly bandaged each knick and cut with tape and shredded cotton. He took his time to do each perfectly, too. When finished, he cleared the area, and knelt alongside the bed, holding Iggy’s cold left hand in between his own. Nansen liked to hold his left hand as a gesture of kindness and intimacy, especially because he was the only one allowed to, but Iggy pulled it away and held it against his chest. Nansen’s eyes rounded and his lips parted to speak, but Iggy spoke first. “You don’t have to touch it,” he whispered with the acidity of shame.

Nansen lifted himself taller on his knees. “What? Why not?” 

Iggy tried to stay calm and lie, but a heavy sob suffocated him. He bowed his head and crowded his fingers against his eyes, wincing with pain as the first tears dripped salt into his wounds. “I thought that my situation was already bad,” he whimpered, “but now, I won’t see anything at all… I’m wrecked. Maybe, it is a good thing that I won’t be able to see myself… how ugly I’ve become.”

Nansen leant in to protest, “no, don’t say such things,” but then the doorknob rattled behind him. 

The door opened and Baine entered the room, ruffled and ragged, with a bowl of boiled potatoes in his hands and a fork sticking right out of the top. His knuckles and fingers were tinted dark brown and smudges of the same color were scattered all over his clothes. He came to the bedside and held the bowl out for Iggy to take, but Iggy showed no interest in it. Nansen took it himself and stabbed the first chunk of potato with the fork and he held it to Iggy’s mouth, but Iggy’s mouth remained still.

“Ig, you haven’t eaten in days,” Baine lied. 

“It’s true,” Nansen chimed in. “For a seventeen year old, you hardly eat anything, but even now, especially for the last week or so, you’ve been turned off by food all together. What’s going on?”

Iggy looked up into Nansen’s eyes and felt guilt. He was about to form a frown, but Nansen’s arms wrapped around him before he could and embraced him in a warm tender hug. Nansen loved Iggy, and this love fueled Iggy’s hope many times again. It saved him from falling into the abyss of debilitating depression when he was eight and every other night that Iggy became overwhelmed in the constant isolation and inherent abandonment that he felt. Nansen’s happiness and contentment was important to Iggy, and he knew that if he should end Nansen’s pain, then he needed to end his own first. 

So, he slipped his face out of the hold, grabbed the fork from Nansen’s hand, and ate one bite. Just one bite. It doesn’t seem like much, but for him it was difficult. Nansen recognized the struggle and he smiled a smile that was drowned in sadness, patted his shoulder, and praised his effort. 

Baine cleared his throat. “That woman says she came from the Silgria house where they’ve been attacked,” he said. There was tension in his voice. “She traveled forty miles in nothing but a cloak in daylight to send the message.”

Nansen’s tone neither implied untruthfulness on the stranger’s part, nor accountability. “What are you going to do then?” He stuck another piece of potato on the fork. “Believe her?”

“I don’t see why else she would’ve come here. Meeting Iggy outside wasn’t supposed to happen.” 

Iggy closed his eyes tightly, feeling the scene at its climax, again. Flushing with anger, he turned his face away from the food. Nansen gritted his teeth in frustration. 

“Up until that point,” Baine continued, “she had followed orders appropriately to send the message. We have to go answer the message.”

“What?” Nansen looked up at him shockingly. “Now?”

“Yes, indeed.” Baine paced toward the door. “She said that the trip took her alone 6 hours running. We can make it there in half the time, but to make it back before sunrise, we need to go now. We’ll bring back as many survivors as we find, but most importantly their young one, Emi. If she’s lost in this whole ordeal, we’ll lose our investment in the Silgria’s. So, I’m taking everyone with me on this rescue. The house will be empty.” Without hesitation and with nothing more to say, Baine walked out and shut the door quietly behind himself. 

Nansen set the bowl of potatoes onto the bed and glared at the closed door. “So much for my input,” he huffed, jabbing a potato with the fork like a dagger to a criminal. “As second in command, you’d think he would ask me what I thought.”