The Century Curse

004

Citrus washed the unconscious girl's body, thoroughly dried her with a towel, and dressed her in a pair of clothes she promised to lend the woman. The black t-shirt and the black sporty short shorts were quite loose on the narrow frame, but they covered everything up, which was the important part. Ian carried Diana by he armpits whilst Citrus held her by the waist. They moved her to the spare bedroom next door, laying her atop the mattress. They covered her with the quilted blanket their grandmother gave Citrus after winning an outstanding author's award. Her body seemed a bit too cold not to cover her up. Citrus sat on the bed tending to the girl, brushing her white hair behind her ears.

"You should go get that much-needed shower. I'll make us some coffee." She sat there, staring at the girl's motionless face, as if to obsess over it in a sense. Maybe she was just happy to have someone else in her life besides him.

Ian nodded and made his way down the steps. He dug through a trash bag of his clean clothes he had stored in the back room. The thought crossed his mind to sport his black King Crimson band shirt, but did he really want Diana to learn anything more about him?

One thing he didn't like about taking showers, the thing that actually brought on his infrequent panic attacks, was the loneliness that allowed him to think. Some people used this to their advantage, staying in the shower as long as the hot water lasted, straightening their thoughts, or creating new ones. But not Ian Debole. Usually he'd race in, wash in just a few minutes, and jump out, even going so far as to time himself. His quickest was two minutes and two seconds, and he was proud of that achievement. However, he made the mistake of telling a friend in high-school once, and soon after, that person, as well as their friends, weren't Ian's friends anymore.

But in this instance, that sensation never arose. No, he needed time to think, just a few minutes to process what his life had become in the last 24 hours. His mind was on everything besides the anxiety of being alone in the shower. He'd recalled each of the events involving that girl multiple times, the explosion of blood, the resurrection, casual coffee with his sister. None of it made sense. She had just killed herself on top of him with a dull kitchen knife.

Even if she could come back to life, that had to hurt like s**t. He thought, reassuring himself of his sanity. The muscles in his cheeks tighten to a horrific look. Covering his face, he looked through the gaps in his fingers, trying to hold in a scream.

How'd she do that?

After every last drop of hot water connected with his body, his effort to get out of the shower was lackluster. He looked around for a towel, realizing he hadn't nabbed one. This wasn't the first time this had happened, and it surely wouldn't be the last. But he had no choice. Yelling for Citrus was his only option. It had occurred that his actions now mimicked Diana's as he peeked out of the wedged door.

"Forgot a towel with all the excitement, didn't you?" She snickered, walking out of the temporary recovery ward. She walked to the closet across the hall. "I've told you before, you can walk out and grab it yourself."

"And take the risk of getting spied on by peeping tina? No thanks."

"Oh, come on, I walk around here with just a towel on all the time and you never have anything to say about it." She flipped the folded towel at his hand, making him struggle to catch it.

"Ya, it's because I'm so dumbfounded that your morals would allow you to just strut around like that in front of people!"

"We're family. It shouldn't matter! Plus, if the moral police busted down the door tomorrow, there's nothing they could do about the almighty! My house, my rules, jive?" His face embodied the phrase "like you'd get away with that." He gently shut the door in her face with a towel in his possession and got to work. He dried his hair, then face, all the way down to his feet, patting everything on the route down.

After dressing, he reached for the door handle and turned it, or at least, tried to, but it didn't budge. He tried again, but not an inch. It was just an assumption, but his loving sister was probably holding the door handle.

"Citrus," he let out a painful sigh. The roadblocks of the day unrelenting. "Are you holding the knob?"

"Yes," she said. It sounded like she was pointing at the sky with her nose, but it soon fell to tensity. "Yes, I am."

"Why?" Ian asked, juddering the handle. "Can't you just let me go downstairs and rest for a bit?"

"What all did she tell you, Ian?"

He couldn't even comprehend why she was asking him this now. He raised his hand, rubbing his shoulder in wonderment. "She didn't really say anything. She cut herself and asked for help, nothing but cutesy bits before that."

She sighed, not only releasing the door handle but swinging the door open herself. Standing there on the other side, her eyes deadlocked into his. Her hands fixated on her hips as if he'd disappointed her. But then again, she seemed contemplative, not disgruntled. Sighing again, she ran her fingers through her hair. The snapping sound of her unkempt tangles from her run the night before agitated him for the first time.

"This might sound weird, but after everything that's happened, you really shouldn't feel surprised any further." The motions of her hands waved with meticulous detail. Some were grandiose, others miniscule. But no matter the movement, it all gave a particular message. It was to inform him of how screwed up this whole mess was about to get. "Have you ever heard of a witch doctor, voodoo, puppet master, any of those?"

Thinking for a moment, he confirmed to himself that he had heard of all her examples at one point or another. Although he wasn't entirely sure of their exact definitions. He shook his head. She, of course, didn't appreciate this gesture.

"99 books."

"99?!" His disapproving tone met with a swift end as his sister reached over and snatched up a small stack of loose-leaf paper. Rolling up the pieces, she swung the blunt object, aligning it with the tip of his nose. Ian knew a quark of Citrus' was having random sheets of paper lying on stands around the house. Randomly, she'd rip a page off the top and scribble something down, whether it was shopping related or an idea for a book. But now, it almost felt like their true purpose was as a disciplinary weapon meant just for him. Getting down on his knees, he initiated his tear ducts in a last ditch effort to beg for both forgiveness and mercy on her sentencing.

"If you can't tell me the exact definition of any of those three words, you get 99 books, 33 for each. I'll make you a better writer yet."

She's devoid of mercy!

He regained his stance, disappointed and silent. Accepting his punishment, he felt it best to just listen with his ear open to the lesson.

"Now, these three terms, witch doctor, voodoo, and puppet master, don't describe her situation exactly. But they're fairly close. Our new guest, Diana, described a particular person of interest as a leech. Someone who curses people to consume their emotions, fears, and so on. That individual seems to have performed some sort of ritual or seance on her. With the successful execution of this stranger attaching an entity to Diana, it's granted the poor girl the power of everlasting life."

Everything she was informing him took him back. If it were all true, that'd explain each thing that rattled him so harshly, at least everything except the constricting of his windpipe. He thought about it intensely before realizing something. A power like that could be kind of cool. "Wouldn't that be a blessing, not a curse?"

No response came from his sister, other than a disappointing shake of her head. It was clear he had a lack of knowledge of the subjects she was trying to throw at him. He figured it would be some sort of superpower, but maybe it was a power best saved for masochists. And Ian knew she didn't derive any sort of pleasure from those types of experiences. On the contrary, she hated pain, loathed it even, but then again, what sane person didn't.

"No, because there's a caveat to this process you may see as a favor from the gods. You see... Diana has to kill herself at least once, every day, before midnight strikes in whatever part of the world she may find herself in at the time." Even without interruption from him, she clarified. "Yes, if she took a plane from an eastern time zone state after midnight and landed in a central time zone state, she'd have to kill herself twice within an hour."

Citrus really thought of everything. She always had. But she never divulged any of her deductions procedures. True to form, she was a spokesperson for the movement of figuring things out for yourself.

"But why?" He insisted.

"Well, that's part of the trade-off, if she doesn't end her life by midnight, every night, she experiences, and I'm just wording it the way she did, the last century of every person's death that happened... in rapid succession... over an eight-hour sleep period."

The details, the images. Once they'd all processed, it horrified him to his core. Ian felt sick. A pain shot across his gut. Immediate depression overcame him, engulfing his entire body in regret on Diana's behalf. He didn't know how to comprehend it, truly comprehend it, and why would he want to? This was something no one should ever have to experience, ever. But there was someone who was doing just that. The girl sleeping in the room next door, the girl who asked for his help.

"She's informed me that she's only endured it once. The first night she was cursed, she didn't believe it. And needless to say, that one time was enough to never want to experience it again."