Her eyes steadied on the yellow liquid inside the five hundred ML gravity feed bag hanging from a double hooked pole in front of her. Tasìa lay reclined in a leather-bound chair.
The medical technician droned on and on with his voice pitched in see-saw fashion to punctuate every question he asked. Tasìa did not listen when he went over the procedure in minute detail, as he did every Wednesday.
She thought of the world outside the fenced-in limits of her current domain. Outside was a world built by a people who had adjusted to a direful reality.
A biblical verse came to mind.
I look out on earth… lo, all is chaos;
I look at heaven... It's light is gone.
The bag crumbled as its contents flushed out. It's cold contents now flowed beneath her skin.
I look out on the mountains… they are trembling;
And all of the hills are swaying!
The medical tech watched her. His lips puckered timidly beneath a dark red mustache.
"Do you still turn to your old creed, Alma-Gris," he asked, using only part of her surname with undue familiarity.
Tasìa ignored him still.
I look out… lo, the man is seen!
All the birds have taken flight.
He would ask his questions in the same pretense-ladened pattern every time she visited. Her lips creased in a slight smile as she anticipated his next question.
"How does a woman of the cloth, a sister of the convent, develop a mania for burglary?"
I look out… lo, the sown land lies a desert;
And the villages are all razed by the Lord's rage.
Now came the coldness that swept into her loins and intestines like morning frost as it spread in the burrows of tilled soil. A rusted iron rotor blade scraping against the lining of her stomach would not have caused any more discomfort than the brew that now crept inside her gut.
Yet, Tasìa smiled placid even still.
For this has the Lord said:
The whole land shall be desolate.
"You're almost there," said Red Stache, what she called him when telling Este-Oeste about him, "I can see it in you. No matter how serene you pretend to be. It rides you like lightning sizzling through air. You get these little goosebumps up and down your arms. It's your tell.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Still, you won't give me anything. Tell me at least this much, for sometimes I see your lips move in repetition. What biblical verse does a fallen sister seek comfort in when she sits in that chair to receive her chemo?"
Words to annoy her. She had assessed long before that the medical tech was not merely a contract worker going about his duties every Wednesday. He was there to prod her as well.
Demoralize. To break her spirit.
She pushed him out of her mind, and continued with the verse now naked on her lips.
And for this show the earth mourns.
And the heavens above grow black.
Red Stache braced himself. He heard the squall that emanated from her body. Tasìa kept her composure perfectly still as her stomach rumbled to a thunderous crescendo just before her intestines released.
His lips shivered with little control as he watched her vacate her bowels. Once she was finished, Red Stache suspired dramatically while he regained his composure. He was now ready to speak.
"We have been through three months of this, Tasìa. You and I in this danse macabre to which we are fated."
His words were always so oddly flirtatious after she shat herself. Her cynical heart understood the cajoling to which he had previously subjected her. This, however, made no sense. Why was he so intent on making an impression on her?
She wasn't anyone's idea of a ravishing beauty.
Short stature. Flat butt. Weird goblin smile. She could go on and on about her physical inadequacies, yet still, Tasìa was comfortable with herself.
He turned a switch on the side of the machine by her knee. Instantly, she felt the yellow liquid reverse its course as it drained out of her in a slow pneumatic sip.
The versus pushed fore into her mind like an incantation that had to be completed.
Every city shall be abandoned,
And not a man dwell therein.
They mirrored the tribulation she felt sweltering inside of her. After the first treatment many months before Tasìa found need for verse to give her meditative solace.
She felt as if the liquid that drained out of her was taking something vital from her very essense. She did not understand why she thought this; though quite irrational, there was a certainty there that played true to her intuition.
It was the same dread feeling that caused her to scurry up the wall a few hours earlier.
Red Stache waved for her attention.
"This is the part that scares me, Miss Alma-Gris," he said, tapping the bag that was now nearly a quarter full.
The liquid glowed an iridescent yellow.
"What is that? What is in you that causes that? No other patient, none but you, causes that to happen."
No fret would she allow to surface on her face so long as the man was in her presence. She smiled with eyebrows raised in slow, docile contentment that revealed none of the scorn that she now felt.
The questions were stupid. The glow was obviously caused by a marker triggered by her very own genetic materials. There could be any number of reasons the manufacturers targeted a specific trait. If a medical technician could not figure that much out, she was not going to help him with an explanation.
It first occurred to her, he was likely fucking with her, playing upon what he assumed to be her religious superstitions, given his mocking tendency to treat her like a simpleton.
As a chill of realization occurred to Tasìa she tried to suppress an urge to flinch. His words did not follow their usual ridiculous oscillating pattern of both cajoling and courting her with overwrought flowery language. He was more assertive with his words than usual.
She tensed up. He's deflecting. Trying to distract me, but from what?
This time Tasìa answered his question with a sudden jerk of her head; her gaze locked on to his eyes. She finished the verse, and directed it at him.
"You ruined creature, what will you do?"