The rotting (El Loco - Part 5) - (Five minutes freewrite)

marie-jay (61)in #freewrite • 6 years ago (edited)

The tip of her finger carefully traced each bone in her face, going down from the brow, circling the eye sockets till she felt the cheekbones under a layer of plump skin. For all she looked, she could not see a sign of the disease in her, but then she did not have the gift. Like Francisco. She'd always known that he had the gift, just like his grandmother, Dona Anna, God rest her soul.
Francisco had this habit of shying away from certain people, casting his eyes down and refusing to talk to them. Many around the neighborhood thought the boy was a bit weird, which was to be expected - after all he was born out of wedlock and his father was a priest, which made the sin even greater. No wonder the boy was not all there. But Lucia knew he was a seer, he was young and his eyes were untrained, but he could feel the rotting in certain people.
That's how her mother had explained it to her.
'It is not something you can control, you meet someone, talk to them for a while and they start decomposing in front of you, rotting like corpses till all that remains is the skeleton. God be praised that you never got this extra sense, cause it's a terrible burden and you can never speak of it, or they'll think you crazy'.
Lucia wanted to ask a million questions, but her mother rarely spoke of the gift. The one time she wanted to was when she warned her about Tomasso. That was way before Lucia got pregnant.
'That boy's got the rotting. I could see it in his face. Not completely, but it's there, a couple more years his soul will be dead. You don't want anything to do with him. It's like what happened to your father, he was the prototype of the rotting sickness, but I was young and foolish and I thought I could cure him.
It was hard to understand the idea that someone could be dead and yet still alive. The way Dona Anna explained it had to do with some people losing their will to live, to be alive, like Tomasso - he'd always been a coward and he'd chosen to become a priest so he could hide behind the cross and the Bible.

'But he loves me, I know he does', had been the girl's angered response at the time.
'No, he doesn't. He only thinks he does, because he knows that's what people do, what they long for, love. It's all in his mind, not in his heart. He could do without it and he probably will, because he would never fight for you. The rotting kind have no will to fight. Cowards, that's what they are.'
Seeing Tomasso again and so unexpected, she was excited, there's no denying that. Her heart skipped a beat or two, but the boy's screams helped her come to her senses. She tried to explain to him what was happening, why he was seeing horrible things. It was not his fault, it was those who had the rotting inside. She did not have the heart to tell Francisco the skeleton in the square was his father, let him believe he had gone to America to make money for them.
But she worried. What would happen if the boy were to see the signs of rotting in her? What if she started to die before his eyes? That must not happen. Maybe she'd punished herself enough, maybe she should go to the dance next Saturday. Marcel the butcher kept inviting her. She was still young, she could have another baby.
She searched her soul wondering if she felt sorry for Tomasso. She did not. It was nothing she could have done for him, you cannot fight for someone who doesn't fight for himself.