NANOWRIMO 24  Day 3

Prompt: I awoke one morning, after uneasy dreams, and find myself transformed. 

 

The cotton sheets, comforter, pillows, rug, all the lovely trappings of the Killarney Royale Hotel are gone. There is only a pathetically small pile of straw, strewn over a hard, dirt floor. My legs are bare, bony. What happened to my calf muscles? Where are my leggings? I’m in a cotton nightshift too thin for warmth. My stomach cramps again. Again? 

 

The room is dark and silent, except for my sister, whose snuffles and sighs must have awoken me. She is on her side, curled up like a cat, shaking in her sleep. I cover her bare arms with handfuls of straw, then study my surroundings. 

 

As my eyes adjust, I see a crude wooden stool, a small table with spindly legs, a blackened hearth. Other than that, our cottage is empty. Well of course it is. We sold everything else for food -- stale bread, mugs of thin soup. How many days ago was that? Too many.  My stomach is on fire. I grimace.  

 

Stifling a groan, I rise onto stiff legs and limp toward the turf bucket. It’s still empty, just like yesterday and the day before and before that for weeks on end. There’ll be no remedy for the cold again today. 

 

The room spins and I lean against the crumbling mud wall to steady myself. Through our window, I see that outside, the sun is rising, shedding golden light over a land that has betrayed us: blighted potato fields, and shallow graves where the kitchen garden used to be, resting places for the parents, the grands, and some neighbors too. I’ll be next if God is kind, but it’s likely my sister won’t have the energy to bury me. It’s almost her time too. Our bones, picked clean by whatever animals still exist on this hellish plain, will stand as testament to our history, the cruelty of the land, the government, the so-called religious urging us to convert to Protestantism so then we can be fed. 

 

I recall my dream. Two sisters, bellies full, wandering our fields which are not decaying but flourishing, in strange men’s clothes, pantaloons tight to their legs, brogues laced halfway to their knees, and carrying packs that buckled at their considerable waists.  They were laughing. 

 

Yesterday, when my sister was resting, which is all we have energy for now, I sat among the graves, tore up handfuls of grass sprouting up from the dead, stuffed my mouth. Like a sheep, I was, chewing and swallowing as though my very future depended on this miserable meal. My belly cramps again. As I double over in pain liquid gushes from between my legs. I pray that it’s blood. I pray that it’s all that I am.  Jesus and Mary, the saints, and every holy thing, take my child. Take me too.