Utterly Mad

L watched the two working on the the truck through the plate glass window. Watching but not seeing. The distant terrified look in her eyes bother catnip. "What's wrong with L?" She asked, glancin again at the misling while she worked.

"Nothings wrong with her." Kyle said, "Well... That's not really right."

"What is right?" She asked. The truck would run, Catnip could see that. The best part was, everything she needed was at hand or could be found in a nearby siding. The task would be simplicity itself under her skilled hands.

"All I know is that the Searing Spear found her dehydrated and half starved in the cellar of a cabin in the middle of a mycus patch." Kyle said, low as if L could hear them through the window. "I think it preys on her. The memory I mean..." Catnip supposed she knew what that meant. Some unpleasant memories had a way of creeping up on you, springing at you like a predator lashing out from ambush.  She had an image of her sister stalking Kathrine, the way she had climbed down the wall towards her, and shivered. She hoped that Mica was keeping her promise.

---

The blanket of memory had unfurled in L's mind, the eye of recollection wide open. She was running again. It hurt and shamed her to be running, but she had no choice. Not really. It was the choice of the coward, and to her it was right that it should be so. If she'd had the guts to do what needed to be done, she wouldn't now be fleeing from her family.

The cabin had seemed like the place to go, to hide from them, but it had been a deathtrap. L, then known as Elle Ericson, locked herself in the cabin cellar and waited in the dark. For a week, she sucked condensation from dry pipes, and ate through the small stockpile of canned food she found in the basement. When the canned food was gone, she began eating from a bag of dog food. It made her feel sick, but it was better than nothing. The worst part though had been the voices.

"Come out darling," Came the droning idiot voice of the fungal infested corpse of her husband, "Come out and let me hold you. I long for your touch." She'd closed out the voices, covering her ears with her hands.

Then came the dirtiest, most heart breaking of attempts to get her out of the cellar. "Mama." The voice of her runt whispered. "Mama come out."

Elle broke down. The mycus was cruel, and virulent. Her youngest, Missy, had been stung by some kind of tendril as they'd traveled. Her husband had hacked the tendril apart, but the infection was already in her. The Wyoming country was clear, it was supposed to be free of mycus. That had changed, and soon the family of six was traveling back towards pricetown. Missy changed quickly, but Elle couldn't do what needed to be done, wouldn't let Henry do what needed to be done. Then her boys had begun to get sick, to come down with mycus infection, and she fled from them.

Three weeks passed beneath that cabin. Three maddening weeks. Then, the searing spear had come. Pricetowns elite guard armed with thermic lances and flamethrowers, responding to reports of the fungal growth they'd been organized to fight. They swept through the patch, burning it to ash, destroying what was left of the fungal zombies gathered there. Elle was found, half mad and half dead. Rescued at last, but down in the dark of the burning cabins cellar she left a part of herself that would remain there forever.

She gambled and drank to forget, and she lost frequently. In the end, she accrued a debt that she couldn't hope to work off and was put into debt slavery. In time, the pain eased but in the dark of the night she could still hear them. In the shadows of her room, at the edge of her senses, their droning idiot voices came back to her.

---

*VROOOM*