Northern Exposure: Episode Five
Page 3
Chapter 15
”With her last breath she mumbled on about three reapers, something about her killing three reapers.”We couldn’t understand how one woman so thin, so fragile and alone could take on three reapers and survive. We thought she was delusional from the scepticism of her wounds, but she was adamant on making us believe her.”
”We tried making out what she was saying, but it was near impossible to understand her delirious jargon.”” After explaining about her run in with the reapers she tried delivering another message.””Constantly repeating the same sentence over and over, at the time I thought it was just symptoms from the fever as her mind played tricks on her, but she was relentless on getting her message across, the dying women repeatedly said,
”New breed; new breed...A-pex.”
”At the time we took no notice of what she was saying and tried harder to convince her to get rest, but our attempts on keeping her alive where soon rendered futile, as she slipped away.”” We franticly tried our best attempts of bring her back, but it was hopeless, she was gone.”That Cairo is when it began and the whole perspective of this New World changed.
“I will never forget the distinct picture of that faint smile on her face, as she lay on the mattress, at peace in death.”” But the woman was not done dumbfounding us just yet, yes she may have been dead but her body had not completed its metamorphosing, before she was completely at rest.”
“The women’s body started reacting, her core began glowing a fiery red colour as a chemical reaction occurred deep within her gut, her eyes started bleeding a toxic yellowish substance, the liquid soon poured from her mouth and pores until it had completely cocooned her.””The yellow substance burnt at her body until all that was left was a sheet of dead flaky skin, similar to that of a serpent shedding its out-lived old coat, I watched in disgust as skin peeled from her body exposing her raw flesh.”” Immediately another layer of fresh skin covered her, this time however it was harder and thicker, with a scale like texture.”” This women was a remarkable creature, whatever she was, and this exuberant ability she possessed not only explained how she had survived top side by herself for so long, it shed light on what exactly we were dealing with up there. A world where Reapers were not the only things we had to fear.”
Smith’s story sounded nothing other than farfetched, but in this place made total sense, after all I was a living breathing example of the implausible existence we now shared. If I could turn into the beast, and the reapers ran rampant top side, who was I to questions the reality of this strange women? But explaining about his run in with a creature as outlandish as he described did not help me come to the understanding of what I had become.
As Smith continued explaining I remembered the others throwing hints around in the past, little comments which I though irrelevant at the time. My so called family new about the changes which occurred in this woman, so keeping the secret from me must have meant they knew it would happen to me as well. I trusted these people with my life, yet they did not even have the mordacity to talk about the situation, they just kept the secrets from me knowing one day the inevitable would happen and they would have to do to me as they now did. It made a bit of sense as to why I survived in the comatose state for so long with such primitive methods of sustaining my cabbaged body; honestly a normal person would have died within a month or two down here. They must have picked up hints as to why I was still alive, they must have thought I was just like the women, a monster.
Smith approached me with his infamous machete, as he pulled it from its leather pouch I regretted ever finding the butcherous blade. He grabbed my leg then hacked away at the wire cables which bound me. He had freed me, I got up but this time opted not to run, Smith had once again intrigued me with his story, to the point I was willing to trust him for the time being.
“You are making her sound like a fictional character from one of my comic books Smith, you telling me this is not caused by Reapers, then what?””Come on there has to be an explanation for all this, a scientific explanation?”
”Let me finish boy,” Smith demanded, “About another year went by after the passing of the mysterious woman and it was all we spoke about.”” I kept her corps in the passageway for about a week trying to figure out what she was, until the corps became rancid and Sky demanded we get rid of it. “”I wanted to figure out what we were dealing with, what abnormities she possessed, but our bunk mates were uneasy with her presence so we did the humane thing and gave her a proper burial top side.”” Since meeting this women, she was all that filled my mind, day and night I tried figuring out what she was, at times I thought perhaps it was caused by a reaper bite, other times I believed it to be exposure from the environment, not knowing how close but yet how far my guesses where.”
“Eventually images of the women faded until she became a distance thought which popped back into my mind once in a while as I fell asleep.”” Life went and we chalked meeting her up as a coincidence, we believed her to be a rare anomaly, a mistake made by nature, the only one of her kind.””But we were so wrong, she was not the only one up there, we found this out one day as we bumped into a rather eccentric individual.”