When it finally took her, no one was really surprised anymore. The mutation, the disease, the cancer, the infection, the curse, had become so obvious she could no longer deny it. Her battle had been quite visible and her loss undeniable. Now, it was in control.
Was this predestined, written into her fate at birth? Was it a result of her ravenous addictions? Perhaps both. Were they ever really different?
Some grow out of the selfishness of youth. They learn from their mistakes and try to correct them. Others, in their shame, learn to hide their flaws, to manipulate those who see, to silence those who speak.
One who lives a life of deception only fools themselves in the end.
Oh, how she had been admired. Even in her darkest days, she was a beacon of hope. So many had come to her for help, and now they had begun to fear the monstrosity she had become and ran from her. Perhaps, it would be more apt to say that they feared the monotonousness nature that she could no longer hide.
Oh, how she had been celebrated. She was one of the heroes who had slain such beasts as this before. They had cast her as Beowulf defeating Grendel, but she always knew, on some level, that she was Grendel's Mother. She was the source of the infection, and now we all know.
How many of her children did she think she could she eat before she felt Saturn's indigestion?
There were those who had pointed it out. There were those who had yelled, cried, screamed at the top of their lungs. But how could she ever do wrong? Even if these claims were true, what could anyone do? Were her allies, perhaps in some ways, also her hostages?
Now had she become the puppet, or had she always been controlled by some invisible hand?
She could feel death's gaze, cold and yawning, the abyss that stare. She wanted to turned and run, but it drove her body forward, the worm, the cordycep, the nameless. Was there ever a time she could have freed herself from it?
Was there ever a way things could have been different?
She had protected it, this horror growing inside her, as if it was her own child. Perhaps the unspeakable truth is that, in some ways, it was. Had there ever been a time when she wasn't infected? Was it in the blood she was born from?
Was she, like an aphid, born pregnant with this beast? Had it crawled up from the graves at her feet, those that she had dug in her youth, to haunt her in to her own? Or had it driven her to fill those graves in the first place? Perhaps it was an ancient curse, inflicted through her ancestors at their first taste of human blood. Was this the simple conclusion of some sort of original sin, an affliction carried by all of her kind?
Could this curse ever have been lifted, or was it a horcrux, a phylactery, a vital organ, perhaps even the true essence of her being?
The others could see the light drop from her eyes. All the humanity that was left in her screamed one last time before it was silenced.
"What," they all wondered, "would become of her now?"
Wouldn't we all like to know?
- for America