TheSickVillage

“There is a sickness in this village. Perhaps you would not see it from a distance, and the faint sting of rot on the breeze is easy enough to dismiss. But as you get closer, that infectious feeling of wrongness is harder and harder to shake.

The grass is not the green of nature, the buildings are warped by more than age, and the voices that come from behind the inhabitants’ masks are hoarse and wet.

They move with exaggerated casualness, a parody of idyllic village life. And when they have a break from weeping, they reassure each other how wonderful it is in their village, or at least how wonderful it used to be.

Each is covered from head to toe in thick black fabric, and they never, ever touch.

Take a deep breath.

The air feels thick and soupy in your lungs, swarming with a thousand contagions digging into you, begging for you to join the village…”

“The disease itself is nothing special. It begins as a small patch of discolored skin, the tiniest blemish. Scrub it off, and it is gone! For a few hours, at least. But it returns again and again, and begins to spread, a mold with tendrils that burrow deep.

It ranges in color from rancid yellow and corpse-fat white to the dull, angry purple of a fresh bruise. It itches, and burns, and you can feel it growing and spreading inside you, looking for the core of you. At least until it worms its way into your bones.

Beneath the coat of each terrified citizen of this sick village lies a lurking possibility, a nightmarish suspicion of infectious constellations of hungry mildew, a mutating technical atlas of rotten and pockmarked flesh.

But who can know for sure? Their coats are oh, so thick.”

“The deception is pitiable, and yet deep down every villager knows the mold has marked them deeper than any of the others, and carries it as their most secret shame.

Foremost in their denials are the village council, those loud and hardy souls who have taken it upon themselves to police this place, to safeguard their traditions and denounce the infection that is the right and proper punishment of those who would allow the village borders to be breached, and their ancient way of life to be compromised.

Their masks are blue and red and white, and their coats are the color of fresh ivory, stained sometimes with streaks of crimson from their dutiful ministrations. None would dare accuse them of infection, and to cross them or draw their eye is to invite the strongest diagnosis.

Head of the council is Jillian Smith. Her father’s father’s father’s father’s father built the maypole, carved from a jackalberry tree and painted in the colors of the village. This place is her home and her right and her duty, and woe to any fungus-riddled outsider who might believe it otherwise.

For no one would speak up if Jillian Smith were to mark you infected or declare you foreign. No one would lift a finger as they dragged you to the green.

Her gloves are purest white and never sullied, and they hide a cerulean mold that covers every inch of her, through skin, muscle, and organ, though she has no idea it runs so deep.

By night, she sits in the quiet darkness of her perfect cottage, peeling herself with a straight razor, layer by layer, desperate to reach the pure flesh she is so sure must still be in there, somewhere.

Her living room is the same suffocation blue as the rest of her, every surface piled high with her own discarded bloody skin, and she has no terror deeper than the thought she might be discovered.”

- The Magnus Archives episode #164, The Sick Village