Consumption

By: Tilly Genato Millena

Short Story

Submitted: January 28th, 2023

1ST PLACE (Group 156) — NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2023 Round #1

Genre: Horror / Subject: A reward / Character: A castaway

— — —

Summary: As the last surviving member of her family, Angelica leaves the Philippines for America. She tragically finds herself caged in her new life, plagued by an illness and a hunger that both threaten to consume her.

Word Count: 2,407

— — —

I.

I always did everything that I was told to do. My father said to me, “Angelica, ‘if you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land’.” I believed it because for twenty-one years of my life, the rewards were plentiful enough to build us into one of the most influential families in Luzon. But that was where it ended.

I lost him, my mother, and my brothers in a shipwreck. The steamship Venus – meant to follow the Uranus bearing the revolution’s generals to exile in Hong Kong - sank a week out from our departure. I, alone, washed up on the shore of a deserted island, our ship’s and my family’s only survivor. After five long months, I was rescued. I struggled to recall much of the time that I was stranded. It seemed that my suffering blurred and dissipated the memories into wisps that slipped through my fingers. Although, the separation made it easier to swallow because the fragments that did solidify were of starvation, grief, and a desperation that crawled down my throat and settled in my stomach.

John Ernest Henry was an American man aboard the ship that rescued me. “Marry me, Angelica,” he had said. He was plain-looking, with brown hair and brown eyes, and he was pleasant enough. I was still in mourning so I denied him at first; I soon learned, eyes that once regarded me with warmth, turned dark with suspicion because despite being a castaway who toed at the edge of death, I returned looking full and healthy. I could not explain it.

I left Manila with John and arrived in New York with a fever that ran hotter than the summer we arrived in. He rushed us to Redvale Manor, a house he inherited from his father after he passed away some years ago. He described it as ‘a grand mansion outside the city with high ceilings, lush velvet furniture, gilded drapery, and a white-brick foundation built on acres of green fields’. The Redvale Manor that we approached was not the one that he had promised. Bleached grass surrounded a sorrowful, neglected structure, overgrown with ivy vines. The roof had holes and missing tiles and the walls were set with broken windows. He quickly brought me upstairs and directed me into a bed, but not for my own sake.

Late into the evening, I was examined by Dr. Alan Isaac, a rotund man with a thinning head of hair and a bushy moustache who dared not make eye contact with me. He spoke only to John who, himself, wouldn’t cross the door’s threshold.

“It may not yet be consumption,” Dr. Isaac said while packing his instruments. “If it is, she will fade soon before long.”

“Stay here, Angelica,” John ordered as he and Dr. Isaac left, locking the door behind them. I obeyed, for what choice did I have?

As a child, I heard of ‘consumption’ when my father spoke of it fearfully after returning from Spain. It was a dreadful disease that drained you, leaving you pale and weak until you wasted away.

That night, I dreamed of being stranded in a bangka on a stormy sea alight in hellfire. The waves created giant walls of blinding amber light, splashing with a vicious heat that charred my flesh to the bone. Among the sickening crackles and my own cries of agony, my father called to me from below to reach into its depths; I did not refuse. I met my father’s skeletal hand in the fire and palmed into mine was a small black-feathered chick.

II.

The manor’s staff fed me once a day at whatever time it pleased them. They gave me only crumbs of bread and morsels of cheese or fruit; not enough to satisfy me but enough to keep whatever was trying to consume me at bay. They would unlock the door, toss the food inside, pick up the old dishes, and then lock it again. They never looked at me or spoke to me, all I heard of their voices were the horrible things they would say to each other about me.

John neglected me as he neglected Redvale Manor. Never once visiting, so the only moments I would see him were when I had enough strength to watch him from my window, desperately hoping he would look up and remember I was there. He kept strange hours, always returning home after midnight, swaying as he went. Each time, a crow returned with him, until several murders roosted in the attics and flocked in the fields.

Weeks went by and the fever would not break – it worsened. Some days, I could not even stand on my own two feet for the ceaseless pounding in my head was as furious as thunder and when I coughed, painful hacking that shook my bones, blood spattered into my palms.

As my strength waned, in its space my hunger grew, a starvation so visceral it made me feral. One night, a maid brought me scraps of old stewed venison, its gamy, near-rancid aroma wafting down the hall. I sprung for the door with a sudden might before it was fully opened and wrenched the meat from her grasp, frightening her into dropping the plate. I devoured the meat with tears in my eyes as she locked the door and fled. I consumed it in seconds, licking leftover juices off jagged shards of porcelain, the savoury flavour mixing with the iron tang of my bloodied tongue. It wasn’t enough though, it was never enough.

Tik! Tik! The strange sound momentarily severed me from my savage episode. When I turned to it, I was no longer in the room that caged me, but in my home in Caloocan.

“Don’t leave the window open, anak, or it might feed on you,” my mother teased. She closed the window and then turned to look at me with milky white eyes, her bloated stomach bursting against drenched clothes. I was too frightened to look at her as she helped me into bed.

“It always hungers… the manananggal…” my mother sang with a deranged smile on her face. “Fangs that chew, claws that rake, and a sharp hollow tongue that will suck up the rest. It flies, it flies with bat-like wings, body light to carry without its legs, and its entrails hang, and drip, drip, drip…”

Drip! Drip! Drip! The sound of seawater dripping from my mother as she repeated and repeated and repeated…

III.

One evening, John allowed me out. He was to entertain Dr. Isaac and his pregnant wife, Esme. I was forced to trade my piña alampay and camisa for a leg-of-mutton-sleeve gown and I was to style my hair like the illustration in a magazine he brought me. In the mirror, I still saw my father’s dark brown skin and my mother’s deep umber eyes but the dress and the hair did not suit me. I had lost the fullness of my curves from illness and hunger and my tall frame crumpled under the weight of my sorrow.

I exited my cage; my first real look at the manor proper. The hallways were unlit, carpets shredded, and dust and debris collected on all surfaces. John and Dr. Isaac spoke in harsh, hushed tones by the fireplace in the parlour. They were arguing. The crows cawed outside the window. The sky looked like it would rain.

Before I finished descending the staircase, Esme appeared before me, a porcelain woman of carved edges and golden curls, her belly heavily swollen. “What wealth do you have?” she asked me.

The men fell silent. I looked to John for instruction but he gave me none, so I held my tongue.

She continued venomously, “Your fiance is a filthy gambler, in case you didn’t know. He owes us a great deal of money. All he has is this house and he refuses to part with it, so tell me you have wealth.”

I could not obey because I would be lying.

“Her father invested everything they had into the revolution,” John answered instead. He faced the window, lightning flashing in the distance. “And the monetary indemnity that was promised to him has already been used to pay for arms; she will not see a cent of it.”

Dr. Isaac regarded John with disbelief, grabbing his shoulders, “Then why did you bring her here?”

“Because I did not know at the time!” John spat back.

“You don’t love me, then?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, my voice raw with disuse.

John looked at me, one of the few times he did. He looked right into my eyes with ire and disgust and then furiously shook his head.

I laughed, “Good.” Remarkably, I felt relieved. I shared in his ire and disgust. I hated him, I truly and deeply hated him. I would be chained to him for what remained of my life but at least if he did not love me, I did not have to love him.

Esme frowned and then offered, “If this girl has no wealth, Mr. Henry, I suggest you find another who does. Don’t bother waiting until she wastes away, even though it won’t be long now.”

I spat blood in her face before my legs gave out underneath me. I fell to my knees and screamed, “Is this to be my reward? Where is the good of the land that my father promised? I curse you all! I curse this house! I curse my damned obedience! I curse the ocean that should have swallowed me with my family!” I screamed until my throat was raw.

The doctor had my fiance send me away to a sanitarium in the mountains to find either my cure or my end.

IV.

I was wrapped up in blankets and warm clothing and tucked into a bed on the porch to breathe the cold, winter air. It brought no relief for I was exhausted, overwhelmed with grief, and suffered a starvation that ran deeper than not being fed. I was treated better here, kinder, but it came too late to soothe my hollowed heart.

When night fell, I heard it: Tik! Tik! It was that noise again. A crow landed in my lap; it wanted me to follow it. Slowly and with much effort, I dragged myself after the crow through the snow and the mist, to the shore of a lake that warmed and brightened into the shore of the island where I was stranded, not alone, but with my father.

And I remembered.

The both of us laid in the sand at the edge of the jungle, dying. In my delirium, I barely noticed the small black-feathered chick sitting on my chest. When it chirped, my father turned. His cheeks were sallow and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes were hidden under sun-blistered skin. 

“Anak,” my father wheezed. “You have to consume it.”

I understood but I knew the stories.

“Let it sit in your belly. If you feed it, it will keep you alive,” he pleaded.

I shook my head, afraid, “I’ll become a monster.”

“But you’ll survive.”

He rolled over to pick up the chick, gently cradling it against my mouth. And I obeyed, choking as the chick crawled down my throat and settled in my stomach. That was when my hunger truly began. I did what my father told me to do, I survived. I feasted on his blood, his organs, and his flesh, feeding the chick and regaining my health.

When darkness came, my teeth sharpened into fangs, my fingers cracked and elongated into pointed claws, and a proboscis-like tongue unravelled from my drooling maw. Massive leathery wings sprouted from my back and with two powerful beats, my torso tore away at the abdomen, entrails dangling below. I left my legs waiting for me on the shore while I disappeared into the jungle to hunt.

I came back from the memory, wings flapping above the lake. A chick chirped from within my belly and I answered it with a deep, feral growl, “I will eat the good of the land. This is my reward.” Like lightning, I shot down from the mountains in search of my prey.

I found the doctor first, strolling through a shadowy forest on the way home. I bore down from behind and tore into him with my claws, flaying the flesh of his back open as easily as peeling the rind of a pomelo. I settled the weight of my severed body on the back of his neck, keeping his face pressed into the dirt to muffle his wailing. Streams of fresh blood like sweet juice spilled from his veins and I drank my fill.

I found his wife next, she had left her window open just a crack. My proboscis slithered into the darkened room and, quick like a stinger, pierced her womb through her navel, sucking the fetus up. It was a delicacy that rivalled balut and I swallowed it whole. I didn’t linger to see her waste away as she bled out through her wound, but I knew it wouldn’t be long.

I found my fiance last at Redvale Manor. I entered through the holes in the roof that the crows had found. I could smell the amber in his sweat and the ashes of the clothes my mother made for me. Enraged, I howled and dove at him tearing the ligaments at the back of his legs so he couldn’t run away. He collapsed onto his back, whimpering and begging for mercy. I rested my torso over his chest - gore seeping into his clothes - and looked into his eyes.

“Stay here,” I commanded and he had no choice but to obey.

I raked my claws down from his shoulders to his belly and sliced him open, delighting in his tormented shrieks. I indulged myself in his savoury offal: his liver, his stomach, his intestines. It was the most satisfying spread I had eaten in months. I spent hours consuming my fiance, leaving behind his bones and his stilled heart. My hunger was satiated for the time being. I set Redvale Manor ablaze and returned to the mountains, settling back onto my legs, and reforming before dawn.

In the morning, the nurses found me in my bed, full and healthy, shocked at my miraculous recovery.

— — —