Delirious: 65

"Come to pay some last respects?" Girl asked as Gabe entered the room. She strolled to him as if for a greeting hug, but walked passed and slammed shut the door of her room. She lean against it and glared. "What am I saying, it's you. First respects then."

"You realize I won't believe you if you tell me you are innocent of this," he said, not turning to meet her eyes, but proceeding to he pile of pillows. He leaned near her and felt her forehead as though a parent with a feverish child.

"She doesn't have the flu," Girl said. "Maybe encephalitis lethargica."

"She has something, pet. She looks different. Not just paler but unusual…" He lifted her limp hand and examined the fingers. "These are longer, aren't they? And her nose had the smallest bump right there and..." He traced the scabbed wound on her face. "This should not be happening."

"Yet it is. It among many things. Earth to ether, dust to dust."

"She's dying. Won't last the week."

Girl waved her hand. "Lies. I feed her seven cookies a day. More on the weekends and all the tea I can pour down her throat. I just move her jaw and rub her throat. Easy as can be." She crouched on the other side of the cairn in a mockery of Gabe's searching posture.

"You don't sound like you are doing so well yourself." He looked at her for the first time this visit, the first time in weeks. Ash dotted her face like a three year old had gotten into her mother's make-up. Her hair hung in ribbons from her head, a bird's nest after an oil spill. She may be madder than a poet but never looked it.

"Pshhh, sound is but energy. My mind, you'll agree, is energetic beyond merry measure. I am of sound mind then."

"And Shane?"

"If she dies, it can't be helped now. Nothing better than that. Peaceful. Better me than you."

Gabe held Shane's shoulders, considering her heft in his hands. She no longer felt as light as a hummingbird, but rather precisely what she had become. One hundred and pocket change pounds of decaying meat.

"You can't sling her over your shoulder, continental soldier and you know you can't begin to wake her. So..." Girl held the door open and Gabe obligingly left, as he must.

He could go no more than a few steps before running nearly literally into the Raefian.

"Ah, I wondered when you'd show, mate."

The Raefian's cloak expanded and spread like an overripe slug. Gabe felt the void growing, pulling his every mote into nothingness. The blood in his body stopped and the skin grew grayer and more wrinkled. He felt his muscles wither with age. He shot his hand into it, grabbing the hems and shutting them fast.

With a spotted and sagging hand, Gabe spread a fan of cards before the creature's vacant eyes. "I don't suppose you are much for card tricks?"