Sigama

I fear that many congruent requisites of the inscrutable malady, have ordained, a rather invincible fate, one which only the sufferer may divine, from the shadow of infamy. I shall not maculate its nature with perfunctory designations, nor shall I pronounce any instrument of conduit, from my surmise, until such liberty is due. The primeval etymology of the resilient albeit implausible anecdotes, relating to this supreme malady, has been rooted in the superstitious folklore of the locals. I am only a physician enjoined to the morbid indulgence of academic observance, and my concern does not warrant any childish rhapsodies of the preternatural. I will say however, that it is a grave illness and the man I have been assigned to, has become destitute of the salvageable prerequisites of well-being, which must superinduce the advent of convalescence. He is a bread winner of two and forty, and has been rendered bed ridden by the "plague of Sigama" or so the locals call it. The albescent sclera of his eyes, have been imbued with a rich yellow and his hair has withered from his scalp. His tremoring gaunt vessel has the deplorable seemings of the moribund, and the pigment of his skin, is ghoulishly pale. It has been a fortnight, and my deductions are without conclusive diagnosis. Tonight as I seat next to him, monitoring his augmenting fever, his wife, seats beside me after sending her little daughters off to their respective chambers,

"It is not usual that a man devotes himself to a mere acquaintance with such diligence and care. Your kindness to my husband is appreciated. It is unfortunate, that he may not live for long" she says with a subdued, modest tone and I gasp before gathering her hands in mine,

"You cannot say this. We shall make progress believe me! ..you also need not thank me, I am only doing what has been requested of me, ...it is all in the name of Science" and then her eyes regard me and narrow, as if scrutinizing an inconspicuous macule upon my visage,

"Your hardihood is commendable, but you forget there are unimaginable forces which exist to corrupt. You forget about Siga..." Here she pauses, and arises with eerie stateliness. Her discourse seems to have been muted by an intrusive hindrance of apprehension, and she does not speak, as she recedes, like a ghost from the cold confinement of the precinct. I am now alone with her husband, but I cannot scrape the residue of our dialogue from the fissures of my conscious. What is this titular monument of forbidden locution? No, I must not question my practice, because of false superstition.

The night continues, and it is silent save for the grinding teeth of my patient. He now groans and writhes, until I decipher what he mouths, in the monolithic elongation of my defective cathexis.

"Sigama lives here!" I lean into his vocal orifice, half with dread, and half with interest as he halts and ascends adequately enough, to engulf my ear,

"She is the consumer, she will not die until we are forever gone" and the speaker reclines into an incumbent throe of terror, as he grips his chest while his wife enters the precinct, completely nude. Her hair is suspended, in the air, and utterly still, and upon her back are the wings of a bat. She wields a scythe, which she uses to point towards him, and I fancy that its presence causes him, to waste away, first in the visceral nature of a precipitating illness, and at length, like a vampire evanescing into embers in the midday sun.