Oubliette A: Ouro Reliquary#
Father died in blinding pain. I held his hand at the end, when the last convulsions of life shuddered through his broken frame. His purpled hands, cold as ice and streaked with white where his knuckles pressed against his skin, clutched my fingers. I said nothing as he spasmed and seized.
The doctors said he had past the point of no return weeks prior, that it was a miracle he still clung to life, but I failed to see anything miraculous about his condition. To me, it appeared opposite. I had read the Authority’s report, that he fallen through a collapsed tunnel beneath the Pedreira and broken his respirator. By the time anyone could get to him, he had been inhaling the unfiltered clouds of fungal spores that pooled in the underground mines for hours.
They showed me the sonograms, the acoustic maps that charted the progression of the infection. Sterile black and white photographs carouselled across the screen, an expanding web of nodes that ate through his lungs and travelled up his spine to make its home in his brain. Towards the end, they stopped bringing me updates.
…
“I’m glad you’re here,” He whispered before he fell into the coma from which he would never wake.
Why had I left? The reasons suddenly seemed so foolish.
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What else do we have but words to hold our loved ones after they die?
Gruta do Carimbado, 2155
Ouro Reliquary