Datura Stramonium

What was this awful ailment coursing through her body? Her blood bolted through her veins like jolts of lightning as she staggered around the iron cage, grasping a bar tightly with her clawed digits, trying to remain on her feet. It felt as if she had been drugged, and yet the slight graying of her flesh weaved a different tale. Death would be knocking at her doors soon enough, frosty chills wavering through her frail figure as fatigue started to kick in. Her limbs began weakening as she neared the farthest corner of the enclosure, leaning back against the beams of her enclosure, she shut her faded amber optics, awaiting the moment where her soul would be taken away.

“What a pretty kitten you have turned out to be, my sweet Vilia. Absolutely astonishing.”

The guttural tone of the voice caused her heart to palpitate, her clawed digits grasping her chest tightly as her frame slid down the bars, a small huff coming from her pressed maw. Unfiltered fear shook her entirety as she whispered her reply.

“Adon, why are you here?”

The sole being that could send shivers of consternation to her very spine, and yet the only person that could soothe the raging flames inside. “Me? You should be asking yourself the same question little one,” he responded, the voice pounded through the back of her skull. “Why did you flee my home? How could you allow yourself to get caught?” It was as if he were part of her, embedded deep within her essence, a string that she could never slice. Clawed phalanges dug into her scalp, minuscule pinpricks of pain dancing over her skin as she drew blood. An attempt to keep herself sane as his voice resonated throughout her brain, echoes of escaped horrors encircling her internally. “Y-you know exactly why I left, and you know what you did, you monster... ” The tremble in her tone was prominent as she spoke to a force that she could not detect, as if there was an aura concealed by the darkness.

Claws slid down flesh, leaving rippling lacerations down her cheeks, using the afflictions as a distraction from the sounds. “I did nothing wrong and you know it. You ran from a loving home and became an inferior ‘witch’ in the woods. Nothing pleasant could have come of that anyways.” Adon’s voice slowly distorted, fading into a growl of rage that she knew all too well. A rage that inevitably left her bruised and broken, stuck under the roof of the village Healer with sage wrapped around her wounds. Just a notion of her past life made her stomach turn, much worse than the feeling of the toxicant destroying her vital organs. “You forget my dear ’Lia, you are nothing more than a worthless bitch without me.”

‘A worthless bitch’--Something that he incessantly called her when she displeased him, the one term she had gotten used to over the many years that she had spent with him. “I’m not worthless!” Her scream reverberated in the enclosed room, the distressed stifle of oncoming tears uninterrupted by the sudden silence.

“Worthless.”

“Worthless.”

“Worthless.”

The instantaneous chanting filled her ears as tears of crimson fell from her faded amber optics, a sign that death was closing in upon her frail stature. Tickles of blood came from every opening of her figure as the hissing chants increased in volume, her palms pressing against her ears, drenching the graying flesh as she tried ignoring the screams.

“Worthless! Worthless! Worthless! WORTHLESS! WORTHLESS! WORTHLESS! ABAGHI URU! ABAGHI URU! ABAGH-”

Sudden silence suffocated her as her heart gave its final beat, her drained form nothing more than a sack of flesh soaking in her own scarlet fluids. All from a bite of a Thornberry Apple.