IGNATIUS The Colors of Rage

H.Z. Science Fiction

I was eight years old when I first had a seizure. I remember stepping down the staircase, and then something oddly familiar caused me to stop in my tracks, and woozy,. I reached for the hand railing with my left disfigured wrist. Needless to say that I fell.

I toppled down the stairs, an entire floor’s length, and crashed hard into the tile at the bottom. After 32 hours of unconsciousness, I awoke with a head injury that fixed my left pupil to 90% dilation, even in the light. It spared me little vision and no color perception at all in that eye.

I thought my life was over with, but my older brothers, Baine and Nansen, told me time and time again that I was just a vessel, and that that virus would cure me, and that I just needed to get a little older. Still, I had very little faith.

I am approaching my 18th birthday, and the seizures are occurring more often and lasting a lot longer. I convulse violently or tense up so tight that there isn't any movement in my entire body. Once or twice, I even undressed myself... that made for a very awkward awakening.

Afterwards, I don’t know who or where I am, or who my brothers are. I can’t speak or move. Other times I stay unconscious for hours after an episode, just to wake up like nothing had happened with injuries that seem to have appeared from nowhere.

To say the least, I need a lot of help.

I am so severely compromised because of this, (and other reasons), that I am constantly supervised by my brothers. My chaperones are all that I truly know about others, they are my entire world. It doesn’t occur to me that beyond the walls there can be more humans. More uninfected people. I have to be the only one. The uninfected are too weak to survive on their own. Just like me.

My brothers tell me time and time again that I am just a vessel, and that the virus will cure me, and that I just need to get a little older, but unfortunately for me, things don't ever go as planned.

-Iggy

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