Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.
Meet Ira’s dad, Zion Carpenter. He’s horrible.
CWs: Zion, rotting flesh, Zion doing horrible gross body horror rotting flesh things to some poor innocent bastard. Dead dove warning.
***
“Is it gonna have to come off?” the workman asks, his bared leg stretched out before him atop an unraveled pile of disgusting, greenish-stained bandages.
Zion bends over it, inspecting the infection. He’d recognized the stench before the bandages had even come off; a large part of the calf muscle is gangrenous. Under the medical capabilities of modern science—such as they are—it would call for amputation.
For his skills, on the other hand, it’s eminently curable. But that doesn’t suit his needs here.
“I think we’ll be able to save it,” he answers, tracing fingertips along the skin at the edges of the rot, sensing its invisible spread. He’s spent some time putting feelers about, doing little healings here and there, making a mild name for himself among the hard-up. Working to lure in someone exactly like Mr. Schoeller here. “I won’t lie; it’s in a severe state. I’ll need some time to get things ready, but I can apply a poultice to keep it from progressing further in the meantime. Can you come back tomorrow?”
Schoeller’s broad form sags with relief like an undermined dam. Tears have started in his eyes. “Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, God, thank you.”
Zion looks up to hold his eyes, projecting sincerity. “It’s my pleasure.”
He wasn’t lying about it taking some time to prepare. Much of this work couldn’t be done ahead; the forms and materials need to be fresh, or there’s no point to this.
When Schoeller arrives the next afternoon, leaning on his crutches and radiant with new hope, Zion sits him down with some tea to help him relax, and then escorts him into his work room. “I’ll need you to lay down here.” He points at a place in the center of a spiral of markings.
Schoeller is turning his head this way and that, looking at the arrangements. “Mr. Carpenter? Is this…godly?”
Zion cocks his head—what a question—and then looks around himself, considering Schoeller’s perspective. “It does look rather diabolical, doesn’t it?” he answers wryly. “Well. Far be it from me to summon divinity, but I can promise it’s nothing God would frown on.”
He and Mr. Schoeller have very different notions of God’s temperament, but this is hardly the place to go into that.
In any case, Schoeller’s scruples are outweighed by his desperation. He allows himself to be helped down to the ground, uses his hands to lay out his bad leg and then lies back, tucking the provided cushion beneath his head. Zion circles around behind him to pick up a large box, and then takes his place cross-legged at Schoeller’s side with the box beside him.
He sets a Bible on Schoeller’s chest, just to make him feel better.
All these preparations have nothing to do with Schoeller’s wound, which Zion hardly needs ritual trappings for. Schoeller cradles his Bible and prays and pays little attention as Zion nurtures the rotting flesh of his leg, feeding and encouraging the tiny organisms until the gangrene seethes outward, the flesh around the wound deforming and bubbling with pus and gasses.
By the time Schoeller opens his eyes, sensing something amiss, the foul infection is climbing his thigh, his leg swollen several sizes too big, a hideous purple black with seeping green.
He screams and thrashes, trying to claw himself away from the monstrosity that is, after all, attached to him. Zion leans back away from one flailing arm as he opens the casket next to him to invite the feaster of rot into the new home he’s prepared for it.
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