Fly On The Wall: Fairy Tales From A Misanthropic Universe, Vol. I by Alfy Dade

– Coughing
    It always
started the same way, metal. Everything tasted of metal. Iron.
Other metals had different flavors, but this was unmistakably iron.
He dreaded it. He had been called paranormal, wacky, creepy, scary,
disgusting, and even satanic, by those who claimed to love him
most. Shunning would have been a too lenient trial for him they had
decided, then strangers could still speak to him. It was through
his cursed ailment that he came to be, here where tree trunks
covered all one's vision, far from all. Now it was just him, the
wolves, and bears. He often wondered whether it was any real
improvement, they could, after all, smell it.
    He
retched.
    The first
time it happened was when he had just come to life. The doctors had
pulled him from his mother and held him up high. He coughed in that
shrill newborn's tone, and blood bubbles sputtered from his lips.
Then he coughed again, and again, and again. Those sputters soon
grew, and from them flowed more fluid – but no yellow phlegm this,
instead scarlet droplets stained the operatory floor. Blood poured
from his tiny mouth onto where so many crimson stains had been
before. This time, it held more than mere small stains though.
Newborn though he was, he vomited with the force of a great man,
his head thrashed, spraying the whole room. The doctors nearly
dropped him on witnessing such an awful sight; they panicked and
yelled at one another, none had seen such horrors before; they
tried to find a way to stem the flow. They failed, and in that
failure failed too to notice his ever more sallow and anemic
mother. The phenomenon had made them lose their senses, had made
them loose attention. She had become paler and paler; her pulse had
weakened, and her movements had quietened: the blood had drained
from her invisibly. A final extended tone indicated her demise. Her
blood, her life force, now pooled on the floor, and stained the
walls, as well the doctors' scrubs. The doctors who had seen and
helped with many horrors, and brought back many from death's honed
edge, were now well and truly traumatized. They performed many a
test throughout his life to try and discover his disease, but all
faltered. They had carried out many treatments, from electric
shocks, to pills, to priests, but none had been
successful.
    He coughed, a
small red fleck stained the wooden floor of his forest
hut.
    He did not
know if he could live through it again. All who got near, all who
became dear to him. all their blood was inevitably expelled from
his mouth. But none were near now, so whose blood could it be but
his own? Those who tried to help all ran eventually too, for they
perished one by one. Those who sought to weaponize him ran further
than that still, they sustained much bigger casualties still. They
even failed to euthanize the wretched man, for each would be
executioner just dropped, drained. Even hidden expert marksmen just
expired, blown out like candles on a birthday cake. He was happy
that this time at least it would be own demise, he could feel it –
he knew it was. At least it was over, he would not be forced, time
and time again, by some cruel joke of fate, to watch more lives
sucked out.
    He coughed
again, blood rushed up his esophaguS, and welled up in his mouth.
The metal taste intensified. That old familiar flavor found his
tastebuds all too well. He wished that he'd had strength to end it
all himself, but the irony was that despite being surrounded by so
much death he could never seek his own, merely await it eagerly.
With a great big gulp, he swallowed the dread liquid once more,
still fearing it might not be his.
    He remembered
the last time it happened. He knew not how long it had been for
such singular existence has no clock. He thought only a few seasons
had passed since then but was not sure. He could remember the event
with startling precision. There he'd sat, on an empty park bench,
tormented by the loneliness which had always been the order of the
day, at least until