The Sick Stuff by Ronald Kelly Page A

mother
had once called it -- was now forlorn and choked with weeds. The
circular pond in the center was covered over with a dense scum of
green algae and the marble statues that their father had imported
from Greece stood dismally around the courtyard, devoid of their
former luster and stained with a heavy coating of thick, black
mold.
    He left the ruins of the garden and
approached the main house. The Deveroux mansion had once been the
finest in all Louisiana and their sugar plantation the most
prosperous in the land. Then the War Between the States had come
along and, fast upon its heels, the dreaded Curse of the Deveroux.
It wasn't long afterward that everything that the Deveroux family
had built their life upon -- health, wealth, and power -- had fallen
into a vicious cycle of affliction, poverty, and disrespect.
    Quentin was almost to the mansion, when he
heard the sound of mournful crying coming from a utility shed that
stood away from the rear of the house. He hesitated for a long
moment, torn between investigating the grievous sound or leaving
the poor soul to their private misery. But, in the end, his love
for his sister surpassed his own emotional discomfort.
    "Isabella," he said softly when he reached
the shack's wooden door. He knocked at the panel with his knuckles.
"Isabella... are you alright?"
    A cross between a harsh laugh and a ragged
sob answered his foolish question. "No, Quentin, I most certainly
am not alright! Now, go away and leave me alone."
    "Please, Isabella... I must speak with you,"
Quentin insisted of his sister.
    Inside the awful crying resumed, along with
the sound of liquid falling into a metal basin...dripping, pouring,
continuously. "No, Quentin. I'll not have you see me in such a
way."
    Quentin himself did not desire to see his
sibling in such a sorrowful state of physical distress, but he knew
that he must talk to her and try to understand the extent of this
the awful curse that they had been subjected to.
    "I am coming in, Isabella," he said and
slowly opened the door.
    Despite her protest, Quentin entered the
utility shed. The interior of the structure was dark and dusty, but
the invasion of daylight revealed the horror within. His sister
squatted, naked, within a large metal wash tub filled with
blood.
    It was Isabella's own blood that she
was awash in. For that was his sister's part of the dreaded curse.
Once a month, during her womanly menstruation, she did not merely
bleed from her womanly portal, but from every orifice of her body,
including the pores of her skin. And that was not the most horrible
aspect of her ailment. To prevent herself from bleeding to death,
she was forced to ingest that which her body depleted.
    In an atrocious act of self-vampirism, poor
Isabella had to drink her own blood in order to survive.
    His sister sobbed as he entered. "Please,
brother... cast your eyes from my shame."
    Quentin did as she said, focusing on the
earthen floor of the shed instead. It angered him to see his sister
a victim of such an abominable infirmity. "Isabella, you have
nothing to be ashamed of. Like Trevor and I, you are
guiltless."
    He listened to her dip a china cup into the
sanguine pool around her and, with great thirst, swallow her own
bodily fluids. The noise nearly made him retch. "My only crime is
possessing the filthy name of Deveroux. It is our dear, departed
patriarch who has brought this awful curse upon us all. I hope his
heathen soul burns in Hell for all eternity!"
    Her brother was shocked to hear her speak of
their father in such a cruel manner. Isabella had once been Everett
Deveroux's pride and joy; a "daddy's girl" in every way imaginable.
But her current state of despair and indisposition had changed her
opinion of him considerably.
    "But what did our late father do to raise the
witch's ire and bring such a heinous curse upon this family?" he
asked. He lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at his sister.
She sat there, blood dripping and dribbling from her