Introducing the Wonderful Sara Valentine

Sara Valentine here. I bet all you readers are filled with confusion and bewilderment at the fact that I’m making a post on this blog. Well settle down and learn some damn patience, it will all be explained soon.

I remember talking to Rosa outside the bar. And then it’s just a big black spot, until I found myself waking up on the third most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept in. The depressing thing about that is it was still softer than my apartment bed, which is holding strong to its second place position. When I woke up Rosa was hovering over me like someone who has heard of personal space, but just doesn’t think it applies at all to them. She didn’t even give me a chance to get over my waking grogginess before she started bombarding me with stupid questions about how many fingers she was holding up.

As anyone else would in this situation, I replied to that with a good old “Where the hell am I?”

Rosa kept insisting I count her damn fingers, so I did. Far from ending things, this just encouraged her to put me through more trials, making me say my full name, asking me to recite the alphabet, flashing a light in my eyes, and so on. Only once she was finally satisfied did she back off and let me ask what was going on.

“You were poisoned.”

I was wait what now

Ignoring my rising anxiety, Rosa continued to explain in an annoyingly calm and analytical tone. “You collapsed while talking to me last night. From my examination, you’re showing early signs of Ichor consumption. Looks like three days since the infection.”

“Wait, infection? I thought you said poison!” I was probably sounding a lot ruder than I intended, but in my defense, I was close to panicking there.

She wasn’t impressed by my concern. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to sedate you.” She said with annoyance. That was not what I needed to hear to calm me down. The opposite of what I needed to hear, really. I started freaking out even more, tried to shove Rosa away, and someone had to hold me down and stab me with a needle.

After another period of blackness, I woke up in that bed again. I was… a little less freaked out this time, now that I knew what to expect. I actually made the effort to look around at this room I was in, instead of jumping straight to panicking. It was very… white. White wallpaper. White carpet. White sheets on the bed I was in. Hospital white, none of that “vanilla white” nonsense. Old inner city kind of hospital white. No windows, and the only piece of furniture was the bed I was laying in. Going for the creepy void room look, I see.

Rosa was giving me some space this time, and was leaning against the wall to my left while chewing on an unlit cigarette. Someone else was to my right: a black man in a loosely fit tie-dye shirt and with red-tipped dreads. His smile was sympathetic, but I couldn’t help but feel concerned about the syringe he was holding.

All right, quick check. Still have all my limbs. No one seems like they’re planning to hurt me at the moment. Time to find out what’s going on.

Rosa rolled the cigarette around in her mouth and said with a hint of impatience, “Are you going to fall apart on me again?”

“That depends,” I replied sarcastically, “are you going to tell me you stole my kidneys?”

“No. I’m going to tell you that you don’t have very long to live.” She said with the same clinical apathy as before.

“Right right, that poison stuff.”

Rosa took the cigarette out of her mouth and stared at me critically. “You don’t seem to be taking this entirely seriously.” She said.

I shrugged, but she was right. The whole situation was so strange that it had taken on something like a fuzzy, dream-like atmosphere. “Give it to me straight, doc.” I said. “How long to I have left?”

Rosa stared at me a few moments longer, but she didn’t seem to find whatever she was looking for in my face. “On your own? A few weeks, at most. Under my watch, several months. Possibly years if you follow what I say and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Seems like a pretty shitty poison if it can take years to kill me. Why not just use arsenic? I hear that’s much more effective.”

Rosa started to say something, but stopped and thought for a few seconds. She seemed to be struggling to find the words to explain this to me. “What you consumed is known as Ichor. Well, I guess it’s more popular these days to call it Eat, but I never understood why kids want to call it such a dumb name. Anyways, Ichor isn’t some mundane poison. It’s more… supernatural. Rather than attacking the body, it attacks the personality. Kind of.”

“The poison… is going to attack my personality?”

“From a certain point of view, yes.”

I’m not sure if my expression could have conveyed how incredulous I felt hearing that. I looked to the other man in the room to see if maybe he could explain things better, but he just shrugged and lightheartedly said, “Don’t look at me, she’s supposed to be the expert.”

“Thank you, Matthew.” Rosa said sourly. “It might make more sense for me to say that Ichor attacks the mind.”

“Wait,” I cut in, “isn’t the mind a part of the….”

“Not the physical mind.” Rosa said. “If you could cut open the head of an Ichor victim and look at their brain, it would seem the same as the brain of a healthy individual. But it will still kill you. It deadens the personality of its victims, until they turn into borderline lifeless husks with no trace of their original self, even as the body continues to survive.”

Oh well that sounded absolutely lovely. A poison that can’t even be bothered to kill me properly and just leaves me without any personality. Arsenic really was sounding like a preferable choice. “So how do I survive this?”

“You don’t. But there are certain things you can do to delay the effects of Ichor. If I keep you here under my observation, I can ensure you remain in the proper environment for fighting the infection, and control its spread.”

I frowned at hearing that. “Ah, yes. Stay here. Well, the thing is….” I tried to smile, but it didn’t come out very well. “You two seem like absolutely wonderful people, but I have things I need to do. Like a job. And a roommate who needs me to pay my part of the rent. And a cat that needs to be fed. Doctor’s appointments, weekly movie night with friends, you know, that kind of stuff.”

I’m assuming by Rosa’s expression that she didn’t know that kind of stuff. “You’d rather die than miss out on… movie night?”

“I’ve got things going on in my life! You’re giving me a choice between still having that life for a while, or spending the rest of my time being observed and ordered around by you! I’m not going to end up some invalid who just lies in a hospital bed for years!”

That came out a lot stronger than I’d intended. Rosa gave me another of those analytical stares, and then said, “That sounded like you have some personal issues with that.”

“Shut up.” I grumbled. “Just let me go home.”

“I’ll take on the case you wanted to hire me for.”

The nonchalance with which she said that blew out my contentiousness like a cold gust. “You… you will?” I stuttered out.

“Yes. Completely pro bono.”

I was left completely speechless there. After she turned me down at work, I’d given up hope, but now….

“I’ll give you some time to think over it.” She said. “But you should at least stay here a few days to recover from your collapse. I’ll handle anything you need taken care of in the meanwhile. Just give me your answer when you’re ready.”

And that’s how I’ve ended up in this weird place. Haven’t left the bed yet; in spite of all my contrarianism, I’m still feeling weak from earlier. And I really have been given a lot to think about.

As for this blog here? There’s apparently a lot of rules for living at Rosa’s place. Number one rule: Everything needs to be recorded. She claims that “Memory works strangely in this house,” so you have to log anything important down so you don’t forget it. I thought that was weird, but hey, I figured I could just post stuff on my Tumblr and that’d be that. Well, no, Rosa got mad at that suggestion. She doesn’t want anything about this place going through some channel she can’t filter. So for now, if I want to put up anything online, it has to be through this blog. I mean, really, Blogger? Who uses this site anymore? Old people, that’s who. Old people who rant about magic poison that’s going to somehow turn me into a normie.