its excrement penetrated my numbed mouth and throat, scorching and vile, like a hot and stinking tar...and then, darkness.

its poison was eating me alive from the inside out. i had been defecating blood now for the past several days, and the agonizing stomach cramps were getting worse, keeping me up night after night. they were a blessing in disguise, however, since the nightmares were more terrifying and horrendous than all the other symptoms put together. the doctors and medicine men of the local village told me i should have been long dead, and now when they rarely visit they spend more time talking in whispers amongst themselves. i have told them not about the incident that put me here, lest they deem me mad and send me to asylum. i would rather the pain of disease at home than the haunting screams of the insane.

it was not long before i was bedridden, the poison's tentacles at last sapping my strength for movement. the bleeding from my bowels did not ease; soon the sheets were saturated and stained. no souls came to visit anymore, the doctors were baffled, and most afraid of my condition. my appearance was also ghastly: the limbs no longer in use had darkened and shrivelled, the skin on my face taut and grey, and not much of my hair remained, only small wispy clumps upon my head. a picture of terror for any healthy soul. my days were numbered, that's for certain. i couldn't move, couldn't sleep; i just lay, staring with unseeing eyes, barely breathing, barely living. i had been so for many days, i had lost count, it seems, several moons ago. death's door was gaping wide, but for little life left in me i couldn't reach it. some hellish evil was keeping me alive, an evil beyond man, beyond time.

everything changed when my son arrived. how he knew me ill i will never know. he had travelled from great distances abroad to see me. alas, what misery to see the horror on his face and my sickness reflected in his eyes. at last i could practically see the soul-reaper awaiting my earthly departure, my time had come at last. i beckoned my son closer in the final rasps of the dying man. he came hesitantly to my bedside, covering his mouth with a silken handkerchief; i could only imagine the cadaverish stench emanating from my rotting vessel.

as i tumble into a dark abyss of the afterlife do i recall with fading memory the last breath of my life. as my son had leaned toward me, almost retching from the deathly odor, my hand which had shown no movement for many moons, suddenly and inexplicably reached out and gripped his neck, dragging him relentlessly to my already gaping mouth. he could barely let out a shrill scream before my thin lips had clamped firmly over his. to my own shock and terror, my wasted body convulsed, and the thick poisoned mucous that once infected my existence was released at last from my cursed corpse through my mouth and into his.

so i am no longer of your earthly world, and never will be again, but my legacy lives on forever...