Progenitor

Chapter 15

Amos woke up to his wife shaking him. He felt like his bones were made of broken glass and every shake was grinding those shards together. He shuddered, which racked his sweat drenched body with bright sharp pain. He tried to tell her to stop, but he didn't even have the energy to call out. A low moan escaped his cracked lips.

"Amos. You're bleeding."

His eyes fluttered open allowing the morning light to strobe in as his vision focused. He reached his hand up to his nose, the most common culprit, but found nothing there. He looked up at his wife, fear naked on her face. She covered her mouth lightly with her hand. Her eyes widened.

"Where?" He croaked.

"Your fingers. Your mouth," she spoke through her the fingers riveted across her mouth. Amos could see the horror that his wife felt by the way she was looking at him.

Amos tried to sit up, struggled, and tried again. He grunted and strained as beads of sweat poured down his face. The weight of the blanket was excruciating to him, and feeling cloth move against his skin had the same effect as dragging your front teeth across the tines of a fork. "Can you take the blanket off?"

Charley did but stopped after she had folded it down over his feet. She stared.

"What?"

"Your feet. They're bleeding, too!" Her voice cracked and wavered at this.

"Huh?" He looked down to see the dark blood caked around his toenails. "What the fuck?" He kicked at the sheets weakly and pulled himself up the bed.

He stared at his feet a minute longer before looking back to his hands. His nail beds, once well-maintained, were cracking. Blood, though not much, was pooled up under his nails. Like his toenails, the blood was dark red, almost black. Two of the nails had split down the middle and exposed the sensitive skin underneath.

"Oh shit." Amos's voice was surprisingly calm but his mind was spinning out of control, like a top headed for the edge of a table. "Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm going to get up. Piss. Change. Then, we're going to the hospital."

Charley nodded and stood up to leave.

"Charley?"

She looked back to her husband laying in the bed with dark blood crusted around his mouth.

"I need help." He held out his hands.

Charley bent over to help her husband out of bed. He was a mountain of a man compared to her but he felt brittle and cold to her now. With a great amount of effort, he was standing, wobbling really, at the side of the bed. He took a step and cried out. She reached for him, but he waved her off.

"I'm ok. It just hurts. Feels like I'm walking on shattered bones. I just need a minute." He saw by the look on her face that she didn't believe a damn word of it and he couldn't blame her. This shit was not right. He had been mostly fine yesterday, hadn't he? He couldn't even really remember. "Just... get ready to go. I need five minutes or so."

Charley nodded and went downstairs, not convinced, but not arguing either. She didn't want Amos to get angry again and she figured that he knew what he needed right now.

Amos took another hesitant step, trying to slowly put the pressure on his foot but an excruciating pain sounded like an alarm in his head. He looked down and saw that his big toenail had split right down the center. Dark blood oozed slowly from the wound. He hissed and took another step. Another toenail split. He whimpered. Breathed deeply. Amos clenched his jaw and made the painful steps to the bathroom, vowing to not let another noise escape him.

When he pulled off his shirt he saw the bruise, once an angry red was now turning black and the dark tendrils moved off of it like roots from a plant. The dark lines had moved up to his shoulder and down towards his hip. One large vein, an artery perhaps, on his leg was beginning to turn black as well. He stared at it for a moment and could swear it was spreading as he watched. Forcing himself to hurry he grabbed his toothbrush and began brushing his teeth. He hurried, not wanting to do more than to kill the coppery taste that was invading his mouth.