Nella

Written By: Allison Hummel

“Shut the curtains, Nella, it hurts.” Camille shifted on the sofa and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. Her hand trembled slightly, resting against her sternum. 

“You know, I always knew I’d catch something from him, but I didn’t think it would be this.” 

She’d been talking like this all day, but Nella had quickly realized that Camille was not really looking for a dialogue, so she pulled the curtains closed and walked silently toward the sofa, bending to clear an empty cup from the coffee table. 

“Leave it!” Camille snapped. Nella drew her arm back with a snap and clasped her hands together. Inwardly, she cringed. It was hard to navigate her dynamic with this Camille–so different from the affectionate aunt that she had known before this sickness. 

In the four days since she had arrived at Camille’s apartment to care for her, Nella had been allowed to do very little. She seemed to serve chiefly as a presence, a silent audience. It hardly seemed necessary. She suspected that Camille had been talking in much the same way before her arrival. Talking to nobody. 

Camille never ate, rarely drank, and did not sleep. And worst of all, she was molding–her whole right foot was discolored, the flesh around her ankle velvety and green, like the skin of a decaying orange. It even left a mint-colored powder on Camille’s fingers when she itched it, which she had been trying not to do. The last time she had, she’d created a hole through which a nub of bone shone now, like an emerging tooth.

Nella lowered herself onto a chair beside the sofa, conflicted. It felt wrong that someone should be rotting and scratching, and doing it all in silence.

 “Would you like me to read to you?” 

“No, my love, thank you. I can’t take the noise.” 

Nella nodded, tucking away her disappointment. She loved to hear herself read. But maybe later. 

Nella would be nineteen in two weeks and, according to her mother, was already headed for the day-old bin. It was true that she was physically forgettable, and nobody seemed to find her charming. She failed to register to men as anything worth having. In light of this, Camille’s illness was one of the best things that had happened to her, and she hoped that her aunt would not die but maintain some sort of lifelong convalescence. It didn’t seem likely. 

Nella watched her aunt claw her neck. Dark, tarry lines appeared beneath her fingers.

 “It’s terribly hot,” Camille said. 

Nella frowned. It was not hot. 

“Thomas despises the heat,” Camille continued. “I’m the one who likes it. I’m the one who really likes all the things he’s gotten to do. He does all those things, and doesn’t like them. I like them, and I never got to go anywhere. And never will.” 

Nella sighed in consolation. “It’s terribly unfair. But when you’re better, I think you should just blow past the whole family. Do what you want.” 

“When I’m better,” Camille turned her head and fixed her eyes on Nella’s. “I’m not going to get better. Your mother should have told you.” She rolled her eyes. “But I’m not surprised she didn’t.” 

Obviously you won’t really get better, Nella thought, you only have half an ankle. 

“And he wasn’t even faithful,” Camille said flatly. “I wish there was another word for it, one that didn’t make me sound like such a martyr, but I can’t think of one right now. He wasn’t faithful.” She shook her head. “Ridiculous.”

It did seem ridiculous to Nella that Thomas could have been diverted by any woman other than Camille, who was perfect, even as she decayed. Beautiful, with shiny gold hair cut in a meticulous line and dark, dramatic eyes. Camille had dazzled Nella as a child. And she had been fun, too. She let Nella and her sister try on all her hats. The green velvet cloche, the boater with a wide ribbon. They had stood in a line and admired themselves in the mirror, two small girls warmed by the light of Camille’s crystalline beauty. 

“Not faithful and not bright. He only even found the thing because those students he hired sniffed it out.” 

Again with the amulet. Camille spoke of it often in her ramblings. She had described it as a small, lumpy fertility bead in the shape of a kilted woman. Nella was too scared to ask to see it. 

Camille’s eyes tracked the room, its shelves of books and objects. Masks made of desiccated husks, little jars with shiny traces of opalescence. She sighed. 

“At least he’s gone. With his insipid little face.” 

Nella cringed and said nothing.

Camille’s lung-rattle began and she rasped a cough. The tarry, black substance tracked down a nostril toward her upper lip, and she wiped at it instinctively. 

“It’s a disgusting state of affairs,” she said, smearing her hands against a napkin. Her head drooped against the sofa. “But really, no one should be surprised. You go rooting around in things that aren’t your business and you get bitten. That’s what I told him the day he came home. Too sick to even walk upstairs. His bones were poking out, and his hair was falling out, and I was glad. But I guess I felt sorry for him, too, because I kissed him goodnight. A real kiss.” Camille looked at Nella and nodded. “A real kiss.”  

Nella nodded companionably. Camille’s eyes lost focus again and soon she was snoring. It was an innocent, optimistic sound that filled Nella with tenderness. She considered creeping to the kitchen for something to eat, but slipped into a shifting, shallow sleep. 

…

Nella woke suddenly, one leg kicking in a hypnagogic jerk. She did not know how much time had gone by, and Camille was lying flat on her stomach, rambling in a breathless voice. 

“Thomas told me to look through his bag and find that stupid amulet. I brought it to him and he said, ‘This is what it was all for. Can’t you see why?’ And I could, of course. I knew more than he did about it. He tried to get out of bed then, but he was too weak and just fell back down.”

Camille turned her face to the side. Her eyes were half closed, beginning to stick together with tarry secretions. She rubbed at them and continued.

“...And then he said, ‘You have to get me Margaret.’ And I was so mad. And the gunk started just pouring from him and I knew it was the end. He said, ‘Margaret knew it would be there.’ So I took it from him and I said ‘For Margaret.’ And I put it in my mouth, and I swallowed it. And I think that’s why I’m dying so much faster. It took him two weeks.”

Nella’s mind whirred. Her eyes scanned Camille’s body. Her neck scratches were festering into puffy welts and leaking freely. The toes on her right foot were curled inward now, black and wet. A new plane of soft, green fuzz stretched all the way up to her thigh. 

‘I’m sorry, Nella,’ Camille groaned. ‘It’s revolting, I know. You should go out, go have some time for yourself.” 

“I want to be here for you,” Nella said.

But Camille’s eyes were fixed at nothing and she didn’t reply, just shook her head. 

While Camille slept, Nella cleared the coffee table of the empty cup and washed it in the kitchen sink. She set the kettle on the stove and chafed her cold hands, thinking of Camille and Thomas. Her mind turned to Margaret. Was she dead already? Had she touched the amulet, and did that matter? 

When Nella walked back into the sitting room, Camille’s arm was hanging off the sofa, brushing the carpet. The velvety dust had caught a lift in the air and was swirling slightly. 

“Camille?” Nella laid her hand on her aunt’s arm. She did not wake up. 

Nella sat in her chair and watched Camille. It became clear that she was dead. The black substances still oozed, and the mold still crept slowly along her white-pink flesh, but something more fundamental had disappeared. 

In time, Nella straightened her back and breathed out. She covered Camille with an old duvet, the small body obscured by mountains of down. More dignified, Nella thought. 

She needed to tell her mother and set the proper steps in motion. She walked to the entryway and fished keys from a bowl by the door. 

As Nella reached for the lock, her eyes rested on her hands. Wet, black sap crept out from beneath her cuticles, and she rubbed one finger with another. Sticky. The door gave a click as it opened, and sunlight bathed her face. 

Allison Hummel is based in Los Angeles, where she writes for work and fun. Her fiction and poetry have recently appeared in Up The Staircase Quarterly, Bloodletter Magazine and Annulet Poetics Journal.