Tainted Lenses Part 1

Chapter 1 - Sparks

It was years ago when I first arrived. Madame Botot tells me stories of how I came, though she clearly doesn't remember much. Every time it's different, but every time I enter wide eyed and speechless for weeks. A silent resident of Minka's old hotel that had become a sanctuary from the outside world.

Every once in a while new people entered the Sanctuary, running away from what lay beyond the doorstep, telling tales of their time, various plights and misfortunes. Nearly dying of thirst most of the time, or wounded, they always arrived, and never left.

Our days here were routine for the most part. We all awoke in the morning and were served a pitiful breakfast. A feast, they supposed, when compared to the rest of the world's rations. After that, the more portable of our population would get to work on our various chores in a desperate attempt at keeping the Sanctuary semi-operational and at least a little clean. Of course that was difficult with the amount of dust that painted the walls of the house, entering through all the cracks and crevices of the building.

The building was a miserable wreck with 2 floors, seven bedrooms, a dining room, and a sort of front meeting area where people tended to sit and talk in the evenings, especially on those rare occasions when Minka would bring up something from the cellar down below, trying to bring back the old days of how her hotel used to be.

Walking in each room was a treacherous task and we always feared our foot breaking through the floorboards, avoiding every crack and crevice that ran along the wood.

And in this place, life went on and on, a boring shadow of the day before. Occasionally excitement would arise in the building as someone stumbled in starving, bleeding, thirsty and half dead, but the excitement always died down eventually

And that's when things got strange.

It all started with a story come to think of it.

It was an evening like any other, though a special one with everyone boisterous and loud, as Minka tried to quiet them down, always the one desperate to bring back control and order.

"Hush, you miserable lot of hyenas," She roared at the audience. "We have someone trying to speak!"

Rosalina gave her a nod of thanks as she glared at the crowd with her glowering, angry, and (as usual) slightly hung over eyes.

"I have a story for you all if you will listen. A new one, unlike any other story you have ever heard. A story of a disease, the very disease that brought many of us here. A story my mother once told me, though she could make it seem like you were living in the story, a magical, different world, for better or worse-"

"Get on with it," Weston yelled from the crowd, "We can't talk until you're done so make it quick!"

"Fine, fine. The story begins in an old western town, sort of like the one right near here. Now, apparently there was a disease that came through this place a while back that they said made people lose control of themselves. Go insane. Some of 'em just lost all the will to move and collapsed on the ground to die. Some of 'em tried to move but felt so much pain they screamed and eventually gave up. Many people died. You all know this however, you lived through it. You have seen what it does to the mind and body of those poor, innocent people.

Back then when I was in my young age living at the beginning of this disease there was a young man, a doctor by the name of Viktor Timberpine who was very well known for his skills at healing the sick. People came to him so that he would clear them of the disease, but, very like the rest of the world at this time, he was unable to. No one had a cure. And yet, somehow, everyone expected him to have some sort of miraculous cure and heal them. Every day he watched his patients die, and soon, he lost hope."