I Feel Like A Monster

Chapter 17

-Two Years Ago; Woodlands Apartment 204 (Evening)-

    Only two weeks had gone by since Shadow had just straight up murdered the three mundy teens. During that time Crane had started to become suspicious about mostly on what caused their deaths. He was asking many odd questions to him. About how the three died exactly and what killed them and such, but Bigby would always give him the same answer, they were attacked by a dog.

    Of course, Crane wasn't having it; he would always say it was hard to believe. Bigby couldn't exactly blame him. He even found his own story hard to believe as well.

    Shadow wasn't doing too well himself. Not remembering anything while he was in wolf form wasn't the only side effect and Bigby found out the hard way. When he had gotten back to the apartment just two days after the Mundy teens were murdered, he first heard the sounds of a horrific cough, coming from none other than Shadow himself. He found him in his room and when he entered he saw a small puddle of blood on the floor and Shadow on his knees just over it.

    His hand was over his mouth and he was clenching his stomach; the very first he noticed was that his hand was stained with his own blood. The blood was practically spraying out like a waterfall.

    Bigby's first instinct was to immediately call Doctor Swineheart to which he did, and after he told Swineheart about it, he had practically dropped everything he was working on and rushed over to Woodlands; By the time he arrived, Shadow had already passed out leaving Swineheart free to look at the problem as he rested.

    He was able to conclude that it was a disease of some kind, but just didn't know what the type of disease it was. Swineheart had told Bigby to keep an eye on him and to call in case this kind of thing had happened again. He had given pills to help him with the pain. For now he had to stay in bed until he recovered.

    And now here he was still sick with this strange, unknown disease he had. Bigby entered the Shadow's room when heard the sound of him coughing with a cup of water in his hand. "Here." He said handing him a glass of water.

    Shadow sat up and took the water from him and he took a sip, "Thanks."

    "How are you feeling?" He asked him sitting on a nearby chair that was in the room.

    "A little better than before." He replied starting to gulp down the glass of water, "Thanks for asking."

He let out a couple coughs not as horrific as before and Bigby patted his back. 

Shadow laid back in the pillows, "I can't believe I have to stay here in bed, just because I'm sick."

"It's for your own good and you know it." Bigby told him, "Just be glad it's not permanent."

"It's still just as bad." He told him, "I can't really do much here other than read, the same books I have. And I don't exactly have TV in here; I mean the only one we have is out there in the Living Room."

"It won't be for long, before you know it you'll be all better like it wasn't even there."

"Yeah... Right..."

The two didn't say anything to each other for awhile; there was just this silence between them.  Shadow eventually broke it when he asked, "Dad... What kind of disease do you think this is? I mean if Doctor Swineheart can't figure out what this is, than...?"

"I'll be honest." Bigby said to him, "I don't know what it could be."

Shadow let out a sigh and said, "I'd figure you'd say something like that. You always do when things like this happen."