There was still the dizzy static of adrenaline simmering around in her, but once that died down so would everything else, and so Maddy went about her work quickly. Nausea had began to crawl up her stomach and into her throat and so she yanked open the medicinecabinet and knocked over babyrattle bottles of pills in her search for rubbing alcohol.
Feet were padding towards the hallway.
“Stay in the den, baby." Maddy cringed. She sounded like roadkill.
“Mom? Are you... I think, I think I heard...”
“’m just fine, sunshine.” She tried hard to perk up her voice while wringing the top off of the rubbing alcohol. It worked, some. “So stay in the den for right now, alright?”
There was a dense pause. Then the feet retreated. Maddy inhaled deeply from the bottle, letting the needly fumes poke holes all in and around the swelling of nausea. After a moment, the chair in the den creaked, and Maddy sighed in deep relief as SICK deflated into ill.
Now, then. Before adrenaline pulled the rug out from under her.
“You behave,” she growled acidly at the wall, tugging at the handles of the clawfoot tub. She had hardly any patience for the house on a good day, so it would do well to keep its head down at the moment. How Theresa seemed so easy with it Maddy could hardly wrap her mind around.
Oh, Theresa. Her baby girl. Not a mean bone in her body. What am I gonna do with you now, hm? What does all this mean for you?
Maddy shook the thought away, grim-faced. One thing at a time.
Once the gush was hot and going heavily enough, she began the painstaking process of inspecting damage. It was nothing less than grating. Each nerve seemed to have sprouted a hairtrigger of cruelty, and Maddy was relieved that there was no one present to witness her wincing and cringing at each tug of the ruined nightgown. After long moments of bitten-off hisses and growls that could be heard from just outside the door, Maddy was only Maddy, or at least as Maddy as she could seem at the time. The sight of such an unholy ulcer in the bathroom mirror had her feeling the need for more rubbing alcohol.
“Gracious.”
It was like she had been spat out by a finicky god. Pink chinks of bone were showing on her forehead, her cheek, her clavicles, her arms, her hip, her shins. Shiny syrupy venom had clotted into a leper’s second skin, and Maddy shook her head away from her reflection before she could see more.
“A manticore." She snorted though the working half of her nose. "Good grief.”
It could have been worse, she supposed. The thing could have started asking riddles.
She bent at the waist to tug open the cabinet beneath the sink, ignoring the screeching of her overworked back, only to find empty space.
“You!”
There was the rich, pungent sound of impact: anger and force and flesh on porcelain.
“This is not!" Bang. "The time!” Bang.
When Maddy tore open the cabinet again, its hinges whimpering, the bottles and boxes were back in their familiar lazy zig-zags. She grabbed the nearest one and let the door slam.
“Not an ounce of sense...” she muttered, twisting the cap off and away. The smell of soil and undergrowth and bitter ozone spilled into the room.
“Talk to someone about you later today. Useless thing.”
She tilted the bottle over the bath, and a powdery yellow garter snake slid out and plopped into the water. It threaded around sluggishly for a moment, as if forgetting what it had set out to accomplish, before going belly-up and dissolving.
Maddy made a face. She shuffled the bottle around, to find its label:
GOODALL’S 100% GENUINE RATTLESNAKE LINAMENT
Rheumatism - Blindness - Dismemberment - Arthritis - Possession - Acne - Various Ills
CURE-ALL - HEAL-ALL - GOODALL’S
“Cheap snake oil,” Maddy tutted. She shook her head, put the bottle aside, and minced into the bath.
It stung - not quite from the heat, though there was plenty to go around, but from the simple contact - and her throat rumbled in discomfort. She continued to slide into the bath, lips twitching when the skin of her back was snagged or dragged along, until finally she was swallowed up to her jaw in the strange water.
Maddy sighed. She could feel the oil beginning to work, thankfully, but noted for her next trip to the market that one gets what one pays for.
“Manticore,” she snorted. Then slipped completely underwater.
Theresa had likely bedded herself down, again, in one of the armchairs. She fell asleep easily. Not many of the schoolteachers seemed to appreciate such a talent, but Maddy was more than grateful.
She hooked a thumb into the fresh gash on her left shoulder, and pulled.
Had Maddy laid out the quilt before leaving? She thought she had. She struggled to remember, and cursed when she did. It could get drafty in the den.
The skin of her arm caught at the wrist, but an insistent tug brought it sloughing off into one solid piece. It sat for a moment before rapidly dissolving into nothing.
Surely Theresa knew where the quilt was, though. They had kept it in the same spot for years. At least, Maddy believed so. Maybe?
Her arm was still her arm, but now strange and pink, and too sensitive and too newborn for the heat of the water. Maddy hurried to peel off the rest.
Then again, Theresa may not have bedded down at all. She may have simply nodded off in the chair. And if she had done so while finishing off her mother’s chamomile, it was likely that Maddy would have a puddle of tea to sop up once she was out of the bath.
She scrubbed the back of a hand against her forehead, feeling a patch of too-new skin there, and angled her shin to make it more easily reached. Distantly the grandaddy clock bong bong bong bonged, and Maddy nearly laughed underwater.
That’ll be two messes, for me, ready to clean. And it’s not even today yet.
(AHAAAA. Snake oil! :D ‘Cause that, like, that was a treatment! That people used! And... and it...
It... yeah.)
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