Word count: 781
It is not known when, how or where the Golden Fever began. But it consumed everything quickly and overwhelmingly.
I remember the first time I heard about it. I was sitting on the couch, sharing a piece of bread with my younger sister. She must have been seven at the time, so I was thirteen. The fan was on, making its characteristic ambient sound, blowing that humid, stuffy air into our sweaty faces.
Not even ponytails improved the heat. Our skin glistened with constant sweat, strands of hair stuck to our foreheads and necks, soaked. Mom was in the kitchen washing the dishes, and it was spring.
On the big tube television we had, a reporter crammed into her navy blue suit with a pizza under her arm reported to the camera with her eyes narrowed, avoiding the scorching sun. There was a new local epidemic.
Scientists didn't understand why it was happening, but pollen had started to accumulate. Tiny grains of pollen were everywhere, and as soon as they touched any surface, they clumped together and stuck together like glue. When it did that, the yellow pollen gave the impression of being a long thin sheet of gold, hence the name Golden Fever, or Pollen Fever.
Mom turned off the tap to hear better. If we saw a small cluster of this pollen on walls or any surface, we shouldn't touch it. If we touched it, it would transfer to our skin quickly. It would close the pores, cause a very high fever and then death.
There was no vaccine or medicine, not even an explanation. Mom didn't react, so my little sister and I didn't panic either. But at night, unable to sleep, I heard her crying in despair in her room. I lay down next to her on the sweat-soaked bed and asked her if we were going to die.
"Don't be silly," she replied, but I knew she was lying.
The first to die were the children. They liked shiny, golden things. My little sister would have been fine if Mom had reacted when we first saw the news. She didn't take it seriously when she saw the pollen on the wall of our house. Her arm got infected quickly, and then her cheek.
Mom took her to the bath and tried to scrub the gold from her fragile little body for over forty minutes. My sister cried, screamed in pain, begged for help, prayed and asked me to make Mom stop. From so much rubbing, her skin was raw. And golden.
"Am I going to die?" she asked our mother.
Mom didn't respond this time.
In two days, we buried my little sister.
After that, I don't remember anything anymore. I know that mom spent twenty-four hours crying and sneezing because she was allergic to pollen. Her lungs hurt so much that she could barely breathe. I took care of her. I brought water, medicine, I lay down next to her without saying anything. I didn't feel like talking. She didn't eat and didn't leave the house.
It was almost the end of spring and there was still no cure. Our house, like many others', was being taken over by the cursed pollen. On the ceiling, on the walls, crawling across the floor.
I dodged and maneuvered and calculated my every move. I was afraid every day. I didn't sleep for fear of waking up in the middle of the night with pollen running through the blankets. I didn't sit down for fear of not seeing it coming. I didn't lean against the walls. I was there, standing in the middle of the living room, listening to my mother crying and sneezing incessantly.
I don't know how much time had passed when a bunch of men in firefighter uniforms entered the house and took Mom away. I think I must have been standing there for weeks. Maybe months. Mom's body wasn't golden, it was gray and dried out like a raisin. Mom had died of sadness, and hunger, and thirst, and allergies, because I was standing in the middle of the living room without taking her water or her medicine.
Sometimes I think I remember her voice calling me from the next room, asking if I was still there, but I couldn't answer. I was afraid of breathing in too much pollen. I was afraid of dying and I was afraid of pollen.
They had discovered a cure and it was spring again the following year. But I didn't have a sister and I didn't have a mother, so I didn't want a cure, either. But there was no more pollen because of the cure.
So, in an escape from the Home for Orphaned Children, I went to the city train tracks and waited for the train full of coal cars to pass by, and blow my head off with its wheels.
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