Case File: Umbilicus

Part of me was grateful my brother remained sedated — I was certain the pain would be unbearable if he were conscious. But another part of me wished he were lucid enough to speak, so I could have one last conversation with him before he was silenced forever. I needed to know what had happened on that mountain. I stood over my brother, studying him. The deformity in his skull was obvious, but it was the insidious changes, that unsettled me the most. His fingers had curled inward, stiff and unnatural, as though seized mid-spasm. The nails had thickened and darkened, almost claw-like. I gently peeled back the blanket. His posture was grotesque — limbs askew, the rib cage had widened, flared unnaturally, and his belly had swollen into something rigid and domed. Something inside me recoiled. Not from the grotesquery — I’d seen worse in the war — but from the not-knowing. My brother wasn’t wounded. He wasn’t dying of any known disease. There was no diagnosis, no scientific reasoning, no name for what was happening to him. Just the hideous transformation, obscene and silent.

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