The Masque of Flu A

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to start a story using the phrase, “the stranger appeared…”

Today’s tale comes to us from Val Muller, author of the kidlit mystery series Corgi Capers.

 

The Masque of Flu A

by Val Muller

 

The stranger appeared out of nowhere, but his entry was almost an answer to Melanie’s thoughts. Just a moment ago, she had been surveying the martial arts studio, marveling that none of the students or their families appeared ill.

Could it actually be that they would make it to Sophie’s February birthday party without any illness or snow? The coincidence of weather and health in the winter was like a lottery win, and it hadn’t happened for two years now. Third time’s a charm? Despite flu cases burning through the country?

At least that’s what Melanie had been thinking when the stranger walked in.

He was a man she had not seen before, and that was strange here at the studio. She knew all of the families who attended, at least by sight. This was an old man—and she used that term sparingly, even in her thoughts, ever since the day she realized she was now what her child-self would have considered old. But this man was old in the literary sense.

He was gaunt—yes, that’s the word she would use. He had a face stretched thin against his bone-lines. He looked like a character that would have stepped directly out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. And yet he wore the uniform of the studio, and his green stripe belt suggested he had been a student for several months now. A septuagenarian, she thought. There was no way he was in his sixties, even. He may have been eighty.

The shoes he wore were better suited for the summer, and for summers decades earlier. The ancient leather straps looked like they had slurped up the salty sludge from the snowy sidewalk. And in them, the man seemed to walk almost without moving his legs, as if he floated across the floor.

Melanie froze. Instinctively, her toddler abandoned his attempts to get out onto the dojo floor and instead clung to his mother’s knee.

“It’s okay,” Melanie told the child, though really she was telling herself. It would be okay. Class was almost over. They had only three days until the party. No one was sick. All would be well.

The man was now shoeless and had joined the already-in-session class. How that had happened in the few seconds Melanie looked down to address the toddler was anyone’s guess.

If this were a piece of literature, here would be the tone shift, Melanie thought. It started with the late arrival. Everybody knew the rules. No arriving late to the dojo. And yet he had, and none of the instructors said a word. The class simply absorbed him like the night absorbs fog.

Then, the clearing of a throat. A few of the students looked up at the old man, appearing almost as startled as Melanie felt. They were used to a few of the parents joining classes, but no one this age. Not at this studio. No one knew the man.

If this were a movie, the lights would have dimmed a little, maybe taken on a greenish tint. Accented by ominous music. Melanie knew at this point, it was inevitable.

The story played in her head as her toddler continued to cling. It was a story she studied in high school, one that had been passed around during the early days of COVID. It was Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” The story hadn’t stayed with her consciously, but apparently it was there, etched in her brain.

It was medieval times, wasn’t it? The time of the Black Death. Poe wrote a group of aristocrats who had locked themselves in a castle, thinking they would escape the plague in entertainment. There was a party, everyone wearing elaborate masks, and the castle was decorated so each room was a different color. It was a magical evening, Halloween-esque in its whimsy.

And at the end, of course, the colors turned red and black and deadly as everyone realized a single stranger had entered the party and, of course, carried the plague. If she remembered correctly, everyone ended up dead.

She watched the old man as he rotated to each station. First to the Wavemaster, then to the push-up station marked by spots on the floor. Then to the sparring ring, where he interacted with countless others. All the while, his coughing became more pronounced. Others stopped to look. Someone asked if he needed water.

“That cough sounds a lot like Flu A,” another mother whispered to Melanie. Both women instinctively scooched one inch further away form the old man.

How did Poe’s story end? Something about a clock at the end, she believed, striking the end of health and life. Maybe it chimed twelve, or perhaps thirteen.

The room had somehow silenced. Even the toddler was quiet. Then, on queue, someone’s phone sounded. Everyone looked up. 

“I forgot to turn off my alarm,” another parent said sheepishly. But Melanie knew. She looked at the mat, and the students stood, bewildered. The old man was gone. Vanished. Melanie looked for his shoes under the bench, but a sound overpowered her thoughts. It was the cough of a young child at the Wavemaster, echoed by the cough of her Sophie before traveling through all the room.

Three times was not a charm.  

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/