Flash fiction - Polka Dot Legs

This is one of my earliest short pieces, very loosely inspired by a disease I had when I was young. Dengue. There won't be many similarities between the symptoms/treatments in that wiki article and what I very briefly describe here. I let my fantasies get the better of me. 

The mosquito I describe is based on the Aedes aegypti. I can't find a picture of more than one, but I remember them making pretty polka dot spider webs.

A handful of billion years after the universe began, a bloody plague harrowed a sunny island floating in the Atlantic. Though the little island’s inhabitants feared it was the end of times, the plague was more of a sneeze in the grand scheme of things. Only one hundred and nine people died. It didn’t even affect the entire island; just a slice of the northern half, and only because the climate there was perfect for the tiny Ilydes mosquito.

Only a little girl with wavy brown hair and long legs grasped how little the fever mattered. Her family called her Iadis, mostly when they were trying to find out where she was, though they generally preferred her far away. While Iadis’ neighbors despaired over funeral plans, she prayed for the summer to end so she could go back to walking barefoot without burning the soles of her feet. The ground got too hot in the summer during early afternoons.

It was the sun’s fault that Iadis found a Ilydes nest, though it was certainly Iadis’ fault that she got sick. Her aunt Ida, a harried, stout woman who didn’t have time for orphans in the first place, had warned Iadis to run away from mosquitoes and to wear the bug repellent that the city people had brought to their village.

But Iadis hated to be sticky, so she refused to wear the bug repellent and wandered all over the farm in sleeveless shirts and a short skirt. While burrowing into shade to protect her bare soles, she found the Ilydes nest.

Ilydes mosquitoes liked it moist and hot, so they clustered at the trunks of large trees after rainy days to drink from the soaked bark. They were flimsy, like all mosquitoes, but their legs were long and decorated with black and white polka dots. While feeding, they stood close together and made the prettiest, spiderweb-like sheet.

Iadis hated spiders. There was a pregnant one living in a corner of the tiny room she shared with her younger brother. Every night Iadis stared at the fat, white egg under its belly, terrified that it would eat her, but envying its gorgeous, shiny web. The spider knew better than to pick a fight with a human, of course, but it did envy Iadis’ long hair. Rather, it envied the individual strands because they looked tougher than any spider web she would ever produce.

Harmless, pregnant spiders tortured Iadis every evening, but pretty mosquitoes carrying a fatal disease didn’t faze her. She reached out for the web, thinking that it would look so nice blanketing her forearm. One, or perhaps several of the mosquitoes bit her. 

Though she’d been the one to disturb them, Iadis wiped them off her skin, killing several in the process. She glared at the polka-dot web, considered destroying it in a fit of spite, but settled for going on her way with an indignant huff.

Iadis went about her habits, skipping the day away and chasing cats, without a care in the world. One of her cousins was vomiting blood in the clinic a few miles south of the family farm, but he always pulled Iadis’ hair and tried to steal her food. She wasn’t worried about him.

(He only pulled Iadis’ hair because she kept laughing when another cousin of theirs called him Clucker-Chicken just because he was too afraid to go to the latrine alone at night, but Iadis would never grasp why that would bother him. As for the food, there just wasn’t enough of it sometimes, and Iadis wasn’t the type to curb her appetite.)

Iadis wasn’t bothered until the next night, when she didn’t manage to finish her dinner. She gave most of it to her little brother, who she liked best in their family because he was hers. Iadan had many cousins, aunts, uncles, and four different grandparents, but he only had one sister just like Iadis only had one brother.

Unlike Iadis, Iadan didn’t think that was so special, but he did like being the only one Iadis shared food with. She was the best tree climber of them all, and could get the juiciest fruit in the tallest trees.

The second morning after Iadis disturbed the Ylides nest, she couldn't get out of bed. Her world was spinning to the right while her head spun to the left. Iadan was cuddled on her back, as was his habit, and every time he shifted on their shared bed, Iadis wanted to barf. She would have pushed him away, but just the thought of moving made her want to cry.

Iadan was used to his sister’s finicky moods, so he got out bed without bothering her and joined their cousins games. Only when the sun was in the middle of the sky, the time Iadis liked to go fruit hunting, did he remember to go check on her. 

He found her on the edge of their lumpy bed, her head hanging a bit off and a pool of coagulating blood on the floor. Iadan almost screamed, then ran for one of their aunts.

Iadis’ aunt did her best to clean her up, then sent one of the older kids to the one house on the village with a phone to call her husband at his factory job. Without a message, he might not know to drive straight home after work to take Iadis to the clinic.

Though Iadis was far from the nicest kid at the clinic, she was the prettiest, and all the bleeding left her too weak to be nasty. The nurses doted on her, kept her thick hair clean of blood, and always knew when she stopped breathing. They never left her without fluids and when it looked like she’d thrown up too much blood, they convinced the doctor to test her cute little brother’s blood type. 

Iadis and Iadan were a perfect match.

Iadan didn’t care about needles, but unlike his sister, he’d been paying attention to all the people dying in the village. They all died because the mosquitoes sucked their blood, and suddenly a bunch of adults he’d never seen wanted to take his and give it to Iadis. 

Luckily for Iadis, her little brother was afraid to say no to adults, so he stuck out his arms and cried into their aunt’s skirt even though he only felt a little pinch when they stuck the needle in.

With Iadan’s blood, Iadis recovered in a matter of days. The nurses enjoyed a morale boost when they found Iadis cuddled with Iadan the night before they were both sent home.

A week after coming home, Iadis ran into another Ylides nest on the same tree bark. The polka dot web attracted her attention once more, and she crouched to take a closer look. At least, she knew better than to physically reach out for it.