Her cough was rather insignificant, but crimson staining the white cloth she held to her colorless lips spoke volumes of the unseen. She cringed at the sight of it, but wadded up the napkin and continued walking into the foggy winter night, her fingers wrapping around the collar of her wool jacket, pulling it in as close as possible to gleam some semblance of warmth to her shivering petite frame. Cholera had swept the nation, its icy cold reprieve not a respecter of person nor wealth, age nor status. She shook her head and reached quickly into her pocket as the small cough echoed around her, the taste of metal stinging her tongue.

She contracted the disease a few weeks earlier when her older brother, Jamison took her with him on a mission of sorts. He was a man of the cloth, as was her father and as such, their family often times were to be found with the poor, the hungry, the least and the sick. They’d taken vaccines put out by the Roman Catholic Church, but hers had obviously been less than effective. Her family knew not of her condition and she did her best to hide it from them, staying away until late in the evening and rising early in the morning.

Her situation was quite without resolution and yet she couldn’t help but carry on each day as if nothing were wrong. There was very little time left now that she was coughing the color of death with every other painful breath, but she had a few things left to do. She shivered again as the bellman held the door for her, the quaint bed and breakfast one that her father used to bring them too when she was a little girl, the courtyard filled with small birds each morning that they’d all take turns terrorizing. A smile touched her lips, yet didn’t reach her sea-green gaze.

“Evening, Miss.” The bellman moved to open the door further, a smile on his portly face, the warmth of the inn rushing out to greet her.

She smiled back and licked at her lip, worried of the evidence that would have her turned away for good from anyone trying to remain present in the folds of humanity. She shouldn’t have been there anyways. This disease was one that traveled via the molecules of air that slipped from her lips and into someone else’s waiting unawareness. She turned her face from him and tucked it further into the protection of her coat, her shivers giving him a sense that she was just chilled to the bone. Elle walked to the small room, last door on the left at the end of the hall and slipped her small silver key from her pocket, opening the door and locking it behind herself.

She shrugged off her coat, her long chestnut locks swinging around her as she moved, dancing as if trying to gain her attention. She brushed her cold, bony fingers through the silky locks and pulled them from her face, stopping to stare into the mirror, a frown touching her once beautiful face. She’d yet to reach twenty and looked forty because of the disease eating her very essence deep in the pit of her chest. Her once rosy cheeks were sunken in, dark circles raced around her eyes, dimming the dulled picture of a life once lived. She licked her lips again and reached for the cloth, bending over a little as the next cough racked her small frame, a whimper rushing from her bloody mouth. Her white satin gown hung around her shoulders and concaved in places it shouldn’t, on parts of her that used to be full and curvaceous, but that time had passed.

“No,” she whispered, knowing that she needed to leave them letters, to tell them how much she loved them and what they meant to her. She needed to leave him a letter telling him the truth that he deserved to know, the answers he’d always waited patiently for. She wiped her mouth and steeled her resolved. She would not slip into death’s strong embrace until she’d finished accomplishing all that was left to accomplish.

She opened a large window near the kitchen table letting the coolness of night flood the room, her eyes moving across the shadows and wishing for only a moment that she were one of them. If she could be anyone but herself… Something moved in the distance, but she brushed it off, turned and walked to her small desk. Tonight would be the last night of her existence and she didn’t want to leave without a word uttered endlessly in the human experience – goodbye.