It was easy, living in a tiny town so out of the way, to feel like big happenings around the world could never touch her community. Daphne became increasingly obsessed with watching the spread of the disease, soon with a name of its own, PLZ4. Twitter users nicknamed it #PleaseDisease from the phonetic use of the acronym.

But no matter how much of the world seemed to be falling victim to it, Daphne couldn’t help but feel like their little coastal town was so far out of the way that it was immune, or at least out of the strike zone.

As it turned out, nobody was safe, even little Eastern Shore mining towns. One of the girls at the library later pointed out that a pair of obnoxious tourists had blown through on motorcycles the week before everyone started getting sick, starting a few bar fights at the local brewery. It was most likely them that brought it up, though it probably would have caught up with everyone sooner or later.

Daphne watched as everyone around her grew sick. The running joke that she had a steel immune system her whole life became an eerie reality when she didn’t have a single symptom. The human race was degrading, dying, being decimated by this thing, and all she could do was keep her loved ones comfortable.

Hospitals shut down completely as the staff fell ill despite their best efforts to keep themselves healthy. Soon, the live streams were no longer running any people, simply an emergency message for anyone watching to quarantine themselves. Daphne didn’t know what good it would do at that point. It wasn’t as if help was coming. What use was a quarantine if there was no end game?

She mopped the sweat from her mother’s brow. The evening was cool, the tide low, breeze caressing her like silk. But still her mother was clammy. One of the live streams she’d watched described the virus as an organ-boiler. It worked its way through the body and eventually liquefied everything inside. One part of Daphne wished that she hadn’t heard that—because all she could picture now was her mother’s innards melting into a hot mess. The images in her mind’s eye wouldn’t stop, and she had to actively focus to stop her stomach from turning over.

She studied the laugh lines decorating her mother’s temples. Had they always been so deep? When she saw her family every day, the aging was so gradual that she didn’t notice until she really thought about it or looked back at old pictures. She was sure the same could be said for them, looking at her, as an adult now. How weird it must be for them to look at her when they could remember her at four years old, or as a baby.

Willa moaned softly, stirring as her eyelashes fluttered open. They were blonde wisps, and it was strange to see them without her signature mascara. Daphne’s mother would never be caught dead in front of anyone without her mascara on. With a pang she realized that she would be. Caught dead without her mascara, that was. Willa was fading. Slower than most, but it was inevitable, nonetheless.

-intestines breaking down, melting into porous goo-

“Daphne,” Willa breathed.

Her daughter offered a reassuring smile. She took her mother’s hand, the skin scorching her palm from the fever.

“Hey, Mom,” she said, keeping her voice level. “I brought you some carnations.” She pointed to the shelf in the corner, where she’d set up a silver vase housing the last of the carnations from the shop. Of course, there hadn’t been a flower shipment for a while. Either the growers were sick or dead, the distributors were sick or dead, or the drivers were sick or dead.

Maybe all of the above.

“You look… you look good,” Willa said, swallowing so slowly that it looked painful.

-heart valves imploding, washing away in a river of blood-

“Yeah, I’m not sick, remember?” Daphne replied, dabbing with her wet cloth at the older woman’s flushed cheeks. Her normally high cheekbones looked razor-sharp now, given that her face was so gaunt. She hadn’t been able to eat in days, and barely took any water. With the way her eyes had seemed to sink into their sockets, she looked like a ghost already.

Willa cleared her throat, sounding like marbles on sandpaper. “I need to… I need to tell you something.”

“Mom, it’s okay. It’s getting pretty hard for you to talk these days.” Daphne wanted her mother to be comfortable, but a selfish part of her desperately wanted her to stay awake and talk. She didn’t think she’d have long, and she knew she’d regret how little time they had together before the end. But she also knew she’d regret not taking care of her in her final hours.

-brain swirling into a whirlpool of grey muck-

“Dale… he’s gone, isn’t he?” Willa rasped.

Her daughter nodded. “Yeah, dad passed two days ago.” She blinked, but there were no tears to try to force back. She’d done all of her screaming, weeping, and breaking shit. She’d raged and stomped and cried and put holes through the walls of her shop.

She was simultaneously glad and sad that her mother wasn’t conscious when he passed, nor seemed to remember he was gone much of the time. This was a rare lucid moment.

“He’s not your… not your father,” Willa pushed out the words.

Daphne blinked at her, icy tendrils creeping up her spine. Had she heard her correctly? “What?”

“In my…” her mother huffed, barely lifting her hand to motion across the room. “My dresser.” Her eyes fluttered closed, apparently exhausted from the effort, and Daphne swallowed hard, glancing back at the furniture in question.

It was a gaudy, ancient thing, with clawed feet and an ostentatious silver-framed mirror above it. Her dad—was he her dad?—called it Willa’s vanity. Which made a whole lot more sense than dresser, but Willa had always scoffed at the term, offended he thought she would be vain enough to own such a thing. But it was her prize, her pride and joy, and she never wanted anyone to touch it.

As a child, Daphne once played near it with a toy airplane, and Willa had nearly taken her head off when the little plane almost bonked into the pristine finish on the vanity. She hadn’t been allowed in their bedroom for weeks.

Needless to say, Daphne was a little nervous to touch her mother’s dresser.

But how could she not investigate something so outrageous as the claim that her father was not her father? She set down her mother’s clammy limp hand—veins boiling like lava, melting through bone like butter—and took a deep breath before approaching the shiny piece of furniture.

She looked at the top of it, for a time. There were normal little knick-knacks on top, a ceramic doll with a long rubbed-off face sitting next to a small wooden jewelry box. A brushed gold ash tray that her mom had probably ordered off of some antiques website, even though she didn’t smoke.

She swallowed before reaching out to finger the handle on the top drawer, the ivory and gold cool to the touch. She wrapped her hand around it, a thrill going through her like she had a hand in the cookie jar, and pulled.

Inside was a smattering of fabrics, what looked like scarves and thankfully not negligee, as many top dresser drawers were used for. Daphne had a pretty open-minded relationship with her parents, but she wasn’t really interested in digging around in her mother’s panties.

She pushed aside the scarves and her brow furrowed at the sight of a little pink ribbon sticking up from the back corner of the drawer. She pulled on it, revealing a false bottom. She swallowed hard and pulled out the fabric, piling silk and satin and chiffon atop the vanity proper, so she could inspect what was beneath.

She pulled up on the false bottom, the honey-coloured wood scraping against the sides as she wriggled it out. Her heart punched her ribcage as she stared down at a pristine cream envelope sitting there. It looked like any other envelope, crisp and rectangular.

Scrawled across it, in black ink and her mother’s familiar handwriting, was a name.

Daphne.