16 Feb Your Fever is My Fire

Act 1: The Fever Begins

The fever had been hammering me for three days straight. I was too weak to get out of bed, too sore to sleep, and too congested to breathe properly. Every muscle in my body ached, the inside of my throat felt like sandpaper, and my skin burned under a layer of cold sweat. My thermometer blinked back at me: 103.9°F.

I should’ve gone to urgent care. Should’ve at least tried to force something down my throat besides sips of lukewarm tap water. But my body felt like a lead weight, and even if I’d had the strength to move, my head swam so badly I doubted I’d make it to the bathroom, let alone the front door.

So I just laid there, staring up at my popcorn ceiling while my sheets clung to me like a wet second skin.

Then I heard the voice.

“Pathetic,” it rasped from somewhere in my room.

I blinked slowly, head lolling toward the doorway. My bedroom was dark, the edges of my vision flickering with a fever-dream haze, but I could still make out shapes—the doorframe, my dresser, the lamp I hadn’t bothered turning on.

And him.

He was a shape at first, just a crooked silhouette in the corner near my closet, like someone had draped an old coat over a chair. But as my burning eyes adjusted, I saw the shape shift, straighten. Saw the way it breathed.

An old man stood there, hunched but solid, with papery skin and deep-set eyes that glowed with something off. His head was bald save for a few wisps of brittle gray hair, and he smelled like something medicinal, something stale—like old camphor rub left out too long in the sun.

I tried to lift my head, but it was too heavy. “Who…?”

“Pfft. Weak,” he muttered, shuffling toward the foot of my bed. His voice was low, but each word was sharp, cracking like burnt wood. “People used to fight through sickness. Push through it. But you—you just lay there, letting it waste you away.”

I swallowed, or at least tried to. My throat was so dry it felt like I was choking. My whole body pulsed with heat, waves of fever rolling through me, making the air swim.

A fever dream. It had to be a fever dream.

But when I blinked, he was closer.

He leaned against the bedpost now, bony fingers curled over the frame. His nails were yellow, cracked like old parchment. “This is a good one, you know,” he rasped. “A good fever. I’ve waited a long time for one like this.”

My skin prickled, but it wasn’t just from the fever. There was something wrong with the way he stood there, too real for a hallucination, too sharp against the blur of my vision.

I forced my lips to move, barely managing to croak, “What… are you…?”

The old man’s mouth curled into something like a grin.

“Someone who knows how to use the fire,” he said. “And you—you’re wasting it.”

I tried to move, to push myself up, but my body refused to obey.

“Don’t bother,” he said, waving a hand. “You’re too weak to fight it. Not yet, anyway.” He took another step forward, the air shimmering slightly around him, like heat rising off asphalt. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“But you could be so much stronger… if you let the fire burn hotter.”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But my head lolled to the side, my vision dimming. The last thing I saw before everything went black was the old man, watching me—his body standing straighter, his skin looking a little less wrinkled.

And the faintest, faintest scent of burning wood in the air.

Act 2: Fever Dreams and Firelight

Darkness swallowed me whole.

I wasn’t sure how long I drifted in it—minutes, hours, days. Time felt thin, stretched out like melted wax. My body floated somewhere beneath me, but I couldn’t reach it. I was nothing but heat and exhaustion, drifting through the fever’s grip.

Then the dreams started.

I stood in the middle of a vast, endless landscape. The ground beneath my feet was scorched black, cracked like an old riverbed long since dried up. Everything around me shimmered with waves of heat, twisting the air into a rippling mirage. There was no sky, just an angry red glow pressing down from above, like the inside of a furnace.

I turned in slow, sluggish motions, my limbs weighed down by exhaustion. In the distance, something flickered—light? Fire?

And then I heard him.

“You feel that?” The old man’s voice drifted from somewhere close. “That burn in your chest? That heat in your skull?”

I turned to find him standing just a few feet away, his posture different now. No longer hunched and brittle, but taller, stronger. His skin, which had been thin and papery before, looked fuller, his eyes sharper. He was still old, but less old—his frame straighter, his hands steadier.

“You’re burning well now,” he said, stepping closer. “Not wasting it like before.”

I took a step back, but my feet barely moved, sinking slightly into the scorched earth. “Where am I?” My voice sounded weak, brittle.

“Somewhere between here and there.” The old man gestured vaguely to the horizon, where streaks of molten orange pulsed like veins in the cracked ground. “This is what the fever sees.”

I shook my head, or at least I thought I did. My thoughts were thick, sluggish. “This is just a dream,” I whispered. “A fever dream.”

The old man’s smile stretched wide, revealing teeth too white, too straight.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

The ground beneath my feet shifted. The heat intensified. The air shimmered, bending as flames curled up from the cracks, licking hungrily at my legs.

I staggered back. “Stop!”

The flames didn’t touch me, but they surrounded me, slithering toward me like eager hands. Sweat poured down my face, dripping into my eyes, but I couldn’t blink it away.

The old man stepped closer, completely unfazed by the fire. “You need to stop fighting it,” he said, voice smooth, cajoling. “You’re wasting your fever. You don’t know what it could show you.”

My breath shuddered. “Show me what?”

His grin widened. “Everything.”

The flames surged, rising higher.

I clenched my fists, trying to focus, trying to wake up, but the old man shook his head, tsking like a disappointed teacher.

“You think cold medicine is gonna save you?” he sneered. “Some stupid pills? You think breaking the fever means you get better?”

He leaned in, close enough that I could smell his breath—hot and dry, like something burning from the inside out.

“You don’t get better,” he whispered. “You get through.”

I wanted to scream, to claw my way back to reality, but my body refused to listen. The fire roared around me, and the old man’s form shifted again—his skin tightening, his back straightening, his voice growing stronger.

And just before the flames swallowed me whole, I saw his eyes—not old and rheumy anymore, but bright, sharp, and hungry.

Act 3: Burn Brighter, Burn Hotter

I woke with a start, sucking in a breath so sharp it stabbed my throat. My body ached, my skin hot enough to feel like it was splitting apart. The fever was worse—so much worse.

The room swam around me, light warping at the edges, but I forced myself to move. My sheets were soaked, sticking to my skin like a second layer. My entire bed felt like it had been left out in the sun too long.

I turned my head—and froze.

The old man was sitting in the chair by my bed.

Not slumped. Not frail.

Stronger. Straighter. Healthier.

He was different now—no longer some brittle husk of a man but something… fuller. His cheeks weren’t hollow anymore. His skin had lost that sickly, waxy sheen. He looked almost refreshed, like a man who’d had a long night’s sleep and woke up rejuvenated.

Meanwhile, I was falling apart.

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “You’re finally catching on.”

My throat worked, but no words came. My body was burning alive, but I couldn’t stop staring at him—at the way his fingers curled so confidently against the armrests, at the gleam in his sharper, younger eyes.

“You’re… taking it,” I croaked.

His smile widened. “I don’t take anything. You’re giving it away.”

I shuddered, trying to sit up, but my arms trembled under my weight. The fever was eating me alive.

I had to get help.

Had to do something.

I lurched toward my nightstand, fumbling for my phone, but my fingers barely worked, clumsy and weak. The screen blurred in my vision. I squinted at the time.

3:12 AM.

Hadn’t I checked it earlier? Or was it the night before? How long had I been out?

A chuckle from the chair. “You can’t run from this, kid.”

I turned back, my breath hitching.

He was standing now, looming at the foot of my bed. His posture was completely different—no more hunch, no more frail wobbling. His arms were lean, his voice firm, his whole body radiating strength.

And me?

I felt like I was withering.

“I don’t—” My words caught in my dry throat. “I don’t want this.”

He scoffed. “You think breaking the fever means you win? No, no.” He stepped closer, shaking his head. “You haven’t earned it yet.”

The air around me wavered, heat curling in the corners of my vision. My whole body clenched, muscles locking up in waves of agony.

“Let it burn,” he said.

“No,” I gasped. “I—”

He crouched beside the bed, close enough that I could see new color in his cheeks, new strength in his fingers as they curled against the sheets.

“If you stop now,” he murmured, voice almost gentle, “all of this suffering will be for nothing.”

The words twisted inside my fevered brain. I felt them crawl through me, pushing into my ribs, my spine, my skull.

Nothing.

I was nothing.

I had wasted everything.

I could barely think, barely breathe, barely—

No.

I clenched my hands into weak fists, forcing my sluggish mind to push back.

He smiled at me like a disappointed father watching a child refuse to swim. “You don’t get it,” he said. “You were supposed to go further. You were supposed to burn hotter.”

His eyes glowed—actually glowed, flickering like embers.

“Guess I’ll just have to help you.”

And then the room caught fire.

Act 4: Breaking the Cycle

The fire roared to life around me.

Not normal fire—this wasn’t something I could put out with a blanket or a glass of water. The walls shimmered, warped, their edges curling inward like paper held too close to a match. The air thickened with heat, pressing down on me, smothering me.

But nothing burned.

Not my bed. Not the chair. Not the old man.

Just me.

The fever surged, burning brighter, hotter, devouring me from the inside out. I could feel it licking up my veins, boiling the blood behind my eyes. My skin crawled, like something underneath was cracking open.

“Stop,” I rasped, voice barely there.

The old man shook his head, smiling. He wasn’t old anymore. His skin was smooth, his back straight, his body thrumming with the energy he had siphoned from me. The brittle husk I’d first seen was gone, and in his place stood something renewed, something alive—something that shouldn’t be.

“You’re almost there,” he said. “Just a little longer.”

No.

I had to stop this. I had to break this.

My sluggish mind grasped for anything, some way out. Cold. That’s what they always said, right? Break a fever with cold. Drown it. Snuff it out.

I forced my body to move.

It felt like peeling myself from tar, but I rolled out of bed, hitting the floor in a tangle of burning limbs. My head spun. My vision blackened at the edges, but I crawled, using what little strength I had left to drag myself toward the bathroom.

The old man sighed behind me. “Fighting it won’t help.”

I ignored him, gripping the doorframe and hauling myself up. My legs screamed in protest, but I stumbled forward, arms flailing for balance. The tub. I needed the tub.

My hands fumbled with the faucet. The old pipes groaned, and for a second, I thought nothing would happen. But then—a rush of icy water blasted from the spout, filling the basin.

A sharp chill snapped through my fever-ridden body, like a distant memory of something real, something before all this madness.

The old man’s reflection rippled in the mirror behind me, his expression twisting.

“Don’t do that.” His voice wasn’t mocking anymore.

I didn’t hesitate.

I threw myself into the freezing water.

A shock of cold punched through me, the fever screeching as it collided with ice. My body convulsed, lungs seizing, but I forced myself to stay under, stay in the cold, until I felt something snap inside me—like a rubber band stretched too far and finally giving way.

A scream ripped through the apartment. Not mine.

The old man howled, his voice cracking, splitting apart as his reflection in the mirror blackened, curling at the edges like paper turning to ash. His body—no longer solid, no longer strong—withered, his fresh skin shriveling, his frame collapsing in on itself.

“NO—”

His voice disintegrated, swallowed by the sound of rushing water.

And then he was gone.

The heat snapped out of the air, vanishing so suddenly that it felt like I’d been dropped into the dead of winter. My fever was gone. My body, though weak and trembling, was mine again.

I sank into the cold, my breath hitching in relief.

It was over.

It had to be.

Epilogue: Lingering Heat

The next morning, I stood in front of the mirror, studying myself.

My skin was still pale. My limbs still ached. But the fever? The burning? That was gone.

I was okay.

I turned to leave the bathroom.

But before I stepped out, something flickered in the mirror’s corner.

I froze.

There—just for a second—I swore I saw him.

Not as he had been before, but something worse—charred and blackened, his form barely holding together, his face twisting in silent rage.

Then it was gone.

I stood there, heart hammering, waiting.

The air was cool. The walls were still. The fever was broken.

But as I stepped into the hallway, I swore I could still smell the faintest hint of burning wood.

And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew:

Next time I got sick, he’d be waiting.