MAJOR CONTENT WARNING: descriptions of an autistic sensory overload, a lot of sewerslides, sensitive material, and overall very graphic deaths.
The Masque of the Blue Death
Inspiration- “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe
The Blue Death had long devastated the country…..according to many older and uneducated Americans during the 2000s.
In spite of the disorder they spoke of, Autism, not actually killing anyone, the Jovie Foundation, an up and coming autism nonprofit that began to grow in startling wealth and popularity since it was founded, popularized the notion of calling autism “the Blue Death” because of a couple of reasons.
More boys were diagnosed with it than girls so therefore it must be a “boy’s plague” (even though research was starting to prove otherwise, fear means money, and money talks)
According to the Foundation, even though autism doesn’t kill, it’s a death knell for marriages, financial stability, and mental health, and don’t you dare say this is dehumanizing to the child. We know what’s best
Since they were first founded in 2003, they gained a lot of support from parents of the “afflicted” but gained controversy from the “afflicted” themselves. On the internet and in person, many autistic people spoke up about how inherently stigmatizing and harmful the idea of autism being a disease was and how a cure for it wasn’t needed, for they are already normal in their own right. But now it seemed the joke was on them, because now after decades and decades of research, the Jovie Foundation found what could only be described as a cure for the Blue Death. The founder and co founder of the Foundation, Prospero and Susanna White, declared on their Twitter, that a formula they concocted, with the help of other nonprofits funding for an end to the spread of autism, a cure. And tonight, a massive party for the nonprofit and many other elite supporters would be held in honor of the future mass distribution of the cure, which was set to begin at midnight.
The cure had only been found two days before, and the invites to the party had been sent out as hastily as Jovie White, the granddaughter of Susanna and Prospero whom they named the foundation after, was given the cure. Some couldn’t come but many did, and those few were billionaires with nothing better to do. Moments before, the couple quickly decorated the tall headquarters of the Jovie Foundation in the most extravagant manner yet, and arranged the house in many colors, but noticeably avoiding the color red. Red had been used by protestors in opposition to them using the color blue as a symbol of their disability. But one could only have so many blue decorations, and an untouched room in the midst of so many other lavishly decorated rooms would stick out like a sore thumb, so they put most of the red decorations they owned in a quiet and mainly unvisited room, where stood a grandfather clock, which had been ticking the hours of the living days of the White family for more than 100 years.
Even though they had the feeling that most of the guests would likely not step inside, better safe than sorry.
As the sky darkened, expensive cars pulled into the driveway of the Whites’ mansion. Then came the party guests, dressed to the nines in their finest clothes and wearing decadent masks for the party, as the theme for the party was “Masquerade Ball” Professional cooks were hard at work to give the partygoers only the best, and wealthy singers even hosted private concerts here. In the sea blue halls, revelers celebrated, dancing and drinking themselves half blind on the best wine. And as expected, few of them set foot inside the room decked in red, whether it be a reminder that even with the cure, there will always be people resisting, because it was too quiet and empty, or because of the clock. Whenever the clock chimed the hours leading up to midnight, a loud and booming sound echoed throughout the manor and until the noise ceased, everyone grew dead silent, but then not only cheered but went back to partying, for every hour that passed brought them closer to finally eradicating the Blue Death and those who had it.
However, even as the hours passed, a feeling of dread slowly passed over many figures at the party, starting with the parents of Jovie White, and then spreading to Susanna and Prospero, and slowly passing over everyone at the party as rumors began to spread of a strange figure in the Red Room, dressed all in red (when Susanna made specific rules to not come in red) and like a corpse ready for burial, wearing a mask that resembled someone who died in great agony. Susanna managed the guest list and when the rumor reached her ears, she immediately denied it, for there was no name to be given to the mysterious guest, and Ali agreed with her, “I saw everyone who came into the house” she said in response, “And I saw no one who came in looking like THAT. If I did, I would have kicked them out by now, so, no mystery guest here.”
And so, the party went slightly back to normal, in spite of the intensifying sense of doom that crept its way into the senses of the revelers as the great clock ticked.
When it neared midnight, Prospero gave a speech to the partygoers (or at least those who were sober enough to listen to him), thanking them for the donations they had given them and the unwavering moral support and perseverance. “Even though this epidemic will never fully go away”, he said “we will never forget your hard work to cull it and to bring back the minds taken by the darkness!” It was at that moment, when he was supposed to signal the trucks to carry the cure to pharmacies and doctors everywhere… that he saw the figure. It glided amidst the horrified crowd in its horrific glory, its elegant floor length dress looking oddly like a dress Jovie wore for her 6th birthday which was blue, but now was soaked completely in red dye, giving it a purplish hue, its red cloak flowing in nonexistent wind, and its mask resembling the face of a child who died in anguish. And upon closer inspection, as the noises of the crowd died down, there was no sound to its footsteps. It was as though the small red figure was hovering across the dance floor. Prospero turned to the figure, his mic still in hand and yelled “Who are you to insult us with this mockery of what we came here for?!” The figure only looked his way for a moment, giving him a good look at its mask, and then continued to glide away like a vampire squid in the ocean blue sea. Enraged, he chased after the figure, to try to get its mask off, in order to reveal the face of the intruder. Revelers parted like the Red Sea as they passed, and followed close behind Prospero, sharing in his desire to know who would come into a party like this wearing a costume like that. Theories spread amongst them that the figure was a protester, someone who came as a prank, a competitor, and so forth.
But things went from bad to worse as Prospero cornered the figure in the red room, only for him, by some defiance of the laws of physics, to be telekinetically lifted in the air, choking as though the air itself was holding him at the neck, and then flung out of the window, breaking it, and plummeting into the streets below. Terrified, Susanna ran to the figure, and pulled off its mask to try to see what matter of person could pull off such a terrifying feat. It was Jovie. Little, innocent Jovie White standing there with hatred in her tear stained eyes. But it shouldn’t be her, because she died what was now three nights ago.
Jovie’s diagnosis with autism was the reason for why Ali, Susanna, and Prospero fought and advocated so hard for a cure, for it shattered their world. And the exact day they found the cure, Ali called them, and rushed Prospero and Susanna to her house for a chance to cure her daughter. The good news was there was no more autism after it was administered. The bad news was that there was no more Jovie. 4 minutes later, her window was found open and her broken body lay 4 stories below. Even though she was primed to hate herself for her disorder, Jovie felt she lost what made her her when the syringe went into her skull like a lobotomy pick.
The Whites covered the death up of course. If they let the public know that the first plague afflicted child died because of the cure they would sell to the masses, no doctor would approve it. They had a quiet funeral for and sent out the party invites and spoke about the lavish festivities to come on social media to distract the people and truth seeking journalists from the suspicious delay in cure distribution. But now was acknowledged the truth of the matter, and the phantasm Jovie had risen again as, shot a dirty look at Susanna and the revelers, and as quickly as she arrived, the company suddenly became aware of an unnatural heightening of their senses. Some began to find that all of a sudden, their clothes felt oddly uncomfortable when they didn’t feel that way before, and it wasn’t just their shirt, or their dress, or even their masks. Certain fabrics and jewlery pieces gave them such maddening discomfort that people began to desperately tear off their clothing and accessories in hopes of alleviation. Their ears became oddly sensitive to the point that the tearing clothes, anguished cries, and even the sound of jewlery falling on the floor were too much, and their eyes became aware of how bright the lights in the building were, and they covered their eyes and ears and tried to leave the building, but Jovie had welded them shut.
The revelers had become filled with desperation and agony, and some even were filled with remorse, for these were not normal symptoms. These were the symptoms of the Blue Death. Jovie had been sharing her mind and her suffering with everyone there.
Overwhelmed by the suffering Jovie now shared with them, those who weren’t already killed by the ghost because of a personal vendetta began to take themselves out. Bodies joined the fallen Prospero on the streets of Baltimore and rained down on cars and near horrified pedestrians, and some stabbed themselves to death in fear that the spirit gave them the Blue Death. Ali and her husband were the only ones left standing when everyone else had died, but the alterations to her brain still remained, and she was filled with a late blooming remorse; She and her family believed that they were right to do what they did, but the only fruits that their works bore were that of suffering and pain, and even though they tried to ignore the fact that REAL plague was spread by them, even though it didn’t affect them then, it did now. Ali and her beau ran back to the red room and tried to call 911 to get help, only to find Jovie waiting.
They knew the only thing they could do now is to face their doom with the only dignity they had left
3:00 AM. April 4 2010. Easter Sunday
The cops searched high and low for any clue regarding who or what may have caused the massacre of the Jovie Foundation headquarters, and while they did take note of the brutal nature of the deaths, there was no evidence of any drug usage or foul play, and they went along with eyewitness accounts and confirmed the incident as a mass suicide and possible hysteria.
The closest things they could find to clues of the supernatural intervention was a line of exploded trucks leading to a ruined laboratory which held the cure, and an unsettling mask at the site of the incident.
And so the true Blue Death that had unfairly scapegoated autism was gone at last, and the people who suffered at the hands of the Jovie Foundation had one less problem.
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