from the pen of icarus blake

It is 0730 and I have prions on my mind again. Have I posted about this particular interest before? Probably, somewhere, I’m not going to dig it up.

On this morning, I’ve got prions on my mind as a curse. Consider this:

You and your flock of sheep take up residence in a lovely little farmhouse intentionally ignoring the whispers kicked up in the wake of your settling in. The fields roll green in every direction, the sun shines, your dogs play when they aren’t working. All is well, rumors of a curse be damned.

Townsfolk give you a wide berth when you come down to the local tavern. A man missing four and a half teeth in the front sits down next to you and asks how it goes. Great! Wonderful! You reply, your lambs prance as the green of late spring sets in. The man missing four and a half teeth is glad, he hopes the curse passes you over. So you take your chance and ask him what he means by curse.

Mr. four and a half teeth shrugs leans in close. No one’s been grazing that land, he says, not for fifteen years. Not since old Bill’s sheep clocked themselves out for good all at once. Since then, anything that eats on that land’s gone mad.

He says mad with the pop-eyed look of an old sailor.

Fifteen years, you figure, is plenty of time for whatever killed those sheep to disperse, and things go well for the spring and summer. Then for the winter after. It isn’t until two years later, when you’ve forgotten about the curse altogether, that you stumble home from a late night in the pub to find one of your ewes scratching herself madly on a fencepost.

You check her out in the morning. She’s rubbed the wool off her rump, the skin pink and raw underneath. Other than that, she’s fine. Probably just a touch of nettle. When she starts to stumble around, you opt to slaughter and butcher her for meat, assuming she’s no good for breeding.

But it keeps happening. Autumn rolls on, the trees going red, your sheep stumbling and falling and scratching themselves raw. Your rams lose interest in breeding, your rubbed-red ewes unpainted, no lambs for the spring. You look out at the rolling hills, and in the darkening days they take on a sinister cast. You remember the curse the day your first sheep dies in her pen and her compatriots clumsily trample her.

Spring comes with no lambs. Your sheep stumble, fall, and don’t get up. First in singles, then in groups, until you have neither the time nor energy to bury them all. No one buys the curse-tainted mutton you hock on the street corners. Mr. four and a half teeth doesn’t sit with you anymore. Still they die, your sheep, one after another with the wool scratched from their skin. You don’t shear what remains for fear your remaining livestock might skin themselves.

Until one day, you put the last ataxic stragglers out of their misery and take your chances with the winter somewhere else. The townsfolk nod at your back on your way out. The land is cursed, they know.