#i was terrified of things not working out because i have worms for brains disease. i could have done this forever ago and have always been

[sol-flo]

ok alright ok alright box of t gel in hands now the future's up to god

[ronnie-azumane]

Haikyuu guys as stuff my dad did

This idea has been in my brain for a while, so I'm writing it out. Hope y'all enjoy :)

CW: idn, its pretty wholesome

Daichi answers your frantic phone call home expressing that you forgot your backpack and laptop for college when you went home over the weekend. Expressing that all of your notes are in the backpack, he decides to wake-up extra early Monday morning and make the 2 1/2 hour drive to your university, then drive all the way back to your hometown to go to work.

Sugawara came up with the best hiding spot for you while playing hide and seek at your 7th birthday party. He squeezed you in-between the back of the couch and the back couch cushions. Then, he sat in front of it to conceal the awkward lump it made in the couch. It took the others 30 minutes before giving up and telling you to come out.

Asahi asks you to style his hair for a zoom meeting he has later that day. After some deliberation, you both decide to do a mohawk style. He braces himself as you run off to get the brush, hairspray, hair gel, and hairdryer.

Nishinoya still wears the Annoying Orange shirt you got him when you were in 3rd grade. It's faded and has a giant picture of Annoying Orange on it, which faded from popularity in 2010, but he still wears it. In public.

Tanaka makes the dumbest jokes while in the audience of your colorguard/dance competitions. For example, he asked your mom if he should shout "Go get 'em George" to the group of girls performing to confuse everyone. Another favorite joke o his is to chant "the worm, the worm,, we worship the worm" while the previous team is carrying out their floor.

Ennoshida talks with you as you make one of the biggest changes in your life. Midway through your second semester at university, you determine that business is not for you, however, you do not have a backup plan. Talking with him, you end up changing your major to Geography, and now you love every second of it.

Kageyama drinks the milk out of you cereal. You hate the taste of milk by itself, but you don't want to eat dry cereal. To not waste milk, he drinks it after you finish eating your cereal.

Hinata fails miserably when your mom tells him to reapply the medical glue on your forehead. The day before, your sister threw a wooden block at you, causing a major tear in your head. Your mom took you to the emergency room, but they were busy and it was a school night, so they told her to just take some liquid band aid (which we called glue) and close the wound. Your mom told him to replace the glue, and he took ELMERS GLUE and placed it on the open wound. It hurt like a bitch.

Tsukishima takes you to go see the museum of natural history once a month. He knows you're the odd girl out of your class that would rather play with dinosaurs than dolls, so he takes you to see the dinosaur fossils. He also gets a discount because his place of work donated a significant amount of money and resources to one of the exhibits.

Yamaguchi helped set up your setup once you moved to zoom university. He attached your laptop to a monitor his job had extra, so now you feel like a badass whenever you use the two screens.

Oikawa out of nowhere invites all his high school friends over to stay the week at your house. A trip that probably should have been planned in weeks, even months, is planned in just a weekend. Everyone ends up sleeping on air mattresses and blankets on the floor due to your mom just finishing up replacing the floors in the house (she was not too happy with the sudden trip, but was welcoming anyway)

Iwaizumi makes you watch Godzilla with him whenever it's on TV. Some of his fondest memories include receiving Godzilla themed ornaments from his mom ever Christmas. He also unironically watches those cheesy fan-made Godzilla fights on YouTube for hours on end. Man just likes Godzilla.

Hanamaki and you wear funny hats to a volunteer cookout. The organizers told every one to wear a hat so that their hair didn't get in the food, but you two take it a step further. You wear a banana hat while he wears a hotdog hat.

Matsukawa taught you how to make all kinds of breakfast food at a young age. Whether it was a simple as a fried egg or as complex as French toast, he worked with you until the recipe came out perfect.

Kyotani scares the other parents off when it comes to the silent auction selling the class are projects. Now the shelf you and your kindergarten classmates fingerprinted flowers and bugs on sits proudly in your closet holding crafting supplies.

Ushijima scolds you for leaving the lights on. Most parents do that already, but he takes it to a new extreme. Your mom explains that he would never turn the lights on in his apartment when he was in college and would simply get his homework done before dark. Sometimes, if he had something to do, he would light a candle to finish something up.

Tendou recalls a story in which he stole a bus battery with his buddies to power an air conditioned tent at boy scout camp. He also recalls the year he and his friends tried to build a pool in the wilderness at the same count, only to get caught and reprimanded for it before filling it with water which totally had nothing to do with a camp counselor finding it and having a Vietnam flashback

Goshiki watches anime with you. He always acts like he is uninterested in whatever show is on, but he soon gets super into it and it will be the only thing he talks about for a week.

Kuroo sits at the table with you until 2am working on that math assignment you have been struggling with. You've definitely run out of tears to cry, and had to redo the assignment twice, but he is guiding you through the answers

Yaku isn't a fan of all the pets you and your mom have collected over the years. I mean, in his defense, at one point we had 8 cats an 3 dogs. However, he is also super cuddly with them, always giving them nose boops and belly rubs.

Kenma plays Xbox, Wii, and the ds with you. He doesn't find the bulk of the games you play with him entertaining, but he is willing to run through LEGO Star Wars with you. His personal favorite to play is Mario Kart and he doesn't let you win >:(

Lev is trying to convince the family to let him take the position in Alaska with higher pay. When mom raised the concern that the long winters wouldn't do well for your mental health, his counter argument was, "Yeah, and that sucks, but hear me out. We could have a pet Polar Bear." We didn't move to Alaska

Bokuto was definitely the most enthusiastic dad at the girl scout father daughter dance. He twirled you around in your pretty little JC Penney dress and made sure you two were the center of the dance floor. At one point, he lifted you above his head with each foot in a hand like a cheerleader. Truly terrifying.

Akaashi drives out to the 24-hour pharmacy to pick up some cold medicine when you couldn't sleep due to a stuffy nose. He also checks up on you every hour when you are coughing with some mysterious disease (due to the lack of tests and priority of the high-risk, I will never know if I had Covid when I got sick in late March)

Aone gives you the biggest hug after you get released from the graduation ceremony. He isn't the best with words, so this hug speaks so much to you.

Terushima has been taking you to Mardi Gras in New Orleans since you were a baby. He doesn't care that it's mostly an adult party, he believes that everyone in the family should enjoy a good ol' Mardi Gras

Atsumu carries you on his shoulders all the time when you're small. He just thinks it's the cutest thing.

Osamu makes sure to host a crawfish boil every year. Whether its the neighbors, family, both, or just the household, you can expect some good, spicy crawfish with corn and potatoes whenever he cooks.

Kita teaches you how to drive a stick shift. He's frustrated that you cant move three feet before stalling, but then realizes that the issue was that you were in third gear, not first. He is now impressed that you were even able to start moving at third gear.

Sakusa takes you along with him to work. His job is full of tough men, so when they see him with you in a little blue dress-up tutu and a plastic tiara on your head, their hearts just melt.

[blindingdutchy]

lamentation | SEVEN

{peter parker x fem!reader AU}

based on All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

SERIES MASTERLIST

word count: 4,000

warnings: fluff. angst. language. not even sure why i warn for angst anymore this whole story is just angsty af

18+!!! minors stay away!

In the following few weeks, you realized two things. One: Peter Parker was definitely not subtle. The other being that you were definitely in way over your head. There was no denying the stupid butterflies in your stomach anymore, or the way you found yourself expecting his touch before it even came.

It seemed as though the two of you were like magnets; a constant tug gravitating the pair of you back to each other with an unstoppable force. If you weren't together, he was on your mind, and like he could sense you thinking of him he'd be quick to reach out in some way or another. Be it appearing at your side, all happy grins and playful eyes, or calling your phone no matter the time with his stupidly adorable stutter--Peter seemed to think of you just as much as you thought of him.

The more that you thought of him, the more that you wished you didn't. It was terrifying. You wished that you could pull away again, to push him back out of your heart and lock those iron bars tight once more, but your heart had grown selfish and stubborn. It was as if you were the one locked out anymore; the control over your feelings slipping further and further from your clutches with every toothy smile Peter sent your way.

Like a magnet, he held you in place. Oh, to be held by... You slapped a pillow over your face and screamed, holding it so tightly that your nose ached and you couldn't breath. Peter Parker was like a disease. A stupid, all-consuming, utterly infatuating disease of the mind and the spirit.

You knew that you were wasting time, undoubtedly causing yourself to risk being late for school with every minute that passed as you continued to lay in your bed, but you couldn't bring yourself to get up. Already, your mother and father both had knocked at your door on multiple occasions and questioned if you were sick, and now you were regretting saying no. It would have been so easy to avoid him if you'd just played hookie.

But, with midterms in the near future, you knew it wasn't the best idea. The realization had come to you in the night. A moment so insignificant, so mundane, but it had been as if a switch were flipped in your mind. A light was turned on, so to speak, and illuminated all the thoughts and emotions you'd been so tirelessly repressing.

Talking on the phone with Peter was like a drug, and talking on the phone to him at night was a dangerous game. Under the dull light of a crescent moon and the ridiculous teddy-bear night light that was plugged into your wall, a lingering remnant of your sister's presence in the space, your inhibitions were always low. With sleepiness your walls were always lowered, and he'd unknowingly put a fatal crack in the foundation.

You rolled onto your stomach on your bed, kicking your feet through the air like a little kid as you fought back the grin that always seemed to worm its way across your lips when you were talking to him. "So, how do you like Ned and MJ?" Peter asked, and you could almost picture him mirroring your position as you heard the quiet rustle of blankets over the line. A little giggle bubbled out of your mouth at the thought.

What a sight that would be, Peter kicking his legs to and fro like a school girl in love. "They're cool. I kinda like that MJ doesn't even pretend to hide the fact that she thinks I'm weird. I don't--I don't know, it's refreshing I guess. Ned's sweet." you rambled, and it was the truth.

Ned and MJ were easily slipping into the fortress that shielded your heart with every passing day. Somehow, it wasn't as terrifying as you'd expected it to be. Perhaps that was because they didn't harbor a secret identity with which they risked their lives every single night, or maybe it was just because you'd come to realize that letting people in wasn't so bad. Not everyone was going to die on you.

Michelle Jones really didn't pretend not to think you were weird, not even a little bit. Her blunt and honest nature was a nice change from the quiet stares that seemed to follow your every move; MJ wasn't much for staring. Rather, she boldly told you what she was thinking without any shred of doubt.

And Ned, sweet Ned Leeds, was like a puppy personified. Always happy, always smiling, and always waiting to offer you compliments when you approached. You couldn't remember the last time someone had dared compliment your hair, your smile, or your outfits. Ned made it impossible to feel anything but comfort and joy in his presence, even his awkward nature was endearing.

"I'm glad." Peter hummed, "They really like you. To be honest, though, I kinda like it when it's just us. Maybe I should have waited a little longer to share you."

There was a pang in your chest at his words. Peter had been subtly flirting with you for days now, but this was more direct. He didn't have to come right out and say it for his implications to come across loud and clear, and that magnetic pull grew stronger.

So strong, in fact, that you murmured back, "I like it when it's just us, too."

If you had just kept your mouth shut, maybe he wouldn't have been so bold as to say, "Not gonna let them steal your heart from me, are you?"

The words were right at the tip of your tongue. Your heart was screaming, never! Nobody could ever steal me away from you, Peter! Yet, your mind was racing with a million and one horrible thoughts that made you feel as though your mouth was full of mud.

The silence between yourself and Peter grew thick as it drew on, no words escaping your lead-like lips. The voice in your brain, the one that sounded like your sister yet you knew was not her, was ringing in your ears. How could you ever fall in love, when she never could? How could you give your heart away, when she never had the chance?

You took that chance away from her. You stole it. This thing, whatever the weird force between the two of you was, was all stolen time, stolen opportunities, and stolen lives.

"Good night, (Y/N). I'll see you at school?"

You whispered, "Yes." The line went dead, and you felt cold.

Those simple words from Peter, with meaning and intention that was far from simple, were all it took to send the walls, bars, and barbed wire around your heart crumbling into nothing. With no protection, no barrier between yourself and the dangers of everyone else, your mind was working on overdrive. It would have been so easy to let him in, had that voice remained quiet, and yet you were steadily building those bricks back into place.

Now, all that was left to do was to steal your heart back. When had he managed to take it from you? Had he snuck in during the night, slipping through the strategically placed cracks and weak points he'd created, and stole away with it undetected? Had he taken it that first night, without you ever noticing?

As you finally released the pressure over the pillow on your face, sucking in a shaky breathe and letting all the heavy things crash over you again, tears burned your eyes. You didn't want to push Peter away. You didn't want to be the reason he was hurt, upset, or angry--you weren't ready to be the villain in his story.

"Mom?" you called out, knowing she was lingering close by.

Proving you correct, the door to your bedroom cracked open only seconds later and your mother's worried eyes fell upon your blinking ones. She definitely saw the troubled look on your face, the tears in your eyes, yet she held back from mentioning any of it as she asked, "Are you sick, honey?"

You nodded, the lump in your throat aiding your act as you croaked, "Yes. I don't feel good."

She frowned a little, knowing that you were bending the truth of the matter. Your mother was perceptive, and with the emotion all over your face, it easy for her to know that this wasn't some stomach bug or sore throat. To your relief, though, she resigned, "I'll call you out of school for the day. I'll be in my office if you need me."

Tomorrow, you could be the villain. For today, though, you were content to avoid your troubles and wallow in your self pity. At least this way you had some time to slip back into your stoic, cold demeanor before you had to face him. Time to prepare yourself to be alone again, because you knew that once you pushed Peter Parker away, Ned and MJ would be quick to follow him.

Sleep didn't come for you like you hoped it would. Well, it did, but then you found yourself dreaming of Peter and woke with a start. School had started an hour ago, and already there were a flurry of confused and increasingly alarmed messages from him lighting up your phone screen. Even though you couldn't hold back from reading them, you locked it before you found yourself replying as if on autopilot.

Pete: are you late

Pete: i'm at your locker

Pete: hello?

Pete: i'm going to class... see you there?

Pete: are you okay? you said you'd be here

Pete: at least let me know you're aldkhdkfj

You spent the day in your room, ignoring Peter and ignoring the world. Occasionally your mother would crack open your door to check on you, fussing over feeling your forehead despite the fact that you both knew you didn't have a fever, and tittering little comments about getting rest and staying hydrated. She knew you weren't sick, yet you were grateful she didn't try to pry.

As much as you wanted to tell her all of the things that were on your mind, the reasons that you were upset, you couldn't. You couldn't tell her all of the awful things you were thinking, and see the way her face would contort in anguish over you. You certainly couldn't listen to her telling you that it wasn't your fault, you weren't wrong for liking a boy, and your sister would want you to be happy. Even if you knew, in some deep part of your brain, that it was true.

Pete: got my phone taken in calculus sorry

Pete: I'm at lunch now, are you okay?

Pete: are you sick?

Pete: like... actually sick?

Peter really was relentless. You wondered how long it would take for him to catch onto what you were doing, or if he would at all. Would he understand why you suddenly gave him the cold shoulder? Would he understand, and be okay when you pushed him away again?

Pete: I'm in speech now.

Pete: we got the class to work on the speech and you're not here

Pete: not that we could do much anyways since you're so stubborn but still

Pete: okay what is going on

Pete: (Y/N)

Pete: please talk to me

Reading all of his messages kept the ache in your chest alive, stopping the numbness from creeping back in. You wished you could put your phone down, turn it off even, but it was like a cruel an addicting game to read each message as it arrived. You found yourself watching the little three dots as he typed another message eagerly, even if he was far from happy.

When school ended, he called. You let it ring each time, watching his name scroll across your screen over and over again until it ended. Once, twice, three times--he finally stopped calling, not leaving a voicemail.

For awhile, you wondered if that was it. Was he done? Had he caught on? Had he figured you out just as easily as he always seemed to do? Had Peter given up?

Pete: i know what you're doing

Pete: i'm sorry if i made you uncomfortable

Pete: we can just be friends if that's what you want

It wasn't what you wanted, and that was the problem. You didn't want to be friends with Peter Parker. Well, you didn't want to just be friends with him. You wanted to know what his touch felt like when it was deliberate and welcoming, not the fleeting and curious brushes of his skin on yours. To be held by him, to taste his lips, to hold his heart in your hands like he already held yours--you wanted so much more than friendship with Peter, and that made you a thief and a fraud.

You: that's not what i want

You were weak. A weak, cowardly idiot is what you were, and you threw your phone on your bed with a groan as you realized what you'd done. The voice in your mind whispered insults, taunting you for being so easily broken.

Pete: what do you mean

You: i don't want to be friends with you Peter

Pete: oh

One simple word, and you realized he had taken that in a completely different way than you had meant it. Yet, you didn't correct him. You didn't explain that you meant you didn't want to just be friends. Maybe this was your chance--an easy way to kick him outside your walls without having to see it firsthand.

The chance didn't last long. A quiet knock sounded on your window, and your heart froze in your chest as you tried to sink deeper into your bed. It was the wind, you told yourself, until the knock sounded again and slightly louder. You could see the shadow on your floor out of the corner of your eye, and you buried your face into your pillow to block it out. If you ignored him, he would go away, and this would all be over.

After a few more knocks, it was silent for awhile, and you tempted a look at the floor only to frown at the sight of the shadow missing. He was gone, and you were alone again. Your lip quivered at the thought; what had you done? It was a mistake. This was a mistake.

You didn't want to push him away. You wanted him to hold your heart. You wanted Peter Parker as your friend, as more than a friend, hell, as anything as long as it was with you. But now? Going back on your word and dragging him back in again would be pathetic. He didn't deserve such treatment, especially not from you.

So, you pulled your pillow back over your face and let the tears fall. Your hot breath burned your eyes and made you feel sticky and gross, but you didn't care one bit. It felt cathartic to cry, like returning to a familiar place you'd been skirting around for ages. Crying over Peter was different than crying over your sister; the hurt was different, but one thing was the same: both were all your fault.

"Go away, mom." you whined, barely hearing the sound of your door unlatching over your muffled sniffles. It creaked further open, and you groaned, pressing the pillow harder onto your face, "Mom, please, I just want to be alone."

A throat cleared, and you froze. That wasn't your mother, the voice was deeper. The sound was still too light to be your father's, though, and that left one option that made your blood run cold. He didn't--did he?

He did. Peter pried the pillow out of your hands, all red cheeks and sad eyes as he stared at you in a sullen silence. "Why are you doing this?" he whispered, "Why are you pushing me away?"

You blinked at him, too paralyzed by the sight of his fluttering eyelids and pouting lips to speak. It must have been a sight to see you like that, your face red and blotchy, streaked with tears and snot that you'd been too lazy to wipe away. He didn't look away from your eyes, though, gazing into them with an intensity that dared you to look away.

Sensing that you weren't going to speak, he pressed on, "(Y/N), what is going on? I don't--It's okay if you don't like me back, I can deal with that. I want to be your friend, though. I thought you wanted to be mine, too."

Voice scratchy, you muttered, "I don't."

Something changed in him, and suddenly Peter was raking a hand through his hair as he frowned deeply. You wanted to smooth the crease between his brows, but you felt frozen. He was angry; he was angry with you, and he didn't hold back as he snapped, "That's bullshit, and you know it. If you didn't want to be friends, then why did you make that deal? Why did you let me make a complete fool of myself just to get your attention? Why did you let me introduce you to my friends? Stop lying to me!"

"I'm not!" you yelped, sitting up frantically and wiping at your face, finally. "I'm not lying, Pete!"

He threw his head back at the nickname, a sigh of exasperation forcing its way from his lips, nostrils flared. "I don't get you, (Y/N). I don't get you at all." he growled, facing you again with a heavy brow.

You gripped your blankets tightly, bunching them around your waist as you blinked at him with wide eyes. "I don't want to just be your friend, Peter!" you burst, "I don't want to just be your friend, and I don't know why. You make me feel all these things that terrify me, but I keep chasing after you and whatever those things are! It was so easy being alone, okay? Then suddenly you came swinging into my life and made everything so--so complicated!"

Your mother's face peered into your room, eyes blown wide in surprise, but the moment you glanced at her she backed away with a bitten smile and you flushed. You didn't get the chance to dwell on the fact that she'd been eavesdropping, though, because Peter sat on the edge of your bed and bit the inside of his cheek, blinking at you with teasing eyes.

"So, you like me?"

Eyes narrowed, you grumbled, "Are you really going to make me say it, Pete? After all of that?"

A sly grin stretched across his lips, cheeks puffing out adorably and making you bite your own to keep from grinning too. He tutted, raising his ruffled brow as he jabbed, "After everything else today? I think it's the least you could do."

You were screwed. His fingertips barely caressed the backs of your knuckles, and you shakily grabbed them before he pulled away again. "I like you, jerk." you mumbled, screwing your eyes shut as you felt your face burn in embarrassment.

Peter just chuckled, squeezing your hand as you felt your bed shift under his weight. "I don't want to just be your friend, either." his breathe fanned over your cheek, and your eyes snapped open to find his face closer than ever. If you just turned, ever so slightly, his lips would brush your own... He kissed your cheek softly, backing away with a tiny smile that you matched. "I like you a lot. Probably more than like, really."

"That scares me." you whispered, eyes still latched onto his, "Peter, you scare me."

He took a long moment to answer, weighing heavily the words he would utter next, before finally telling you, "You scare me, too, but I think it's worth it."

A gentle tapping at your door crashed through the moment, both of your faces burning a deep red as you turned to face your mother's sheepish smile. "Sorry, sorry, don't mind me--"

"Mom!" you wailed, slapping your hands over your face in mortification as she stealthily slipped into your room and dropped a box of condoms onto your dresser before racing away again. "Oh, I can't believe she--Mom! Did you really have to do that?"

Peter was laughing boisterously, head thrown back and eyes shut, though you could tell he was flustered too from the cherry red color that creeped down from his face and under his shirt. As humiliated as you were by your mother's actions, you couldn't help but to feel a little grateful for the interruption. The intensity, the tension in the air, had disappeared with the intrusion, and things felt a little bit lighter again.

You flopped back onto your bed, still pouting over the spectacle, as Peter breathed out, "That's so something Aunt May would have done, too."

At least you weren't alone in the embarrassing family department, you thought to yourself as Peter threw himself down beside you. She meant well, obviously, but did she really think that you and Peter were going to go from admitting you liked each other to ripping each other's clothes off in one night? Well, you were eighteen--maybe she had a bit of a reason to be so hasty.

"Do you think it's worth it?" Peter questioned, and you turned your head to face him, trying to ignore the close proximity of his face to your own. "Liking me?"

You chewed at your lip, listening for that voice in your head that had suddenly gone silent. "Yeah, yeah I do." you responded, and his face split in a blushing smile. You did think it was worth it, because being with him reminded you of all the good feelings you missed out on when he wasn't around. "I just wish we could have been like this before. Maybe then I wouldn't feel like I'm stealing her life."

He grew serious in an instant, eyebrows furrowing as he stated, "I don't." At the sight of your confusion, he continued, "I don't wish we met before. Can you honestly say that you're the same person you were before?"

"No."

He nodded, "Exactly. Stuff like that... It changes you. I would know, remember? You wouldn't be the you that I like, and if Uncle Ben were here maybe I wouldn't be who you like, either."

You had to admit, he had a point. "I guess so." you pondered aloud.

"You're not stealing her life, either, (Y/N). She would have wanted you to be happy, to do all the things she never got to. It took me a long time to stop thinking that way, too, but I did. It wasn't your fault, and you can't miss out on stuff just because of her." Peter advised, and you swallowed down the lump that was growing steadily in your throat, "She didn't give up her life for you to stop living yours."

Fuck, Peter really knew exactly what to say. You, however, were at a loss for words. He said all of the things that you'd needed to hear for so long, so perfectly, and it rocked you to your core. How did he know just what you needed to hear? The answer was simple--because he knew you, and he knew how you were feeling. He knew, because he had lived it.

Changing the subject, you asked, "So, what do we do now?"

You didn't have to explain for him to understand, and he swallowed thickly, "Do you... will you be my girlfriend?"

"Yeah. That might be worth it."

He scoffed, "Might be? Forget it, I don't want you to be my--"

"I want to be your girlfriend, Pete!" you cut him off, laughing loudly. "I really, really want to." So, maybe you lied when you said that Peter made things complicated. In fact, Peter made things incredibly easy--and that made it worth it.

SERIES TAGLIST {ask to be added}:

@msmimimerton @zendayasfwb @sweet-symphony @cherthegoddess @justsomebodyweird

[eldunea]

THE ATAXTE MAARI AND GALRAS’ FIRST ENCOUNTER: TWO PERSPECTIVES

What actually happened

the galra first came to the moon elves as refugees fleeing political corruption and environmental degradation in their homeland. they wanted to find an uninhabited territory to call their own. when they arrived in the great altean desert, the massive scar-shaped sandscape that cut across the planet in a jagged band, they were utterly blown away. unlike the environment of daibazaal, so polluted that even clean water was a luxury only the elite could afford, the uninhabited parts of the land had been so well-kept by the people who lived on it that it looked as though no one had ever lived there at all. they thought they had reached an incomprehensible paradise--finally, a new and perfect home waiting for them with open arms. little did they know that the land was already taken.

the leader of the galra had hijacked warships for their escape, and outfitted them to be suitable for habitation. unbeknownst to them, every spacefaring people in this sector had signed a treaty never to bring armed ships into each others’ airspace and outerspace, and so the moon elvish warriors who saw these ships immediately believed them to be a hostile foreign threat from another galactic sector looking to conquer. sensing that the fleet could easily be destroyed, they warned the galra to turn back or else be annihilated. the galra refused, and so 90% of their ships were wiped out. the other 10% were able to land, after which they were surrounded. the warriors sent to scout for survivors had donned their space armor, which served to protect against foreign agents of disease.

the moon elves were shocked to discover that their new prisoners of war were not legions of fit soldiers, but rather sick and dying families with children. the people commanding the warships had given no indication that they had been in fact harboring refugees, instead posturing as though they meant to destroy every single moon elf that stood in their way. the 10,500 or so remaining galra were immediately taken into quarantine, where they were inspected and treated. almost every single one of them carried some sort of contagion--whether it be parasites such as fleas and worms, bacteria, viruses, even prions. many would have died if not for moon elvish intervention. luckily for them, the moon elves were able to instantaneously sequence the DNA of the pathogens and parasites, and invent cures for all unknown ailments within a matter of days. development and distribution took a fair bit longer than that, and so some still died waiting for the cure. but it was fast enough to save several thousand lives, something for which the galra have never thanked their hosts.

this did not come easily, however. the elites of the galra kingdom were so corrupt and greedy that the common people either did not have access to medicine and hygiene or believed them to be unhealthy, or both. (honestly, it was a miracle that they even managed to get into space, let alone come so far from their homeworld and homestar. while the elites wasted the peoples’ money on extravagant space trips and on building warships that might one day conquer distant galaxies, many of the more isolated communities had grown up thinking outer space was just a myth.) when the moon elves attempted to bathe the galra in steamy hot water, they fought tooth and nail, thinking they were to be boiled alive. when the moon elves attempted to give treatments such as healing balms, vaccinations, pills and serums, their patients balked. some galra were particularly scared of the concept of vaccination, fearing that if pathogens were put into their bodies they would catch the disease; they were also terrified of pills, because pills resembled the bioweapons that power-hungry elites would slip in each others’ food--they contained bioengineered parasites that could eat someone from the inside out. thousands of galra had to be sedated even to receive simple basic checkups because they would otherwise attempt to attack and kill their healers.

when the galra leader was finally declared free of all infections and safe to interact with general society, he was not thankful, he was furious. he came before the ataxte maari clan council and demanded compensation for the killing of 90% of his fleet, and also demanded to know where the rest of his people were being kept. he was informed that the council would attempt to present compensation in due time--also that some of the quarantined galra had been released; others were still in quarantine, and still others had died. he told the elders that he “knew” his people were being tortured in quarantine, and that he would accept only one form of compensation for the deaths of his compatriots. he said one galra life was worth at least ten of the “savages,” so he demanded the arbitrary killing of at least ten times as many moon elves as the number of galra who had died. 

he and the council then got into an argument about restorative vs retributive justice and about the nature of the treatment that the galra received, in which it was apparent that he understood neither basic science nor basic decency. he insisted loudly and vulgarly that his people would have been “fine” on their own and that they didn’t need the help of those who were lower than them. the council leader retorted that many other spacefaring species would have killed him for his insults and turned his people out to die, but it was only altean values of compassion and hospitality that stayed her hand. at the very end, he tired of using his brain, and instead rushed the clan council intending to kill the five matriarchs seated before him. suddenly, he found himself dead on the floor with six poison arrows sticking out of his body, each one embedded in a vital organ.

the council never told the galra that their leader had been killed. instead, the council leader’s son shapeshifted into his form and took his place among the purple. this was part of the matriarchs’ overarching plan. they decided to let the galra stay on their land temporarily before sending them off to an uninhabited desert planet several hundred lightyears away that they thought was suitable for the galras’ new home. during this time, they would teach the galra proper values for interacting among themselves and other species--such as the concepts that every sapient being deserves to live happily, that it’s not okay to just slit peoples’ throats when they’re too old, weak or disabled to take care of themselves, and that it is also not okay to kill someone over a scrap of food found in a garbage dump. they would also teach about scientific concepts such as sustainable land management, space travel (including maintenance of spaceships) and medicinal and hygiene practices. the false galra leader would pose as the exemplar of these positive behaviors and willingness to learn the new knowledge, in the hopes that the refugees would look to him as a model.

and it worked………with some of them. some of the galra did their darnedest to keep up with the alteans’ teachings, and even though they didn’t understand things like showing compassion to the weak, they rolled with it anyway. they admired the elaborate city planning and horticulture that they had never had on daibazaal; when they stepped into moon elvish cities for the first time, they thought they were dreaming. back home where everything had to be fought for or else it was not “deserved,” they could never have conceived of a society with free food, free water, free healthcare and free housing--and they were definitely starting to see the perks of the altean way of life. 

but then there were the greedy fucking bastards who were just there for the benefits and none of the teachings. they ate all the food while never offering to help hunt, squandered their water quotas then demanded gallons more, and constantly mocked their teachers’ language and dress. they also disparaged the galra who seemed to be assimilating with the alteans, accusing them of being in league with the “transgendered degenerates” (the galra hated altean acceptance of LGBTQ identities). when these galra started becoming a violent threat to the alteans, the moon elves had them deported to the uninhabited desert planet. they sent along some of the “good” galra volunteers to continue the training, but these volunteers were soon killed as "traitors” to their culture. having murdered the only people who could have taught them about sustainable land and resource management, the galra deportees eventually ruined the entire planet they were planted in due to unchecked warfare and environmental irresponsibility, thus killing themselves off within a matter of centuries.

the tale, however, does not end here. 

[TW for the consumption of sapient beings.]

even the “good” colonizers had a bad side. as i have discussed in previous headcanons, galra are instinctively drawn to eating alteans due to the extremely high amount of quintessence in their bodies. even the ones that promised to play nice and learn moon elvish values had a barely-quenched thirst for altean blood. some of them started having this extreme hunger around the council leader’s son; shapeshifted though he was, something about him made them feel half-starved and ready for a meal. finally, one galra couldn’t resist any longer, attacked him and killed him for food. when his corpse automatically shapeshifted back into altean form, the deception was discovered.

the galra, understandably, were furious. but instead of acting in the regular galra way and immediately attempting to kill the moon elvish leaders in revenge, they had learned a thing or two from their hosts. alteans can be very deceptive, and if there’s one thing they learned from the moon elves, fighting smart can outlast fighting hard. so they played along. they said that he had died in an accident and appointed a new leader to carry out their task. 

following the appointment of the new leader, for some reason hundreds of moon elves started to go missing from their communities--several children disappeared, but most of them were of childbearing age. the ataxte maari nation wound up missing enough people in so short a time that a national emergency was declared, but for a while, they had no idea the source of this tragedy. the truth was, their people were being rounded up and slaughtered or bred for their meat in underground factory farms. it was the galras’ intention to get revenge for the killing of their people by taking over the paradise they had landed in and enslaving as meat the people who had taught them everything they knew. 

in the end they were caught, and their surviving victims were rescued. the ringleaders were killed and they, too, were deported--this time not to a warm desert but to a cold one, an icy wasteland devoid of nearly all life. unlike their brethren who were sent to the desert, they were able to survive. the new leader’s line were in power on and off for hundreds of thousands of years, lasting all the way down to the days of the galra empire. eventually, a commander was born from that line who would once again wreak havoc upon alteans--a commander with an almighty grudge against the supposed wrong that the moon elves had committed. that commander’s name was sendak.

Modern-day Galra perspective

[TW racism]

once there was a band of noble warriors seeking to colonize other worlds for the glorious name of the galra empire. since they came from a desert, they naturally sought out other deserts to colonize first, and found one on the planet altea. this desert was inhabited by near-naked brown-skinned savages in face paint and loincloths who had, instead of a language, strings of incomprehensible garble. the warriors drew their swords and cut down massive swathes of these savages, who had nothing more than simplistic bows and arrows with which to defend themselves. the galra had the option to conquer them and make them their slaves, but they were so pathetic that the warriors did not even find them worth subjugating. so they moved on to conquer newer, better worlds, leaving the savages to squat forever in their anarchistic squalor. the end.

(wow, that was really fucking painful to write.)

[cubedcoffeecake]

Unfortunately, That Was Better in Theory

Pairing: gen Drarry

Word Count: ~3200

Beta'd by the AMAZING @drarrytingz. Much love to her. <3 This is the top right corner square of my board for HD Birthday Bash's first challenge, Fic Tac Toe. The picture is of Hogwarts at night, and my brain went right to first year. So, understandably, the Drarry is far from romantic at this point. The story somehow started picking up headcanons as it snowballed down the hill, though, so I have to admit that this is only very loosely based on the actual prompt. Also posted on Ao3. I hope you enjoy!

It was terrifying, sneaking out of the dorms at night. Draco couldn’t fathom why Potter did it so much. Initially, he  thought Potter just enjoyed the freedom of it, but this wasn’t freedom. This wasn’t just getting to do whatever you wanted, which was an admittedly pleasing thought. This was knowing that you’d face horrible consequences if anyone saw you—consequences heavy enough to negate any enjoyment. He had a mission, though, and it was a noble one.

From the time Draco was a small child, he had loved dragons. They were mighty, and strong, and beautiful, and special. They were a remnant of the times of wizards past, when dragons were commonly known by both Muggles and magical alike. All of the Ancient Noble Houses claimed some convoluted connection to dragons. They were associated with riches, and with preserving your own. Everything Draco was and wanted to be could be found in a dragon.

Adoring dragons and owning them, however, were very different. Mother and Father encouraged him to admire dragons, but ensured he never forgot that dragons’ most noteworthy trait was their independence. They did not share their hoard. They did not fly with others. They were great, but they were solitary. They had neither masters nor friends. Dragons were meant to be remembered and respected, but admired from afar. Owning one was a preposterous concept that disregarded and denied dragons their independence, and always ended poorly for the foolish “owner.” Draco wanted to be like a dragon, but he knew not to want one.

Hagrid, however, was a fool. No matter how great the creature, he always believed that he could be both their owner and their friend. As if dragons had either! “Raising a dragon egg” was an insult!

Draco had known the moment he heard of this travesty that he had to put a stop to it. The authorities would kill it, though, and dragon reserves were too scrupulous  for the appearance of a random dragon egg not to arouse suspicion. Draco  had to find a way to alert the professors. Surely, they would take the matter to the school board, and Father would ensure the dragon was given sanctuary! It was the only way everything would work out. The only problem was, Draco had to catch Potter with the egg, or Hagrid would have a chance to hide it, which would only cause more trouble.

In Draco’s mind, using Potter’s own nightly stint against him would work perfectly. Aside from the minor rule-breaking on his part, this was a chance for everything to go smoothly.

Chances meant nothing, as it turned out. The dragon was now beyond Draco’s help and he had not only broken the rules, but also fallen for Potter’s ruse and was, therefore, a fool. Professor Snape may have believed him, but whether or not Draco was in the right would not matter to Father. He had been caught. No matter how wonderful your intentions, they’re meaningless if you’re caught.

A Malfoy had not received detention in four generations, and no Malfoy had ever been in a detention as severe as Draco’s. No Malfoy had ever lost Slytherin as many points at once as Draco had, and many Malfoys had not lost that many points during their entire time at Hogwarts. Many, Draco thought, was more likely most. Though Father was softening the blows a bit in his letters, Draco knew the underlying message was true.

He had been at Hogwarts for less than a semester, and had already sullied his family name—the one thing he was trying hardest not to do. So, as frustrated and worried as Draco was leading up to  his detention, he knew he deserved it, at least to some extent. Though he was giving Vincent and Gregory an earful about the unfairness of it all, Draco knew  it was more unpleasant than unfair.

Well, that’s what Draco had thought before learning that he would be entering the Forbidden Forest. There was nothing fair about that. Had Father known? Surely, this must be illegal!

The bushes crackled, and Draco jumped. He had read all about the kinds of creatures that occupied the Forest, and heard of the lesser known  ones from Father. Draco used to believe the Forbidden Forest would be similar to the ones he enjoyed exploring on the Malfoy lands, but they were in fact extremely different. Malfoy forests had mice and nice little rat snakes, swift and shining, but ultimately harmless. There were owls and hawks and songbirds, toads and beetles and worms, buzzing insects he knew better as potion ingredients, deer, foxes, and some other harmless small creatures. Few things magical, though, outside of a few benign creatures and plants also commonly used in potions.

In the Forbidden Forest, though….

As Draco trudged along by Potter and his Gryffindor cronies, his mind was filled with visions of werewolves and centaurs and too-big cats with too-big teeth, and twisted magical versions of foxes that worked in packs to disorient you and then eat you, and fish with teeth as long as his fingers, and poisonous toads, vicious disease-bearing insects, deadly flora, and whatever was apparently killing unicorns, some unknown monster beyond imagination that no one knew how to combat. Draco had been afraid many times in his life, but he had never been so acutely afraid of his own death before. His only solace was that Hagrid, brute that he was, might be a more desirous food source for whatever they’d encounter. Perhaps Draco would have time to run while it ate him. He could grab Potter, too, maybe, drag him with him. Even gits like Potter didn’t really deserve a death that terrible. As long as it got to Hagrid first….

No, but of course, Draco was paired with Potter while the other two got Hagrid and a feral dog that was as likely to attack them as anything of the Forest. He’d changed his mind. Potter could die as horribly as he wanted, Draco was just going to run.

Unfortunately, running worked better in theory than in practice.

Yes, of course, Draco and Potter encountered the unicorn-killing beast. Humanoid, horrifying, and looking like it would eat them next. And of course, Draco followed his plan and ran, leaving Potter to be eaten first.

It was faster, though—so much faster. Which would’ve been all right, as it did indeed go straight for Potter, but…

Draco had gotten into this mess because he cared too much. He could pretend to be as logical and cold-hearted and calculating as could be asked of him, but in reality, he was willing to break a school rule and endanger his own status to save a dragon. Draco couldn’t just leave Potter behind at the mercy of that… that… thing.

He stopped, and he turned around, and he tried to think of the strongest, nastiest curse he’d ever heard Father cast. Not an Unspeakable, Draco knew you couldn’t cast those until you were older… not anything that would mess with the mind, who knew if it even had one…but it needed to cause extreme physical harm…

Too long! He was thinking too much! It had grabbed Potter by the neck, and now he was screaming, screaming, screaming. Draco couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but there was blood everywhere, both red, human blood and the priceless silvery unicorn blood already turning black as he watched. Why was he still just watching? It was reaching its other hand up; it was going to snap Potter’s neck, oh Merlin, he was going to watch someone die. Merlin Merlin Merlin, where was Fang? How could Draco do anything if the terrifying hellhound had fled?!

There was a sound, echoing over Potter’s screams. Laughter. It was laughing as it reached to snap Potter’s neck, and… that was it. Rage overpowered Draco’s terror. He didn’t know what he incanted, or if he spoke at all. He simply cast, wildly, and it looked up at him, but his magic was faster than even its reflexes, and Draco’s magic launched it across the clearing with an inhuman howl. It hit the ground by the unicorn with a crunch.

Draco paused for a moment as what he’d just done sunk in.. He’d… he’d attacked it. Oh Merlin, it was going to wake up and kill them both now!

“Potter!” he cried, running forward. “Potter, get up! We have to go now, before it comes back over!”

“I—what?” Potter started to sit up as Draco reached him, but his eyes were dazed and unfocused. With a grimace, Draco guessed that Potter probably wouldn’t be okay enough to think for a while. Hopefully, he was just recovering from the lack of oxygen; if he was concussed, Draco likely would not be able to help him escape the Forest in time.

“Look here, Potter. You are going to do exactly what I say, and you’re going to do it quickly, and we’re going to live. Yes? Yes?!”

“Yes! I—okay,” Potter stuttered.

That was enough answer for Draco, who grabbed Potter’s arm and pulled up. He couldn’t hear any noise from the clearing, which wasn’t nearly as reassuring as it should have been. Potter scrambled to comply with Draco’s tugs, and together they got him upright. Immediately, Draco started pulling them into a run toward where he thought the edge of the Forest probably was...hopefully. Potter stumbled more than ran, but Draco’s vice-like grip kept him upright and moving.

“Where are—do we have a plan? Or are we just running?” Potter huffed after a minute, beginning to run more on his own power than Draco’s. He seemed far too calm for the situation; Draco was so scared he couldn’t articulate an answer. After a moment, Potter must have realized this, as he suddenly started yelling for Hagrid’s mutt, which… was actually brilliant. Draco joined in with the yelling. The unicorn killer was probably on their tail already—though Draco couldn’t bring himself to look back and check.

There was a sharp crack to their right, and Draco gasped. At the same moment that Fang leaped through the bushes, Draco lost his footing and fell, his ankle cracking more sharply than the twigs Fang had snapped.

“Fang! Thank Merlin, he can show us the way—oh no, Malfoy?!”

A distant part of his head registered that someone—Potter, probably—was speaking, but Draco couldn’t focus on it. All he could feel was the shooting pain in his lower leg, the thudding of his heart, the lightness in his head, and the soft but solid ground under him. His eyes drifted shut, and he let out a shallow breath. Draco could feel himself losing consciousness, but wasn’t fighting it, until he felt a hand on his shoulder, distracting him from the pain and his heart and his breathing, and bringing the terrified begging, “Please don’t pass out, Malfoy, please, I don’t know what to do—” into focus.

Potter, he realized. I—I have to get up. I have to get up. He doesn’t know what to do. I have to get up. Draco’s breath rushed back to him, and he pushed himself off the ground just enough to roll over, wincing at the pain that shot through his leg.

“Oh, thank Merlin! Malfoy, are you alright? I don’t know where it is, but it can’t be too far behind us, just enough that Fang isn’t scared, I think—oh—oh—your ankle… it shouldn���t bend like that.” Potter sounded like he might be green in the face.

“Brilliant, Potter,” he groused, “but I did notice.” For once Potter didn’t rise to the bait.

“You’re gonna—we’re gonna need to find somewhere to hide, for the night, and then we can have Fang lead us out in the morning, I—I can help you walk, I think….”

“No! Well, I… I…” Draco didn’t have a better idea. “Okay.”

“O—Okay. Yeah. Here, let’s just, I’ll drag you under those bushes over there. Yeah. Can I grab under your arms?”

“I suppose.”

“Alright… here we go… I’ve got you… Ouch, you’re heavier than you look!”

“Are you calling me fat?! Now, here?!”

“No!”

“Maybe you’re just weak.”

“I am not! How could you—can you not? For one minute?!”

“Not what? Point out your stupidity?”

“Yes! I mean, no! I’m not stupid—”

Suddenly, Fang whined, and both boys gasped and fell silent. Potter nearly dropped Draco as he quickly looked around. There were a bunch of glowing eyes in the trees behind them.

“Oh Merlin—we’re going! Help me, please, if you can?” Potter said quickly, sounding panicked. Draco’s heart was pounding again, and he tried to use his uninjured leg to push himself along.

The eyes disappeared for a moment, just to suddenly reappear all around them. Everywhere. Draco screamed.

Draco thought he’d woken up, for a moment, but all he could see were faint, swimming lights. Dull ones, at that. His body felt weightless, with some kind of light pressure all over. He drifted away—no, he couldn’t have, he’d never been awake in the first place.

When he awoke again, however, it was to pain and screaming. His pain, not his screaming. Harry…Harry’s screaming. Potter. Oh, Merlin.

Eyes shooting open, Draco gasped as he blurrily surveyed his surroundings. There was movement everywhere, and Potter was still screaming—though it sounded more like a battle cry than Draco thought his ever had. Looking closer… oh.

Spiders. All of the movement was from spiders. Huge, hairy spiders that were all revolving around Potter, who…

Well, Potter was just curled against a tree, and when Draco realized there was a giant snake separating him from the spiders… he fainted. Not from terror, of course; it was entirely due to his injuries. He’d swear it later. Injured, remember? Ankle.

“Malfoy. Malfoy! Are you in there? Please, please wake up… I don’t… I don’t know what I’ll… you cannot die. Do you hear me?!”

“Of course I hear you, you never shut up,” Draco mumbled. Then he paused. “Wait.”

“I’ll explain everything! Just, whoa, I don’t think… that you can—should! That you should stand yet,” Potter stuttered as Draco tried to push himself upright.

“I—” Draco had too little leverage. He didn’t know what was going on at all. He’d been in the Forest… with Potter… unicorn-eater… spiders. Giant snake. “Yes. Explain. Everything. Now.”

Potter looked disbelieving and exasperated. Good. Draco shouldn’t be the only one miserable here.

“So… we were both, um, attacked by spiders? Really big ones. I think they attacked us. But yeah, we—I, woke up in a spider web… cocoon? All wrapped up in silk. And I was… well I didn’t have my wand, so… powerless, I guess. Couldn’t do anything.

“I just started crying for help as loudly as I could. I called for Fang, and Hagrid, and McGonagall…even Snape, eventually. I thought he might care about you enough to look, and all. But no one answered or anything, so I started calling for anyone to help us, please, and all of a sudden I heard someone! They answered! Something about hearing a speaker, and that being rare or something, and that they’d save me! I mean, us; I insisted they save us both….”

“A… mysterious voice. Agreed to save you.”

“Us!”

“Uh huh.”

“It did!”

“Oh, so go on. How was I saved by this wonderful voice?”

Potter appeared to be full of righteous indignation for his friend, the disembodied voice. “They cut us free from the spiders’ ropes! And then chased off the spiders!” Wait. Wait.

“Potter...was this disembodied voice a giant snake?!”

Potter froze. “You… woke up during that?” he asked tentatively, starting to… blush? “I swear, Malfoy, I was just screaming because I was disoriented. I grabbed you as soon as I realized what was going on!”

“You talked to a snake! Do you know what that means?”

“I’m not as stupid as you thought I was?”

“You’re a Parselmouth!” Draco screeched.

“Can you at least stick with insults I understand?” Potter complained.

“No, you utter imbecile! Being able to speak Parseltongue is a blood-given magical ability passed down in the most powerful descendants of Salazar Slytherin, that allows the witch or wizard  to speak to snakes—and some variations of dragon—and cast some spells wandlessly because it is a distilled language of literal magic! You don’t learn it, can’t learn it, but if you speak it, you automatically know everything about it! Perfect grammar, full vocabulary… Potter, you being a Parselmouth means you are the greatest Slytherin to grace Hogwarts’ halls since… I don’t even know! Slytherin himself, perhaps! The Dark Lord was also a Parselmouth, but you’ve bested him, which makes you a stronger Parselmouth, and… Merlin.” Draco gasped in a few breaths and stared dazedly at a tree. He now knew  a Parselmouth. He’d been saved from giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest by a Parselmouth. He’d…

“But… I’m a Gryffindor!”

He’d forgotten that Potter was also stupid.

“That’s your personality, not your magic identity,” Draco recited. “I don’t remember the rest of that drivel, it’s in Hogwarts: A History somewhere, but it’s a true bit. I’d hate to room with you or Weasley, but all that means is that I like a quiet, clean dorm room, not that I can never do a brave thing, or be bold. They have nothing to do with each other. No, Potter, you’re definitely a Parselmouth.” Draco was gazing dreamily again.

Potter’s jaw hung open for a moment, and he seemed insulted, for some reason, but Draco went on, not paying him much attention.

“Parselmouths have a unique advantage over ordinary wizards, just like Metamorphmagi, for example. Most known Parselmouths have either become hermits, so they can live peacefully with mostly snakes and natural magic for their company, or have become strong leaders of something or another. In those cases, they’re usually untouchable because the level of servitude they receive from serpents makes it terrifying to even think of assassinating them…”

“Stop!”

Draco jumped and looked over at Potter.

“I don’t even want to know how you know this much about this stuff, but all I’m hearing is you spouting off facts about people who are…” Potter’s voice was trembling. “Who are not me, and are not stuck in the Forbidden Forest with another injured person. Yeah, I talked to a snake, they saved us from the spiders, but from now on, we’re on our own. All that about… greatness? Was that the moral of the story? That can wait. Right now, we need to live.”

At first Draco was hurt, a feeling that soon became offense. Moral?! He wasn’t a bloody Gryffindor! Potter had a great gift! He was equipping him with knowledge, as a fellow Slytherin! That hadn’t been Potter’s point, though. As soon as his ankle was mentioned, the pain in it returned with a vengeance, and Draco faced the truth. Potter was right. They must escape the Forest, and they must do it quickly.

“It’s… it’s morning light right now. You were right, a few minutes ago,” Draco said softly, “Headmaster Dumbledore will be sending out professors soon to look for us. We should be alright, if we can stay awake...are you...injured? Should I try to wrap anything?” Though the offer was extended awkwardly, Draco did it anyway. This was no longer just another ignorant, Muggle-raised peer. Potter was going to be great.

[theotherscarmanthewoman]

Season 2 Episode 5: ‘Daleks...I hate those guys’ (and other stories)

In fact, he talks to the Daleks with cool contempt, and tells Ian they’d better put their wits against the Daleks and defeat them; hilariously, the Dalek tells him it can, y’know, hear what they’re saying. Oh and thanks, InfoText, for alerting me to a cut Ian line: ‘When all the history of Earth is put together, the Daleks won’t occupy more than one half a page.’ WHY DID THEY CUT THIS it’s a lovely little line and indeed shows him thinking in Barbara’s terms. Anyway, the Doctor doesn’t believe resistance is in any way futile (because of course) and that if the Daleks are going to conquer the Earth they’re going to have to destroy all living matter. Well, they probably will. As the Space Bros are dragged off by the Robomen, the Dalek rather shakily repeats ‘WE ARE THE MASTERS OF EARTH’ to itself like it’s a therapist’s mantra. Daleks are hella insecure. Back at the rebel base, everyone is listening to the Daleks broadcasting an ultimatum: survivors are to show themselves in the street and live or be killed horribly. Presumably Babs and Susan have already been briefed on the whole Dalek thing, because they seem unphased by this returning nightmare. Dortmun (the scientist in the wheelchair) scoffs at what he refers to as the ‘motorised dustbins’ (which was a rehearsal ad lib—thanks, InfoText!), and Tyler tells Jenny—a defensively hardfaced woman in the resistance who is somewhere between my idol and my spirit animal—to go and find food for Babs and Susan and see to Susan’s ankle. Because this is what women do in the twenty-second century. What she also does, fortunately, is command a certain level of respect: for one thing, when she goes around asking questions, they get sensible answers. She goes over and asks who the one with the bad ankle is, with the bluntest bedside manner ever; Susan is reasonably aggressive in identifying herself as the hobbler, and has her foot unceremoniously yanked about for her trouble. Hilariously, considering how Babs spent all that time mucking about in the diseased river last week, Jenny asks why nobody put a wet bandage on it (which seems to be the universal cure for a bad ankle in Classic Who), and an indignant Babs points out they’ve only just arrived. Jenny sees to the ankle, and continues to be brusque as hell sending Babs off for the food. Babs politely points out she doesn’t know where it is, and responds to Jenny’s instructions to sign them both up for work with indignation on account of the fact that Susan can’t work because of her bad ankle. Jenny points out that Susan could do something, y'know, sitting down. Then this happens:

Jenny, let me love you for doing my job; Babs, let me love you because WHAT an eyebrow. I LOVE SEEING THESE TWO INTERACT. It’s so unusual for Barbara not to be the most capable woman (and let's face it, often the most capable human/person) in the room, so it’s a complete change of dynamic to have two incredibly capable older women (ugh I hate that phrase because they’re not old at all, so let’s just say women over thirty) onscreen. Jenny, although she radiates competence, is also prickly as hell and brusque to the point of rudeness—almost Doctor-like, actually, in the early days before Babs got to him. And you can see Barbara being ever-so polite and suddenly coming across as this rather prim sixties schoolteacher but also rolling her eyes like ‘here we go again’. Also, as I shall discuss later, I have complex-ish headcanons about Barbara identifying with Jenny simultaneously in terms of a pre-Barbara Doctor and a potential post-war, post-Ian-hypothetically-dying Barbara. But more of that anon. Also I ship these two like crazy. Sorry not sorry, hashtag Bibara, hashtag Barbara loves a Dalek-fighting blonde, hashtag why the hell not. Anyway, Dortmun is talking to Tyler about attacking the Daleks; Tyler gets in a quip about this not being the twentieth century where men with bayonets charged at machine guns. That’s two for two in terms of serials and references to WWI. Dortmun wheels himself over to a shelf where he’s apparently left his new bomb lying around. He puts it on the table and declares it finished. Tyler asks whether it’s been tested; it hasn’t. Dortmun is a terrible scientist/tactician. I mean I get it, he’s got a chip on his shoulder about being in the chair, but that doesn’t mean his blind faith in his own theoretical formula is an adequate substitute for an actual weapons test. Enter David through the chute in the wall with a crate of apples. And corrects Jenny on something? I dunno, I still don’t like David (yet). Meanwhile, Dortmun is yelling at Tyler for thinking like a worm. Ugh, do shut up, Dortmun. Tyler (I quite like Tyler) protests that they’ve got to have a decent chance of survival. Which is sensible. David rocks up and tells them about Ian and the Doctor being taken, and Dortmun reckons it’s a shame as they could’ve used those two. Dortmun has more than a touch of the Captain Ahabs.

At the saucer at the Chelsea heliport, Ian and the Doctor have been brought face to face with more Daleks. Ian, bless him, has some classic ‘Doctor, I don’t understand’ companion dialogue so the Doctor can do a spot of exposition. Ian doesn’t get how the Daleks can be here when Team Tardis saw them destroyed already; the Doctor tells Ian that what happened on Skaro was a million years in the future. (How does he know that when the Tardis controls are buggered? And how do the Daleks on Skaro not recognise Team Tardis? Ach, Dalek timelines are an omnishambles. But this is apparently the middle history of the Daleks.) As more prisoners enter, Ian observes that the Daleks look different these days what with the discs on their backs, and reckons it might have something to do with their increased mobility—remember, they could only move on metal on Skaro. The Doctor reminds Ian that this is an invasion force and must adapt itself to local conditions. Though this doesn’t, as yet, include stairs. One guy who killed two of the Robomen is brought forwards, and his friend decides to make a run for it…and is murdered by the Daleks. There’s a rather poignant moment where Ian stops the guy running to help his friend, yelling ‘you can’t help him now’. Because obviously Ian has seen the Daleks kill before. And it’s a nasty scene, actually. I sometimes get a teeny bit frustrated when Classic Who gets painfully slow, but actually it’s a hundred times more effective having the Daleks silently close in around the terrified man who yells for help he knows won’t come. Anyway, the Dalek Supreme (who has ‘a different paint job’—thanks, InfoText!) tells the other prisoners to expect more of the same if they run, and the Space Bros are herded into the ship. (Is it just me, or does Dalek Supreme sound like a pizza? I’ve always thought this. Am I alone?) Back at resistance HQ, Susan is holding David’s gun while he polishes it. And I don’t know just what to do with that image. David continues to earn my loathing by telling Susan about the men being at the saucer but insisting that they not tell Barbara. For reasons? Why is David a dick to Barbara? Why has Susan allowed herself to be taken in by the bullshit logic he offers when she protests? Enter Jenny (a.k.a. Classic Who's new Queen of No Time For Your Shit) with a Roboman’s helmet and holds it out to David, who has apparently asked for a look at it. When he carries on with what he’s doing, this happens:

Jenny: Well here you are, then, take them. I’ve got better things to do. David: Oh, you’re a model of charm and patience, aren’t you? Jenny: Well I don’t believe in wasting time! And I don’t believe in sentiment either.

YES JENNY! SMASH HIM! Also, someone’s been Hurt Bad, haven’t they? Enter Babs, breathless with admiration and looking eager to please, and in a weird reversal of the ‘apple for the teacher’ thing, brings Jenny some apples. When Jenny rather carelessly tells her to just put them down, Babs rolls her eyes yet again and lobs an apple at her Space Daughter and soon-to-be Space Son-in-Law. Who seems to have learned some manners at least and thanks her. But more importantly, Barbara, never ever stop pulling those faces.

Babs picks up the Roboman helmet and asks Susan what it is (hurrah!) but when Susan (correctly) tells Babs that they (meaning, I assume the beings from which they were taken) are called Robomen, David cuts across her and tells her she’s got it wrong, and proceeds to mansplain that the devices were taken from dead human beings. I mean, I suppose you could make the case for David trying to afford the mutilated human slaves some dignity in death, but Susan’s answer was more useful. Jenny chips in about the Daleks needing helpers and operating on prisoners; David explains about the Daleks controlling the brains for a bit. Babs, rather naively, asks whether the humans revert afterwards, and Jenny answers her with ruthless bleakness: ‘They die.’ David talks about the Robos going crazy and killing themselves, and Barbara realises just what she saw when she found that body in the river last week. Then, in a classic Babs move, she permits herself to wax lyrical: ‘Daleks…everything they touch turns into a horrible sort of nightmare.’ Well, quite. Susan asks if they’re still making Robomen, and Jenny again answers: yes, and they got her brother last year. Well, that explains a lot. Oblivious to the fact that Ian and the Doctor are at a heliport, Jenny tells Susan that once the Daleks have you on board a saucer you haven’t got a hope; Susan looks horrified. As well she might. Digression: this is what I meant when I said that for Babs looking at Jenny was probably like looking at one potential future self—a future self after ten years of war and having lost her Space Fam. I mean don’t get me wrong, Babs is a very different person if only because she tends to luxuriate in her morbid streak or fixate on the absurd when things get grim, whereas Jenny has been hardened by her experiences and uses that hardness as a defence mechanism. But I at least find it interesting that this is the first time Babs has met a woman her own age on her travels and instantly tries to reach out (who can blame her after all those weeks spent mothering Susan?) only to realise that she has another right pain-in-the-arse on her hands. Albeit one with whom she nevertheless empathises because of course Babs’s Space Fam is what keeps her grounded even as she develops in the face of extreme adversity, whereas Jenny has recently lost her brother. Back on the saucer, the InfoText tells me of some cut dialogue in which Ian chides the Doctor for sounding like the secretary of the Dalek Fan Club and the Doctor retorts by saying ‘One can admire the ingenuity of a people without condoning their ethics’. He later calls the Daleks the most brutal but the most brilliant people in the universe. Which is interesting insofar as they clearly cut it to make his morals more human/less problematic. Anyway, the Doctor is pretty confident he can get them out of the cell into which they’ve been placed. The Daleks spy on them and think the Doctor’s spiel about resistance etc. means he’s more intelligent than other humans so they’re going to give him The Test. Whatever that is.

Inside the cell, the Doctor chides the new guy (Jack Craddock) for being pessimistic and Ian asks how the Daleks invaded and that. Craddock asks whether they’ve been on moon station; they hastily agree. Though I call bullshit on that, as surely ten years is enough time to figure out the Earth has been invaded. Anyway, ten years ago the Earth was bombarded with meteorites and everyone got the plague. The Daleks waited for everyone to get weak from the germ bombs and eventually the survivors were either too spread out or too few to resist effectively. There are some interesting alternative versions of this in the InfoText which has it begin in 1980 and sounds eerily like it had post-Trump USA and post-Brexit Britain in mind, because one is at war with Russia and China while the other is on the brink of war with Europe. Mankind forgets its differences and unites against the Daleks, proving that xenophobia always wins, it’s just a matter of scale. The other version has bacteria bombs and oh I don’t have to explain it because apparently Terry Nation reused the scenario for his 1975 TV series The Survivors. Which I’d like to see. Though it does sound a bit H.G. Wells. Anyway, we cut back to David explaining what happened to Babs and Susan, who is (rather worryingly) holding the barrel of David’s gun to her chin. PUT THE GUN DOWN, SUSAN. ‘Divide and conquer,’ observes history teacher Babs, knowingly, and David agrees. David starts to explain that it was at this point that the Dalek saucers arrived and they started killing people, but honestly I’m just distracted and mega impressed by the Dalek operators managing to zoom down the ramp and turn off like that. Oh though apparently on the first attempt one of them went smashing into a camera. I’m not surprised. Anyway, WELL DONE, DALEK OPERATORS. Ahem. The Daleks turned people into Robomen, the end. I think? I’m sorry, I’m usually mega into post-apocalyptic world-building but I’m also mega into Dalek manoeuvres.

Craddock’s voice takes over saying how the Daleks knew full well the psychological impact of using their own people against them, and we’re treated to an image of a Roboman knocking a woman to the ground just so we know how bad stuff is. Then Ian asks what we’re all thinking: WHY? Oh Ian, you do NOT want to know. Anyway, apparently the Daleks have turned the whole of Bedfordshire into a gigantic mine. The Doctor gives zero fucks about ‘all this blab about Bedfordshire’ because it’s escape time. The Daleks issue a final warning, telling the resistance that if they come and work for them, they get life. Obvious and chilling Nazi parallels are both obvious and chilling. (Also, has anyone ever listened to the Dalek Empire stories from Big Finish? Because it’s one of the few things I have from Big Finish and it’s brilliant, if only because a lot of it is about Dalek labour camps and resistance and collaboration and it’s dead interesting. I mean I only have I-III, but I would absolutely recommend.) Back at Resistance HQ, the Rebels of London are listening and a random lady extra has hysterics. Dortmun starts waving his untested bomb around saying they’ll come out of hiding…WITH THIS, claiming it will shatter the Daleks’ casing. Instant hubbub! Though through it I see Jenny sternly asking how many they’ve got, being told by Tyler ‘we’ve got enough’, and retorting ‘well, I hope so’. Heart eyes. I do like Tyler, too, actually. Jenny objects strongly to a frontal attack, and oh I’m glad the InfoText is on because I can confirm that I’m not imagining things and Dortmun is indeed modelled a bit on Churchill, because the rhetoric he cracks out about just needing one victory is distinctly Churchillian. He stands for good measure. Jenny still isn’t drinking the Kool Aid and asks how they get close enough to the heliport to throw the bombs; Tyler says they have plenty of cover from buildings; some guy (Baker?) says the Daleks will start firing on them; Dortmun says it will be a SURPRISE attack; Baker says as soon as the first bomb is thrown the surprise will be over. And then—brace yourselves for gushing—BARBARA ROLLS HER EYES AND PIPES UP: they can get right into the middle of the Daleks if they disguise themselves as Robomen! (Which apparently was what they were already doing in an earlier script but bless whoever changed it.) Tyler beams at her and tells her it’ll work; Susan pops up behind her Space Mum and hugs her delightedly and oh I do love how in this serial everyone falls in love with Babs whenever she has a good idea. Because this is essentially what I do. Anyway, they attack in one hour! Hurrah!

Back in the cell, there’s a crystal box thing and a magnifying glass and some bars and essentially it’s the test the Daleks were talking about but the Doctor reckons it’s there so Daleks can get out if they’re locked in and they do a Sciency thing with some sort of electromagnetism and get out of the cell. I’m sorry I can’t go into more detail because it makes no sense but there is a cute bit where the Doctor asks Ian whether he did three-dimensional graph geometry at his school and Ian rather sheepishly says he only ever did Boyle’s Law and the Doctor makes a terrible Dad Joke about having to Boyle this down and giggles like he’s been the wittiest man in the universe and Ian grins and yeah the Space Bros are just too much. Oh and this happens:

Ian: You know, Doctor, sometimes you astound me. Doctor: Only sometimes, dear boy? What's happened to your memory?

Oh and the Doctor rather proudly tells Craddock they managed to outwit the Daleks once before and tells him to go away. They open the door with magnets. Which is educational. The Doctor tells everyone to get out of here ‘and be crafty’…only to run right into a Dalek patrol. The Robomen take the Doctor off to be Robotised, and Ian and Craddock are shoved back into the cell. Outside, Barbara, David, and Susan are lurking. According to the InfoText, Susan, who feels super involved with the insurgents’ struggle, asks to go with David without telling Barbara, who remains behind at the rebel base. Again, I am enormously thankful that they changed this, though I’m sad that we don’t get to see more of Susan actually feeling involved at this point, which would make her thing with David make more sense. And give her a properly satisfying character arc. Nevertheless, the badass bouffant is here, too, and I am very glad about that. The Doctor is being dragged over to the Robotising machine or whatever it’s called. There’s a bit that, much like the bit where the Daleks very slowly surround that extra and kill him, makes me feel super uncomfortable where the Daleks instruct the Robomen to take the Doctor’s coat off him, which they do by force. Which is really horrible. Not only because it makes the Doctor seem really, really vulnerable but also because he stretches his hand out towards his coat in genuine anguish, which only bolsters my headcanon about Gallifreyans deriving their health from fabulous clothing (see Susan’s apparent allergy to squalor in The Reign of Terror). They manhandle him onto the operating table. Outside the saucer, the fake Robomen are trying to blag their way past the Daleks and are almost immediately rumbled, but who cares, because now the fabulous Babs and Susan are lobbing bombs at the Daleks!

Oh and here’s some InfoText: apparently Jacqueline Hill got a bit too into it and bruised her knuckles on the window frame in this scene, which caused the BBC’s head of serials to write her a letter about ‘being a big brave girl’. I hope she knew him well and he was being funny, because otherwise that’s just patronising as hell. Also, one day I will do a master post on Jacqueline Hill v Sets, beginning with that time she broke the rockface in the spelunking section on Skaro. God this scene must’ve been bedlam to film. There’s smoke and extras and bangs and people being exterminated and Daleks whizzing down ramps. They really went for broke on this serial what with this and all the location shooting and I bloody love it. Having said that, the Daleks don’t seem enormously affected by the bombs. Maybe Dortmun should’ve, y’know, ACTUALLY TESTED THEM. Tyler is now in the saucer, and looking for prisoners to rescue. Maybe he should start with the Doctor, WHO IS ABOUT TO BE ROBOTISED! SHIT THE BED WILL THE DOCTOR BECOME A DALEK ZOMBIE? WILL IAN BE RESCUED? WILL SUSAN AND DAVID STOP BEING DICKS AND PUT BARBARA IN THE LOOP? WHERE IS JENNY IN THIS FIGHT? AND WILL SUSAN'S NEWFOUND BADASSERY BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE? Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? With flying colours. Is the gaze problematic? Nope. Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? Nope. Save the girl or save the world? Whose decision is it? N/A. Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? Nope. Though Susan's ankle is still twisted. However, it recovers in time for her to go out to fight the Daleks. Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Nope. Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Nope. The Doctor and Ian are captured this week. Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Nope, it's the Space Bros who need rescuing this week. Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Apart from that extra, no, though Babs and Susan are in the middle of a guerrilla battle. Does a woman have to deal with a sexual predator? Nope. Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No. Does a woman faint at the sight of peril/horror or generally lose consciousness (discounting normal sleep)? Nope. Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? YES. And Susan is complicit, which infuriates me. Why on Earth didn't they tell Barbara that Ian and the Doctor were at the heliport? What did they think she was going to do? Have a fit of the vapours and find herself incapable of bowling overarm? Does a woman suffer in silence (to further the plot)? Nope. Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No. Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? No, and when David tries to blank Jenny she lets him know about it.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Nope.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Nope. That would be the Doctor himself.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? YES. The Roboman disguise plan.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? No.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? N/A.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Yes indeed. Both Barbara and Susan get to throw bombs at Daleks.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Nope. 

Is there past/future/alien sexism? There is still this idea that women are mostly responsible for food and first aid, even though Barbara and Susan (and later Jenny, as we shall see) go on the attack.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? Jenny responds to David's criticism of her lack of attractive feminine qualities (charm and patience) by calling him a sentimental time-waster. Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? David and Susan no longer violently dislike each other, but I wouldn't call it the hots just yet.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict A good week for the women, who get stuck in with the rebellion. We also get to meet Jenny, who is one of my favourite side characters of all time...possibly because she gets a Doctor-style character development arc in the space of one serial. Also, isn't it nice when you have more than one speaking role for a woman over thirty and they get to interact? So that here you get to see two different reactions to having been catapulted into a crazy way of living from two different human women? So that you are allowed to enjoy their strengths and flaws as people rather than constantly having to analyse said strengths and flaws in terms of their being the single onscreen representative of adult womanhood? I warmed to David a little more this week (if only because he referred to the two women as women rather than girls and remembered his p's and q's) but he also infuriated me with his mansplaining and his inexplicable wish to keep Babs in the dark. I also feel like they could have given Susan the character development that comes with actively asking to go on the mission and kept it so that Barbara also went along, as some of Susan seemed to get lost in the cut. The Space Bros continue to be Science Dorks, which I love, and the Daleks were actually pretty chilling this week. Also Dalek manoeuvres. I love Dalek manoeuvres. Next week, RUNNING AROUND LONDON WITH DALEKS.

[victoriagloverstuff]

40 of the Best Villains in Literature

Villains are the best. We may not love them in our lives, but they’re often the best part of our literature—on account of their clear power, their refusal of social norms, and most importantly, their ability to make stories happen. After all, if everyone was always nice and good and honest all the time, literature probably wouldn’t even exist.

To that end, below are a few of my favorites from the wide world of literary villainy. But what exactly does “best” mean when it comes to bad guys (and gals)? Well, it might mean any number of things here: most actually terrifying, or most compelling, or most well-written, or most secretly beloved by readers who know they are supposed to be rooting for the white hats but just can’t help it. It simply depends on the villain. Think of these as noteworthy villains, if it clarifies things.

This is not an exhaustive list, of course, and you are more than invited to nominate your own favorite evildoers in the comments section. By the way, for those of you who think that great books can be spoiled—some of them might be below. After all, the most villainous often take quite a few pages to fully reveal themselves.

Mitsuko, Quicksand, Junichiro Tanizaki

The brilliance of Mitsuko (and the brilliance of this novel) is such that, even by the end, you’re not sure how much to despise her. She is such an expert manipulator, such a re-threader of the truth, that she is able to seduce everyone in her path (read: not only Sonoko but Sonoko’s husband) and get them to like it. Including the reader, of course. In the end, Sonoko is still so devoted to her that the grand tragedy of her life is the fact that Mitsu did not allow her to die alongside her.

Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Because the very worst villain is . . . get this . . . actually inside you. Also, you just fell asleep one time and when you woke up it was your evil id and not you? We’ve heard that one before. (So has Buffy.)

Infertility, The Children of Men, P. D. James

Sure, Xan is also a villain in this novel. But the real, big-picture villain, the thing that causes everything to dissolve, and people to start christening their kittens and pushing them around in prams, has to be the global disease that left all the men on earth infertile.

The shark, Jaws, Peter Benchley

A villain so villainous that (with the help of Steven Spielberg) it spawned a wave of shark paranoia among beach-goers. In fact, Benchley, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, was so horrified at the cultural response to his work that he became a shark conservationist later in life.

The kid, The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

Take, take, take. This kid is the actual worst.

Professor Moriarty, “The Final Problem,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A criminal mastermind— “the Napoleon of Crime,” as Holmes puts it—and the only person to ever give the good consulting detective any real trouble (other than himself). Though after countless adaptations, we now think of Moriarty as Holmes’s main enemy, Doyle really only invented him as a means to kill his hero, and he isn’t otherwise prominent in the series. Moriarty has become bigger than Moriarty.

Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

The housekeeper so devoted to her dead ex-mistress that she’s determined to keep her memory alive—by goading her boss’s new wife to jump out of the window to her death. That’s one way to do it, I suppose.

Vanity, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

You could argue that it’s Harry who corrupts Dorian, and James who stalks and tries to murder him, but the real source of all this young hedonist’s problems is his own self-obsession. Sometimes I like to think about what this novel would be like if someone wrote it today, with Dorian as a social media star. . .

Uriah Heep, David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Few villains are quite so aggressively ugly as Uriah Heep (even the name! Dickens did not go in much for subtlety). When we first meet him, he is described as a “cadaverous” man, “who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand.” Some Dickens scholars apparently think that Heep was based on Hans Christian Andersen, in which case, mega burn—unless Andersen was into heavy metal.

The Grand Witch, The Witches, Roald Dahl

As “the most evil woman in creation,” she is on a mission to torture and kill as many children as possible, and often uses murder as a focusing device in meetings. She’s also kind of brilliant—I mean, murdering children by turning them into animals their parents want to exterminate? I have to say, that’s smart.

Cathy Ames, East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Cathy Ames is cold as ice—a sociopath who had to learn as a child how to mimic feelings to get by—but soon also learns how easy it is to manipulate, destroy lives, and murder people to amuse herself. Apparently all this is available to her because of her remarkable beauty. In the end, she has a single feeling of remorse and promptly kills herself.

Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

That’s right, I said it. Mired in self-pity! Sullen and annoying! Dresses up as a gypsy to mess with Jane’s mind! Keeps his first wife locked in the attic! Thinks he can marry a nice girl like Jane anyway! Gaslights her constantly! Whatever.

Zenia, The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

In Atwood’s retelling of the Grimm fairy tale “The Robber Bridegroom,” an evil temptress named Zenia steals the partners of three women (among many, one presumes). Roz, Charis, and Tony, however, use their mutual hurt and hatred to form a friendship—and unpack the many lies and revisions of herself Zenia has offered to each of them. But I can’t really put it better than Lorrie Moore did in a 1993 review of the novel:

Oddly, for all her inscrutable evil, Zenia is what drives this book: she is impossibly, fantastically bad. She is pure theater, pure plot. She is Richard III with breast implants. She is Iago in a miniskirt. She manipulates and exploits all the vanities and childhood scars of her friends (wounds left by neglectful mothers, an abusive uncle, absent dads); she grabs at intimacies and worms her way into their comfortable lives, then starts swinging a pickax. She mobilizes all the wily and beguiling art of seduction and ingratiation, which she has been able to use on men, and she directs it at women as well. She is an autoimmune disorder. She is viral, self-mutating, opportunistic (the narrative discusses her in conjunction with AIDS, salmonella and warts). She is a “man-eater” run amok. Roz thinks: “Women don’t want all the men eaten up by man-eaters; they want a few left over so they can eat some themselves.”

Becky Sharp, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

A cynical, manipulative, intelligent beauty with many artistic talents and a premium can-do attitude at her disposal. You’ve never met a more dedicated hustler. By the end, the novel seems to judge her pretty harshly—but I’ve always loved her.

Henry, The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Oh, Henry—brooding, brilliant, bone-tired Henry. Some in the Lit Hub office argued that it was Julian who was the real villain in Donna Tartt’s classic novel of murder and declension, but I give Henry more credit than that. His villainy is in his carefulness, his coldness, his self-preservation at all costs. He is terrifying because we all know him—or someone who could oh-so-easily slide into his long overcoat, one winter’s night.

Hubris, almost all of literature but let’s go with Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

Isn’t it awesome? We can just make dinosaurs! There is no foreseeable problem with this. We can totally handle it.

Arturo, Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

Here’s another novel with multiple candidates for Supreme Villain—should it be the Binewski parents, who purposefully poison themselves and their children in order to populate their freak show? Or should it be Mary Lick, a sort of modern millionaire version of Snow White’s Evil Queen, who pays pretty women to disfigure themselves? I think we have to go with Arturo the Aqua Boy, the beflippered narcissist who grows into a cult leader, encouraging his followers to slowly pare away their body parts in a search for “purity.” (But for the record, it’s all of the above.)

Dr. Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

It’s true that the monster is the murderer in Shelley’s classic novel—and also, you know, a monster—but it’s Dr. Frankenstein who decided he had to play God and build a creature in his own image without thought to the possible ramifications! Shelley treats him as a tragic figure, but that only makes him a much more interesting villain.

Hannibal Lecter, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, etc., Thomas Harris

Made iconic by Anthony Hopkins, of course, but made brilliant and terrifying—a serial killing psychiatrist cannibal, come on—by Thomas Harris. “They don’t have a name for what he is.” Also, he has six fingers—though they’re on his left hand, so it couldn’t have been him who killed Mr. Montoya. Still, it puts him in rare company.

Captain Ahab, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

Did you think the villain was the whale? The villain is not the whale—it’s the megalomaniac at the helm.

Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, William Shakespeare

The villainess of choice for every man who has ever claimed his wife made him do it. But I’ve always found Lady Macbeth more interesting than Macbeth himself—she’s the brains behind the operation, not to mention the ambition. Her sleepwalking scene is one of the best and most famous of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Even this makes me shiver:

Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

Sand, The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

It may be the devious villagers who trick the poor etymologist into the sand pit, but it is the sand itself that is the main antagonist in this slim and wonderful novel. The sand that keeps coming, and must be shoveled back. The sand that constantly threatens to swallow everything: first the man, then the woman, then the village—though one assumes the villagers would replace him before that happened. Sand.

Suburban Ennui, Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

In everyone’s favorite horror novel about America in the ’50s, onetime bohemians Frank and April Wheeler move to the ‘burbs, and find it. . . extremely stifling. But it’s not the suburbs exactly but the Wheelers’ inability to understand one another, their fear, their creeping, cumulative despair, that are the forces of destruction here.

“The book was widely read as an antisuburban novel, and that disappointed me,” Yates said in a 1972 interview.

The Wheelers may have thought the suburbs were to blame for all their problems, but I meant it to be implicit in the text that that was their delusion, their problem, not mine. . . I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that—felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit—and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the fifties.

David Melrose, Never Mind, Edward St. Aubyn

Fathers don’t get much worse than David Melrose: cruel, brutal, and snobbish, a man who enjoyed humiliating his wife, who raped his young son, and who seemed to doom all those close to him to a life of pain. You could also argue that the British Aristocracy is the villain in the Patrick Melrose books, but . . . David is definitely worse (if slightly less all-encompassing).

Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

Here’s a villain you can’t help but root for—I mean, sort of. You feel his pain as he tries to insinuate himself into the life of the man he so admires (and perhaps loves), and as he is first welcomed and then pushed away. Less so when he murders his beloved and assumes his identity—but somehow, as you read, you find yourself holding your breath around every corner, hoping he will escape yet again.

Rufus Weylin, Kindred, Octavia Butler

As slaveowners go, Rufus isn’t the worst (his father might rank) but he isn’t the best, either. He’s selfish and ignorant, and (like most men of the time) a brutal racist and misogynist, who doesn’t mind raping women as long as they act like they like it. Actually, the fact that he thinks he’s better than his father actually makes him worse. That said, the real antagonist in this novel might actually be the unknown and unexplained force that keeps transporting Dana from her good life in 1976 California to a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. What’s that about?

Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

Big Nurse rules the patients of the asylum ward with an iron fist. She is addicted to order and power, and can be quite cruel in commanding it. In comes McMurphy, our hero, who wants to undercut her. He does undercut her, in fact, a number of times—but when he goes too far, she has him lobotomized. The end! I know Ratched is meant to be evil, and it’s supposed to be depressing that she wins, but I can’t help but sort of like the fact that after a man chokes her half to death and rips off her shirt in an attempt to humiliate her (because no one with breasts can have power, you see!), she simply has him put down.

The Prison-industrial complex, The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner

Who is really the villain in Rachel Kushner’s most recent novel? It can’t be Romy; serving a life sentence for killing a man who was stalking her. It can’t be the man himself, who didn’t quite understand what he was doing. It can’t be any of the prisoners, nor any of the guards in particular. Nor is this a book with no villain, because the pulsing sense of injustice is too great. It is the whole thing, every aspect, of the American prison system—meant to catch you and bleed you and keep you and bring you back—that is the true villain in this novel (and often, in real life).

Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell

Of course it’s O’Brien who does most of the dirty work—but it’s Big Brother (be he actual person or nebulous invented concept) that really, um, oversees the evil here.

Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

He’s a shallow, narcissistic, greedy investment banker, and also a racist, a misogynist, an anti-Semite and a homophobe, and also a sadist and a murderer and a cannibal and Huey Lewis devotee. He’s also weirdly pathetic. Can’t really get any worse than that as a person—but as a character, he’s endlessly entertaining.

The General, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez

It’s José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra who is the most bloodthirsty, but the unnamed General (of the Universe) who is the most compelling villain in this novel: an impossibly long-lived tyrant who has borderline-magical control over the populace, and even the landscape, whose roses open early because, tired of darkness, he has declared the time changed; who sells away the sea to the Americans. He is desperately unhappy; he considers himself a god. Luckily, we get to spend almost the entire novel within his twisting brain.

Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

The genius of old Hum is how compelling he is—that is, despite the horrible thing he spends the entire novel doing (kidnapping a young girl whose mother he has murdered, driving her around the country and coaxing her into sexual acts, self-flagellating and self-congratulating in equal measure), you are charmed by him, half-convinced, even, by his grand old speeches about Eros and the power of language. In the end, of course, no amount of fancy prose style is enough to make you forget that he’s a murderer and worse, but for this reader, it’s pure pleasure getting there.

Ridgeway, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

The slave-hunting Ridgeway, Whitehead writes, “was six and a half feet tall, with the square face and thick neck of a hammer. He maintained a serene comportment at all times but generated a threatening atmosphere, like a thunderhead that seems far away but then is suddenly overhead with a loud violence.” He’s a little more interesting and intelligent than a simple brute—in part due to that sidekick of his—which only makes him more frightening as a character. Tom Hardy is a shoo-in for the adaptation.

Annie Wilkes, Misery, Stephen King

Listen: Annie Wilkes is a fan. She’s a big fan. She loves Paul Sheldon’s novels about Misery Chastain, and she is devastated to discover—after rescuing Sheldon from a car wreck—that he has killed off her beloved character. Things do not then go well for Paul, because as it turns out, Annie is already a seasoned serial killer who is very handy (read: murderous) with household objects.

The Republic of Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

The government that has taken control of America in the world of Atwood’s classic dystopia is a fundamentalist theocracy whose leaders have eliminated the boundary between church and state—and worse, have twisted religious principles and political power in an attempt to utterly subjugate all women, erasing their identities and allowing them to exist only so far as they may be of use to the state. It is super fucked up and exactly what I worry about in a country where fundamentalists have any among of political power.

The Earth, The Broken Earth series, N. K. Jemisin

It’s pretty hard to fight back when the thing you’re fighting is the earth itself, which punishes those who walk upon it with extreme, years-long “seasons” of dramatic and deadly climate change. Ah, Evil Earth!

Iago, Othello, William Shakespeare

The worst villain is the one who knows you best—the one you might even love. The scariest motive is the lack of one—what Coleridge called Iago’s “motiveless malignity.” The most interesting villain is the one who has even more lines than the titular hero. He is a fantastic villain, a dangerous trickster, whose character has stumped (and intrigued) critics for centuries.

Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

Possibly the most terrifying character in modern literature (or any literature?), Glanton’s deputy is over six feet tall and completely hairless. More importantly, despite the fact that he might be a genius, he inflicts senseless and remorseless violence wherever he goes. The man murders (and, it is suggested, rapes) children and throws puppies to their doom. He might actually be the devil—or simply evil itself. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

Slavery, Beloved, Toni Morrison

This entire novel is based on a single idea: that a loving mother might murder her baby daughter to save her from life as a slave. Sure, the slavers are bad (and the schoolteacher is particularly chilling). Sure, you could make an argument that the vengeful spirit Beloved’s presence is destructive, splintering further an already fractured family. But these are only symptoms, in this the Great American Novel, of the Great American Sin.

Satan, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

Good read found on the Lithub

[mado-science]

Yikes! I highly recommend this fascinating and terrifying read! The chapters about the horrors of cocci and how deadly chicken pox can be for an adult will give you nightmares. Go to Amazon

Good book but may end up upsetting so people, there is a lot out their waiting for you if you are compromised! Very interesting, learned a great deal about various infectious deceases. Some of the parasites are really bad, don't travel to 3rd word countries our eat salads in any restaurant! Plus, it really pays to get multiple opinions, because many doctors can be wrong and of course their opinion if wrong could kill you. It is difficult to imagine what life was like before antiseptics and antibiotics. Great book, if you are not a hypochondriac. Go to Amazon

Book on infectious diseases, parasites, worms, etc. I am finding this book to be very interesting. The author is an infectious disease physician, and she has written about some of her fascinating cases. It is a good refresher for medical folks as well as being entertaining if you are not in the medical field. I hate to put it down, and I have leafed ahead a time or two to see the diagnosis when it was not even obvious to the author. She is in a very interesting field, though it is sometimes sad and baffling. It is always interesting, and she has opened up to the reader some real puzzles which you will be glad she was able to figure out and to help. With all the travel we have in the world this field, infectious diseases, is going to become even more important than it ever was. Go to Amazon

Very Pleased Arrived in great condition. Go to Amazon

Intriguing Reading! I just can't express how much I enjoyed reading this book. The author takes us through the explanation of a disease from the very first symptoms to the end, whether through cure or death. There are no holds barred here, but the reading is not so technical that someone with even a modicum of medical experience can easily understand it. I appreciate that, and understand how difficult it is to keep things at just the right level. Thank you Dr. Nagami! Go to Amazon

LOVED. This was recommended to me from my professor LOVED. This was recommended to me from my professor. If you are wanting to go into the infectious disease prevention field, this is a must read. I love her writing. Easy and a fast read. Enjoyed it very much! Go to Amazon

THE BUG HUNTER DOCTOR Infectious disease should be a concern for everyone. At a time when drug companies rule the world, and the few new antibiotics they currently produce cost a fortune, it is time the public pays attention to their health. Reasonable hygiene should be taught at an early age. These stories provide a down-to-earth journey into the lives of the patients affected, and a glimpse into the detective work required to save lives. The personal life of the physician-author and her compassion for her patients shine through every page. Go to Amazon

Interesting stories full of information, but only for those ... Interesting stories full of information, but only for those into topics of the sort. Not for everyone. At times too detail ed in feelings at times in scien, but a fiar read . Go to Amazon

Not nearly as interesting as it could have been. Read it now! More people need to read this! Good read Woman with a Worm in Her Head You have a worm in your brain! Deeply insightful Good read Yikes! A great read for any micro interested reader Fascinating and horrifically gripping,

[ongames]

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

[yes-dal456]

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

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This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pqP6HI

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Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pqP6HI

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Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pqP6HI

[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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[rtawngs20815]

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pqP6HI

[chpatdoorsl3z0a1]

Why People With A Treatable Flesh-Eating Disease Don't Want The Cure

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

UTUT FOREST, Kenya ― Amos Kiptui is no stranger to hardship. He was born in a cave 27 years ago and still lives in one, despite run-ins with wild buffalo, deadly snakes, leopards and lions. 

So when thick, itchy welts began to appear on Kiptui’s right cheek, he took a sharp rock and scraped off layers of his skin, then packed the bleeding wound with traditional medicine made from bitter leaves. 

“You put the leaves on a piece of iron and make a fire,” he said, demonstrating with a small, battered metal sheet.

“You leave it to dry and crush it to powder,” he added. “Then you rub your wound with a stone until the blood starts oozing out and apply the powder.”

In the Utut Forest in Kenya’s Nakuru County, this treatment is believed to help heal a condition that people living here call “shetani,” meaning curse or devil.

As the disease gained ground on Kiptui’s face, he kept hacking away clumps of flesh and rubbing in the balm, hoping to exorcise the demon he believed to be behind the itchy sores.

Kiptui was actually the victim of a rare flesh-eating disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is spread by blood-sucking sandflies living in rocky areas and caves. Without medical treatment, the injected parasites can keep growing and gnawing their way through the skin, causing insatiable itching, disfigurement and, often the greatest pain of all, social exclusion.

But for Kiptui and some 300 other people living in caves ― for lack of a better alternative ― in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, even basic health care is hard to find. 

Nestled in between huge swathes of private land reserved for wildlife and farming, these cave dwellers carve out a meager living by burning trees to make charcoal. It’s an hour’s trek to the nearest village ― through land teeming with dangerous predators. It’s hours more over rocky mountain passes to the nearest hospital in the small town of Gilgil.

“We live in terrible conditions here,” said Kiptui, standing outside an almost bare cave that he can only sit or lie in. “We don’t have water, and food is hard to come by.”

A localized outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis has spread here in recent years, though the disease is not commonly found in Kenya. Around the world, about a million new cases are reported annually, especially among people living in poor conditions whose immunity has been worn down by hunger and hardship. 

For most people with cutaneous leishmaniasis, the only available treatment involves weeks of excruciating injections straight into the affected area, often on the face and always into the dermal layer where nerve endings cluster. The treatment is said to be 90 percent effective, but many patients do not stay the course.

“Some patients have been absconding especially due to the pain, whereas others abscond due to distance,” said David Kamau, the local disease surveillance coordinator for the Kenyan government.

Kiptui was thrilled to find out that his condition was medically curable, and that the treatment was free, after volunteer health worker Joseph Kariuki spotted him and his lesions on one of his regular treks through the bushland to visit this cave community.

“My major work is to create awareness of leishmaniasis,” said Kariuki, who works with the local government health ministry. “I stop people thinking it’s a form of HIV/AIDS, or some kind of demon.”

But the pain Kiptui endured at the clinic was more than he could bear.

“I was injected the very first time and it was so painful, I literally ran away. I abandoned the treatment,” he said. 

Kiptui went back to slicing away at his face with a sharp rock and filling the wound with hot ash.

Other people with the disease have used knives or machetes heated in a fire to sear off the lesions, and packed the wound with traditional cures that are ineffective and sometimes harmful.

“Some of the herbs they are using are highly poisonous,” said Kamau.

“They are seriously toxic and have even been causing complications” that make the disease harder to cure, he added. 

Kamau’s team has recorded over 400 cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in this rural corner of Kenya, but only half have sought the notoriously painful treatment. 

Children shy away from the injections, but “men especially have been absconding after a few injections because of the pain,” said Kamau.

The kids are less able to hide because a team of health workers holds weekly mobile clinics, including one at a school near the caves.

It’s traumatic enough watching children receiving injections straight into the nose or eye socket, as tears roll down their cheeks while health workers hold them still.  

Headteacher Job Nganga, whose office sits opposite the room used for treatment, finds the piercing screams and sobbing haunting.

“If I’m a grownup and I’m not able to hold myself when an injection is being put into my own body, how about that small kid? I feel so bad,” he said.

Nganga sees children afflicted with the disease becoming so preoccupied with the belief that they are cursed that they fall behind in class.

“Mostly, we Africans, when we find that there’s something that’s disturbing us that has no solution, we rush into saying that it’s witchcraft,” he said.

In poor countries, health systems are overburdened and under-resourced. To help government health workers like Kamau and Kariuki fight cutaneous leishmaniasis, which persists in the most deprived pockets of Kenya and other developing countries, international charities like the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, or DNDi, are working to improving testing and treatment.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is so neglected that the medicines administered were formulated for a disease called visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar, which is also transmitted by sandflies but is very different and much deadlier.

“We have tried to reduce the pain by adding lidocaine, and by applying ice to the area before the things,” Kamau said. “But there is much more still to be done so that patients stick with the treatment.” 

Florence Wambui, 15, endured 57 injections to her face over two months, because she wanted to get rid of the facial sores she found so ugly.

What started as a pimple got worse, despite the application of traditional herbs, until “the wounds were full of worms,” she said.

“I thank God that the wounds are healed,” Wambui said. I thought they would never go.”

The teenager now drags her terrified 8-year-old cousin out of class for treatment, and watches anxiously as he screams in pain.

Although the mobile clinics have solved some of the access issues for this disease, they are not bringing all of its sufferers out of the shadows.

“There are still people hiding in their homes because of the injections,” said Nganga, describing parents at the school whose lips have “peeled off” due to cutaneous leishmaniasis.

“It not something you want to see,” he said. “One of their ears was almost destroyed.” 

The county government has sprayed insecticide in some homes in affected areas to kill the sandflies. But the people living in caves or herding their livestock and farming around them have no respite from the swarms of sandflies. 

The real hope for stopping the disease lies in finding a better cure ― ideally in the form of a topical cream or an affordable oral pill ― that sufferers in remote areas could take away and stick to. In the meantime, further reducing the number of injections needed, and the pain associated with them, would stop people like Kiptui from abandoning treatment.

“I still haven’t managed to heal the wound,” he said, toying with the sharp rocks he uses to gouge at his face.

“If I get another option, I’ll be happy,” he added, looking up, then swiftly turning his face away to hide his scarred cheek.

DNDi is a recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also funds HuffPost’s Project Zero series. All content in this series is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.

If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.

More stories like this:

He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 40 Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget.

Rabies Kills 189 People Every Day. Here’s Why You Never Hear About It.

When Bullets Fly, These Medics Grab Their Packs And Treat Patients On The Run

This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease Doctors Had Never Seen

A Parasite Attacked This Dad’s Brain And Destroyed His Family

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2pqP6HI