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Blight: it was a noun and a verb. Usually it referred to a plant disease, an infection caused by a pathological organism, but it also could simply mean a thing that spoils or damages something or the act of doing so.
It was an appropriate name for her: Blight.
No one really knew anything about Blight even though, unlike most villains, she never hid her face. It was quite the opposite. Yet, if anyone had known her name, they did not by the end of her rein.
People think it started in 1951. It was… hard to say. They did know it ended in 1957 and most of the scope was restricted to one city though there was some reaching out especially when people got too close, and people were pretty sure that she had to have done something to… well, everyone. It didn’t make sense that people somehow forgot a city existed otherwise. Unless she had it built, but architects said that most of the structures seemed to have been built decades before. So, it had likely existed before her rein.
Over 300,000 people and no one knew who they had been before her including them. All records were destroyed, all memories of them erased.
She was a Mind Warper, but one whose power and scope was unprecedented. She took the people in her city, stripped them of their memories and identities and rebuilt them as she saw fit. And she felt fit to be their goddess.
She played with them, manipulated them, and made them do her bidding. They were dolls in a doll house, and they bent to her desires. Anything they were was gone from the moment Blight decided it was. Unrecoverable.
No one really knew how the rein of Blight ended. The minds of her puppets were muddled about the details and the accounts from people who had a clear picture often conflicted. From what outside experts could tell, there had been a fight. One that razed down half the city and left Blight dead, but no one knew her opponent or what became of them.
All they knew is one day there was suddenly a half-destroyed city no one had realized or remembered was there and hundreds of thousands of people who didn’t exist but stood confused and scared and hurt in its wake.
None of the people who were controlled by her ever regained any memories from before Blight. Many of them could never adjust to reality. Ten years after Blight ended, over 80% of them were dead. Those left were not much better off.
It was now 17 years post Blight. Those who remained of Blight’s city’s citizens had done their best to find some sort of life, but there were problems of educations that may or may not have existed, lacks of families (even if they technically had them somewhere, they did not remember), and trauma from all they had been through.
Janus had missed living in the city of Blight by a month.
According to his mother, Janus was meant to be a “Child of Blight.” He would not have literally been her child obviously, but he was meant to be a “virgin” birth molded in the image of the goddess Blight. Of course, his conception was likely not quite so miraculous. His mother had probably been manipulated into performing the act and then had the memory of it stripped from her as was the way of things in Blight’s city.
Now, 17 years after “the goddess’s” fall, Janus sat across a long table from his mother. It was only the two of them that had ever lived in the house, but the table still forced 8 feet between them.
“How was your day?” she asked him from her seat.
“It was good, mom,” he replied. He was not particularly hungry, but he forced himself to continue to eat the rest of the meal she’d made him.
“That’s good,” she said with a smile. What did you do today?”
“I…” he said. “I got my car ready for a trip.”
She blinked at him. “A trip?”
He stuffed the rest of the dinner roll into his mouth. “Yes,” he said.
“You hadn’t told me you were going on a trip.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I know.”
She looked at him with a confused expression.
“I…” he said. “You know how we’ve been talking about college or trade school or some other future plan.”
“Yes,” she said with a head tilt.
“I think I’ve figured out what I’m going to do.”
“What?”
He paused and ate the last bite of his meatloaf. Then he looked her in the eye. “I love you mother.”
She blinked at him.
“I have been saving up my money from my job at the library and I have plenty in cash. The insurance on my car will be enough to maybe buy you a new one or maybe you can find a better use for it.”
“W-what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’ve done enough and it’s time for this to end.”
“You’re saying goodbye to me,” she said.
“I’m saying…” he said. “I love you and I hope your future is good.”
She put down her fork. “I was a bad mother,” she said.
“You weren’t,” he responded immediately.
She smiled and looked away. “I was.”
“You…” he said. “You could have left me for dead or killed me yourself. You could have been cruel or starved me or a whole host of things.”
“That does not make a good mother.”
“You tried,” he said. “You tried very hard. Any mistake I can forgive. I do forgive them mother.” She looked at him. “You were probably the best mother you could have been given everything.”
“Then why are you telling me goodbye.”
Janus sighed. “Because you’ve done enough. You were terrified of me from the moment I first showed signs of my powers, but you still were my parent. You fed me and clothed me and tried to love me.”
“I do. I do love you.”
“I know,” Janus said with a soft smile. “But you don’t deserve this. You deserve a life not riddled by fear of those close to you. You deserve to heal and we both know you can’t do that with me anywhere near you. A Child of Blight.” To prove his point, she visibly flinched back at the title. “It’s okay. You did good and I’m going to be fine.”
She watched him for a long moment and then said, “Come here.” He stood and rounded the table slowly, coming to kneel in front of her chair, but never reaching. His powers were stronger when he touched someone, after all. She looked at him for a moment and then reached into her pocket to pull out a pendant on a chain. She laid it on her palm to show him. It was an intricate design, two silver snakes curled together facing opposite directions. “This,” she said. “Means nothing to me,” she hesitated and traced a finger over it, “but I think… it may have once. All I know is that when… when it was over, I had it and I never was able to get rid of it.” She curled her fist around it and then held it out. Janus put his palm out so she could drop it into his hands, but instead of just letting gravity take its course, she placed it on his palm herself and then laid her hand over his. It was the first time she’d touched him when he wasn’t injured in some way in years. “Make it mean something again?”
He nodded slowly. “I will,” he promised.
She reached up slowly to brush his hair from his forehead. “You are a good person. You are and I love you. I wish…”
“I know,” Janus said. “I love you too.” Then, he slowly stood up and she let her hand fall into her lap. He walked to the living room door and looked back briefly at his mother. “Go find a life and make it yours,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of the room to get the bag he had packed.
He never saw his mother again.