The Black Death

When people see me, they see death. They don’t see a regular guy, or even a strange guy. They see themselves rotting from the outside in. They see their necks swell up and their flesh break out in sores. This is me. This is my curse.

I made a hut. It’s practically in the middle of nowhere. The nearest road is over half a day’s walk away. I catch what I eat. There is no market here, here in this hell where I live. No market, and no people, either. And the water I drink used to make me sick, in fact, I think I almost died once from drinking that water. It’s river water, from a river that flows from some far off mountain I’ll probably never see. It’s shit water if you ask me.

I have to tell you, here in this abysmal purgatory where I live, there’s no food, no water, no people, and I’m lonely.

In fact, I’m probably the loneliest guy I’ve met (har har har).

It’s been this way for a few years now. I don’t do much, not around here. But I get by.

I took up weaving some time ago. I use plant stems and grass and sometimes even tree bark. It helps me with my chores, having a basket around. I don’t have to make so many trips to the river, saves me a lot of time. Valuable time I could spend doing nothing.

The last time I saw a human being they flashed a cross at me and ran away, screaming at the top of their lungs. I’m a vampire. To him, at least, and probably to anyone who would happen to cross my path.

A flash of silver and he was gone, leaving me to waste my days away here.

I have to tell you, it’s no fun over here. I wish I were normal, I wish I were human.

My house is made of sod. It’s one room, large enough for me to sleep in, no bigger. And every time it rains it slips an inch or more down the hill. Pretty soon I won’t have a house at all.

Today, I wake up and the clouds are clearing from last night’s rain. My house is an inch closer to falling and I’m a day closer to death. The ground is still wet from last night’s shower.

If you smelled me, you’d say I stink. I don’t mind, I’ve gotten used to it. In fact, I wish I still could smell it. At least then I’d know I’m human.

I squish my way down the muddy hill that is my front lawn. I have no idea why I built a house on a hill, but now I’m too lazy to change it. Too lazy and too tired.

At the river that in my mind separates my property from everyone else’s I grab my fish net, swollen with rain. I go fishing.

I don’t catch anything for awhile.

As the sky approaches high noon a bobcat, fearless and arrogant, comes to drink from the river. It’s one I haven’t seen before. I know most of the animals in my neighborhood. I name them and talk to them and if I’m crazy I’m glad because it saved me the time of going crazy.

The bobcat drinks and as it turns to leave it looks back at me and maybe it’s my mind but I’m pretty sure it was laughing at me. Not out loud, but inside, where it counts. That bobcat was laughing at me so I grabbed the biggest rock I could find that would fit in one hand and I chucked it right at that sucker.
I missed but I don’t care. He’ll come back.

I stand in the river, more of a stream really, with the water flowing around me, soaking my legs up to the thigh. The water parts around my legs. I am its god. It obeys me.

Finally I catch a fish. It’s a big one that won’t stop struggling. I carry it to the shore and watch it as it dies, a tangled mess suffocated in a net. Suffocated by air. What an odd creature.

I woke up not knowing it was the last day of my life. I’ll still breathe after this day. I’ll still survive. But I won’t live.

It was countless years ago, I can’t keep track. It feels like hundreds but could be only two or three. I’m not sure I can even remember it clearly.

What happened was this: everyone was running through the village screaming. It was a little place called Vicesco somewhere in between Italy and Germany. Neither kingdom wanted it and neither kingdom claimed it. We were all by ourselves. And when the plague hit, we were screwed.

Those who had horses were the first to leave. They took whatever they could and were gone, didn’t even offer anyone a ride. People set out on foot, but I doubt most of them made it very far.

Me, I didn’t leave. My grandmother got sick, she got the plague. I had to take care of her, or so I thought. My brother, he was kind of the head of the house and he said we go.

I refused. He left me.

So there I was, all by my lonesome, pretending to provide for the grandma I knew would die anyway.

A few days before she died I was feeding her gruel as fast as she was throwing it up when she stopped and asked, “Why are you here? Why didn’t you leave?”

I had no answer.

I wished I had gone.

I wished I would get the Death. I think that’s what it was all about. I wanted to die; and since suicide is a sin in the eyes of God I did it the only way possible: I gave up. The Black Death would come to me and relieve me of my burden, this weight called life.

But it never happened. I never got it. The Black Death stared me in the face and then walked away.

My grandma died, no surprise there. She died within a week and then it was just me, all by my self in a deserted world where Death was real to everyone but me. I hated it.

But I didn’t leave. I stayed in the village, eating what was left of other people’s food, hoping one of the rats I ate would kill me. But I was invincible, a god. Their poison drifted through my veins only to wither away into nothing, their job unfinished.

I don’t know what the kind of fish I’m eating is called. I’ve been eating it for years, never having a clue what it was. I call it pillow fish, because the insides are all puffy and pillow-like, not like other fish.

I’m eating my fish when Borris comes over. He’s a rabbit. I know it’s him because he has a white spot against all his brown right over his left eye. He’s been coming to see me for years.

He comes over and I grab the few plants I’ve managed to harvest in my backyard garden this year and toss them over to him. He nibbles and nibbles and nibbles. I respect that. No matter how hungry he gets he never takes more than one little nibble at a time.

Borris the bunny is probably my best friend. Sure, Dina the deer is friendly enough, and Thomas the turtle is always polite, but Borris just seems to care more about me. He really seems to listen.

He really seems to listen.

My neck had been swelling even before the Black Death came. It wasn’t too noticeable at first, but one day I got out of bed and my mother, she said, “Good Christ, look at your neck!”

I went over to the water pale and my reflection told me that the sleep I’ve been losing, it’s in my neck. The fatigue, it’s because of my neck.

I can’t know this for sure, of course, but it’s my body and I can at least pretend to know what’s happening to it.

For the next few days I was a freak show. People coming over asking to see my neck as if it wasn’t already there for everyone to see. People saying, “Oh, how awful that looks. You should try an exorcism, they work every time.”

I was the blank pages they filled out with their useless little remedies.

Eat some fish eye, it’ll shrink right back to normal.

Holy water, that’ll do it.

Just for the record, I tried everything they told me. Nothing worked.

And then the plague hit and everyone whose neck swelled as big as mine was dead.

Another day, another inch. I don’t want my house to fall. I’ve tried everything I can, though. I’ve reinforced it with rocks, tried to push it back up the hill, and built a wall of mud around it. Nothing works, it keeps sliding.

It’s so out of shape. I don’t know why but the bottom slides and the top stays put.

The bottom is almost a foot in front of the top. It’ll collapse before it reaches the bottom of the hill.

I think I might leave before that happens. I would have already if it weren’t for my friends. I can’t leave Boris behind; he depends on me for food.

I just hope I’m not sleeping in it when it falls. The way I am now, I don’t know if I could get out.

The refugees took one look at me and I was out. They weren’t refugees in the typical sense; they weren’t fleeing any country or hiding from anyone. They were keeping away from the Death.

I wore a scarf that day. It was boiling hot but I had to or I couldn’t get anywhere. They let me inside their carriage, cramped as it was.

“Take off the scarf, lad, it’s hotter’n a witch’s kettle,” they yelled lightheartedly.

Kindly I refused.

“Nonsense!” who I took to be the leader bellowed over the laughter of the others engaged in conversations.

“Honestly, I’m fine,” I tried to tell him but I doubt he heard me, not over that lot.

“But you’re sweating up a storm, making it nasty for the rest of us!” He wasn’t quite as pleasant as before, but I stood fast.

The trip was a long one. I kept my scarf on all day and all night. We were heading to somewhere in France, I don’t remember just where. But it was the second day when my secret was spoiled.

I thought I would die, but I kept on. I was sweating that badly. I was so hot and I knew I would throw up if I didn’t get it off.

“’Scuze me,” I cried as I lunged for the window. I stuck my head out and let go on the road bellow. It felt wonderful.

One problem. My scarf blew off in the wind.

As I sat back down it was silent.

They stared at my swollen and bruised neck, wondering if I was their death sentence.

When people look at me, they see death.

“Get him out of here,” someone finally screamed.

“Wait,” I try to tell them, “I’m not sick, my neck is just swollen.”

“It’s just like that,” I yelled, but no one listened.

I was off of that carriage before I could blink.

It’s finally happened. My house has fallen.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I can build another one.

I’m sick, and not with the plague. I have something else, something I’ve never heard of. It’s because of my neck, of that I’m certain. But slowly, I’m wasting away. I can see every rib I have and my ass bones dig trenches in the mud.

I don’t know how much longer I have, and I don’t want to spend it building another house that will just fall down.

I don’t want to die before telling Boris good bye. I just don’t know when to tell him. Or how.

So now I’m standing here at the river, staring at my reflection, my accursed reflection.

When people look at me, they see death. I just see a scrawny man who needs a meal and a good bath.

But I see my neck and I cringe. The only bloated part on my body. I’m surprised I can even lift it. It looks out of place, like a brown leaf in spring. I look at my neck and I see my body, void of all life, floating down the river with birds picking out my eyes and fish chewing on my toes.

This is me. This is my curse.