「✦」Send “Flashback” for a glimpse into my muse’s past.
‘Sibyl Mortimer,’ Elias read from his death-list, squinting through blinding overhead sun, ’dies of disease, 23rd July, 1348, at 3:07 in the afternoon’. Smiling, he tucked his list away, safe in the inner pocket of his tunic, which wore a deep, flagstone gray. Excitement rushed through him, fingers curling in anticipation. This was another chance to look at it up close; to examine the sweeping, unshakable sickness digesting the Isles without lifting a finger.
His first exposure to it had been just at the beginning of Summer, but his — or any Reaper’s — assignments since then had consisted of little else. Thank God he had been able to use the abundance of deaths to his favor; until just a week ago he had been forced to keep a partner with him at all times while reaping. But The Black Death, as the living folk were calling it, had provided him an escape from that dead weight. Forced to spread their ranks thin, Elias had convinced the Dispatch that with just over a century’s experience, he was perfectly capable of going it alone.
And capable though he was, the real reason behind his persuasion was so he could take his time, study and catalogue those stricken by this plague. Nothing he’d seen in his time at Dispatch had ever sparked a grotesque curiosity quite like this. Instead of seeing the sheer ghastliness of the pox-riddled faces and gangrenous appendages, Elias saw the pieces of a puzzle.
Wonder bubbled through decades of what had quickly become banal, unstimulating work. Divine retribution was quick to enter his mind as to why this epidemic may exist, but he had his doubts. Purgatories, he had learned firsthand, were tailor-made, and misfortune alone was a different, simpler beast altogether. But God’s punishments, whether thrust upon the living or the dead, always fit the crime- and while he knew there was rarely such thing as a true innocent, there was no singular crime committed by all afflicted alike. What really caused this? What was different about this sickness? Could it be prevented? Cured? Weaponized or reversed?
Certain others, he quickly realized, must have had the same questions. He had seen doctors in strange masks and thick robes using herbs, tonics, and salves on the disease’s patrician spoils. What was their meaning? He wanted — needed — to know. Every question burned brighter than the last. This had to be part of his purpose, a guiding thread through the maze of his own punishment. The scientific efforts of himself or those doctors, as he saw it, were not defiant to the acts of God; but reading deeper into His work through the ciphers. The Lord helps those who help themselves.
Now he peered, ever-intrigued, over the wet earthen edge of a mass grave, the smell of rot and clotted blood filling his nose. Looking down at the pile of flies and purple bloat, and not seeing his quarry on top, he was vaguely surprised the cause of death hadn’t read suffocation. The bodies of the sick no one claimed or knew what to do with were dumped in plague pits like these; and sometimes unlucky creatures like Sibyl — a widow with no family to speak of — were thrown in before their heart’s last beat.
This assignment would prove a challenge. Plague’s fevered and final delirium may be too thick for Sibyl’s mind to fathom her fate, but her soul would undoubtedly be angry. A soul in the raw, unconstrained state Reapers dealt with them in were powerful entities, especially when charged with emotion. Good. Today, he had been doubly blessed. Not only had he a chance to study the prey of this outbreak, but completion of these tougher assignments, he hoped, would bring him quicker toward the end of his time in his own purgatory of reaping day in and out.
