The proud crowing of the cockerell was not distantly followed the flat call of the carter’s bell and the call for the bodies of the night.
The faint stirrings of the small town became slowlyt recognizable as the signs of life as whisps of smoke wound their way out of the crooked chimneys and ragged figures hobbled, staggered and crawled from the shambled ruins that many called houses. Many bore the heavy burden of bodies bound in ragged tatters that were formerly clothes upon their back out to meet the call of the carter as he slowly pushed his way through the mire and muck of the streets.
Beneath the growing sun the stinging scent of unwashed bodies mingled with the pungent stench of human and animal waste that littered the street was overshadowed by the dreadful overtones of the death that permeated the town. The fetid stench of the rotting flesh in both the crumbling houses and the piles of refuse that littered the narrow alleys wafted sickeningly upwards polluting the air that seemed to settlein the steets, resisting the odd winds that dared to trickle through the town. The air seemed saturated with the sickness and disease that clung to clothes and skin, leaving a residue of death upon the body, mind and soul.
From the lone window of the failing local Inn a lone figure watched the morbid scene of life and death unfold before him as he had seen every morning for days now. He had watched the duldrum of human activity with with waning interest, the sadness and grief was now part of the life here. It was as famailiar as the stale bread and bitter ale that had become the staple food. The ubiquity of filth was matched with that of the rats and vermin, the second plague, one composed of rodents, vermin, insects and parasites of all manner that flourished upon the pestilence and famine of others. The rats had become bold and violent, often hissing and baring their teeth do defend any meal that had been left unattended.
The patrons of the Inn had begun to leave or find new residence, many of which consisted of poorly made pine boxes hastily made and equally buried. He had not been surprised one morning to awaken and see the hideous black boils that had begunt o break through the skin of his arms, it had only been a matter of time. There still remained the question in his mind, it was not why, how, when or where, each was obvious, he did not fear death either, but was afraid of what lied beyond it. It was the nagging question of existence that had chewed incessantly at his mind, as a rat now chewed at his leather shoe, what lied beyond life. Did he exist further as a soul or was he simply here? Should he embrace his death for it would release him from his torment or should he fear it, loathe it and attempt to refuse it for he existed only here?
This question nagged at him more and more, till it was the sole matter that occupied his mind even as his body failed, as the boils grew bigger and more numerous, spreading to cover his body and increasingly painful as they burst. His eyes began to swell and redden until he could barely see open them to see the weak light of the day peering through the dusty air of his room, as he died he still thought, tormenting himself to insanity, but never daring to think what it would mean it he truly did not exist.
Days slowly passed, and he grew to enjoy the sleep, it was his only sanctuary from himself and his disease. His dreams were pleasant, ,he dreampt of what life had been before the city, before the plague, the terror, the death, his death. He slept away the days, oblivious to the stench of his own waste, his dying body, the ugly black mark that had been scrawled on his door and even the rats that shared his bed.
Even his last resort of respite what invaded as he awoke to a stabbing pain in his arm. Looking down his bruise blackened skin at a greasy rat, that had begun to loose patches of hair, as it sat and chewed at his felsh, revealing the dead tissue below. Seeing his head move the rat hissed violently for a second before returning to its feast.
The messenger had arrived for him, the same one that had borne the disease into the town in the filth that encrusted its fur, was now to act as his herald to death. And yet the question nagged at his mind even as he slipped away, slowly losing grasp of the strands of consciouness, the very consciousness that was now denied the answer it had labored so fervently for.