My first foray into plague territory…

Also posted as ‘flash fiction’ on the A174 forums.

 

The damage was done. So much went through his mind as he sat alone outside his home in the fading sunlight. What would happen now? There was nothing anyone could do about what was going to happen – he knew that in his heart and soul.

He surveyed what little land and property they had fought hard for and worked at for generations. The tiny enclosed yard, dusty in summer and oozing with mud in winter, the home of their single pig and a handful of chickens, all vying for whatever scraps they could spare. The pathetic little ‘meadow’ – the spit of land that afforded precious little grazing for the scrawny horse that was their only means of getting around. He found it hard to care about what happened to all of that.

But the little house, its greying thatched roof, the tiny windows with ragged curtains which stirred in the evening breeze. The sparse furniture inside, surviving belongings from father, grandfather, great-grandfather… All of that would be lost.

But where he sat was the place he feared for the most. This little ‘cottage garden’. The peaceful haven where he would sit every evening and let the cares of the day go down with the setting of the sun. Where his weary muscles took a well-earned rest. Where his wife tended her flowers and herbs. Where his father, now long dead, had taught him how to grow vegetables enough to see them through tough times, and even sell at the market during better times. Where his children played, chasing the butterflies, and watching the bees load up their saddlebags with pollen. Where the seeds of the wild flowers would float in the summer haze, ready to bring new life to another secret corner. A place so defiantly full of life and hope that it was hard to place what was happening now in amongst it all.

His children. He looked at his feet in anguish, hot tears springing to his tired eyes. It was going to be unimaginably terrifying for them. The boy, ten years old, would probably suffer most. He was old enough to know what was going on around them, and realise that they would share the same fate. The girl was just five, but he shuddered as he imagined what was in store for her.

How could he have been so stupid as to let the old hag in the door in the first place? She had been a ‘searcher’, she admitted that. As poorly schooled as he had been, he should have realised that she was probably the most dangerous person roaming the silent streets at that time. He had not realised until later that the old woman had brought this upon them all, and by then it was too late.

The damage was done.

He got up, walked to the house, and begun to carefully scratch words on the door, as best he could. ‘Lorde have mercie on us.’