The Bloodridden

When he awoke, it was not to salvation, but to the stench of rot. 

Rain slicked the stones of the capital, washing the blood of the dead into the gutters. The moon hung pale above, a single white eye staring down without pity. He had prayed for God’s hand, for warmth, for mercy, but only numbness answered. It cradled him now, hollow and cold, as he wandered the streets of a city that had forgotten the living.

The spires of the great cathedral jutted through the mist, their bells silent, their doors chained shut. Once, he had knelt beneath those vaulted ceilings and believed his voice was heard. Now, with every step, he felt the weight of betrayal. Divinity had turned its face from him, from his people, abandoning the world to whatever hell had seeped into the black stones of the capital. 

His flock lay in heaps along the roads, mouths still open in prayer. And he, a laicized cleric, walked among them as something neither dead nor saved.

The numbness he felt was always bittersweet. 

He felt none of the cold, none of the maddening itch when invisible things burrowed beneath the skin. None of the horror as neighbors, friends, and strangers alike succumbed to the disease, their screams fading into silence while no one came to help. When his own blood began to blacken and burn beneath his skin, when death pressed close enough to taste, only distant memories of life lingered: the greenest eyes he had ever seen, sunlight glinting off water, the delicate brush of touch against living skin. 

But when he was numb. None of it mattered.

Some nights, he wondered whether numbness was a mercy or the true plague, hollowing him from within until nothing of the priest remained. He could remember what grief felt like, what it meant to love something so desperately that its loss left a wound no prayer could ment. He simply could no longer reach those feelings. They existed somewhere beyond him, like a house glimpsed through fog, familiar but impossible to enter.

The rain kept falling, dripping from rooftops like tears the city could not shed for itself. He moved without thought past bodies bloated in the gutters, past doors barred with wood and iron where prayers had been whispered too late.

He had seen nobody else since crawling from the pit of bodies into which he had been thrown into, discarded like the rest. There had been nobody left to bury them, nobody left to pray when teh infection took hold and took them fast.

He sank against the damp stone wall, pressing his back to it as though the cold might somehow seep through his flesh and reach whatever remained beneath. Rain pour over his head, soaking his tunic and trousers, mingling with the blood that stained them dark.

He dug his fingers nto his eyes until stars bloomed behind his lids. Why was he here?

The question had no answer. It had not had one since the cathedral, since the screaming, since he had watched men who had devoted their lives to the Cradle God claw at their own throats and beg a heaven that remained silent.

Then he heard it.

A voice, faint and ragged, coming somewhere above him. He lifted his head. Behind a shuttered window, someone was muttering. A plea, perhaps. Or a song, half-broken by fear.

He pushed himself upright and approached the door beneath the window, resting one hand against the damp boards.

“Who’s there?” The voice cracked through the wood, brittle with suspicion. “I’ll not open my door to the infected. I’ve seen what you are.”

For a long while, the priest said nothing. He listened to the rain pattering against the roof and tasted rust and ash on the air. He had once possessed a hundreds words for moments such as this. Words of comfort, of faith, of promises that suffering was not the same as abandonment. But God had not answered him. What right had he to answer anyone else?

And yet, when he finally spoke, his voice was steady. “Silas is my name.”

A cough and a pause. “Are you infected?”

Silas looked down at his hands. The skin had split along his knuckles, revealing the dark veins beneath. He could see the rot spreading in thin, branching lines beneathin his flesh. He wasn’t sure how to answer. He would not, but the truth had become a difficult thing to recognize. “Not infected. Not anymore.” He swallowed. “I am only a man.”

“Infected are infected. I will not let the dead inside these walls.”

“You are the first person I have spoken to in days,” Silas said. “I’m afraid there may be no one left.”

“Then you can speak to me through the boards. I will not let you in.”

“You won’t survive here alone.”

“I have enough to last me. Worry about yourself.”

“I can bring food,” he offered quietly “Bread. Dried meat. water.”

“I don’t trust anyone. Not anymore,” the old mans fear trembled through the wood. Silas recognized it, though he could no longer remember the feeling of being afraid himself. He remembered the shape of it. The tightness in the chest, the frantic search for a door that was not locked, the desperate need to believe someone might still help.

“Then consider this a gift,” he said, letting his voice soften. “No debt.”

He hesitated. “If I let you in promise you are not like the others.”

Silas closed his eyes “I am not,” he swore. For a moment, he almost believed it himself.

Desperation stirred something in him, though he could not name it. Perhaps it was the memory of being needed. Perhaps it was the stubborn remnant of a faith he had spent days trying to bury. Whatever it was, he followed it through the rain, searching the abandoned homes until he found a loaf of bread gone hard at the edges, a strip of dried meat, and a carafe of wind.

He returned to the door with his offerings held against his chest. The knock sounded strangely loud in the empty street.

After a long wait, the hinges creaked. The door opened a fraction, revealing one frightened eye and a glint of a blade. “Come in. Slowly,” 

Silas stepped into the candlelight. Warmth touched his face. It was a small thing, no more than the breath of a dying fire, but for an instant he remember what it had been to sit beside a hearth and feel the cold leave his bones. The sensation vanished almost as soon as it came.

The old man stood hunched beside the door, brittle and spotted, a cane clutched in one hand. His face showed no sign of the infection. “You said you weren’t infected.”

“I’m not,”

“Your eyes are bloodshot,” the man said, voice low and wary, “and that pallor” The man's gaze traveled over Silas’s face, lingering on the dark veins at his throat. “If you aren’t infected, then what are you?”

Silas had no answer. The old man studied him a moment longer before pointing with his cane. “Set your things down on the table. Give me the meat. Lock the door behind you. Then explain yourself, boy, quick like.”

Silas obeyed. He placed the food on the worn wooden table and lowered himself into a creaking chair. The old man shuffled to the fire, where he tossed the meat into a pot simmering over the flames. He took a pitchfork from beside the hearth and settled into a faded red chair, keeping the fire between them. He waited.

“I am a priest of the Cradle God” Silas began. The words felt strange in his mouth. He had not spoken his title aloud since the cathedral. “Born into the the crutches of divinity,” he continued, though he was no longer certain whether he meant that sas a blessing or a curse. “I served within the great cathedral, I was infected there. It took me, or so I thought.” He gestured to his skin, to the dark veins branching beneath it. “When I awoke, the city was gone. The people were gone. I was still breathing, though I cannot say why.” 

A dry chuckle escaped the old man. “So who will you preach to now, cleric? I am no believer in your god.” He spat into the hearth. The saliva struck the coals with a faint hiss. Silas watched the fire swallow it

“You look infected, so you are,” the old man said, rising from his chair. “So you are. Outside. I’m no fool.”

“Please.” The word came more quickly than Silas expected. “Let me stay for this meal. Nothing more. I understand your wariness, but we may be the only two left. Let me eat before I go. I won’t come near you…I won’t touch you.”

The man stared at him for a long time. Finally, he lowered himself back into the chair. “We eat, then you leave. And afterward, you let me die in peace. I’d rather that than rot from the inside out.” He nodded towards the cupboard. “The glasses are in there.”

Silas retrieved two glasses and broke the bread in half with his hands. He poured the wine and approached the table. 

“Stop,” the old man's voice snapped through the room. Silas froze. The man took one glass and retreated to his chair, keeping the length of the table between them. They ate in silence.

The bread was dry and bitter. The wine had soured. Silas chewed without tasting, swallowed without pleasure, and listened to the old man cough between mouthfuls. The fire crackled. Rain whispered against the shutters.

For a little while, the hut almost felt like a home. Then the knife slipped.

It was an insignifican thing. The old man had reached across the table to cut another piece of meat when the blade skidded against the bone of his hand. A thin red line opened across his skin. He hissed and pulled away. Silas stopped chewing. The metallic sweetness reached him first. Something inside him stirred. A scent so alive it burned through the numbness. His stomach tightened. His fingers curled against the table, nails biting into his palms. The room seemed to narrow around the old mans’ hand, around the small bead of blood gathering at the edge of the cut. Silas could hear it. Not the rain, the fire, the pulse. He drew a breath through his nose. The hunger opened its eyes.

He had been hungry before. He remembered hunger from childhood, from the long fasts of his priesthood, from the days spent wandering streets where nothing remained but the dead. That hunger had been an ache, a weakness, a reminder that he was still a man with a body that needed tending. This was not an ache.

His mouth filled with saliva. His teeth hurt. A strange warmth crept through his libs, and for the first time in days, he felt something with such terrible clarity that he nearly wept. He pushed away from the table violently.

He was a priest. He had held the hands of the dying. He had prayed over the sick and washed the bodies of those who had no one left to love them. He had spent his life tending to the living. He was not an animal, nor a monster.

“Whats wrong with you?” 

Silas tried to answer, but his tongue felt thick in his mouth. The blood glistened in the candlelight. 

“Put that away,” Silas whispered. 

“What?” 

“Your hand. Please” Silas held his hands together in prayer. 

The old man glanced at the cut, then back at Silas. His expression had changed. Suspicion gave way to fear so sudden and complete that Silas recognized it at last. Not because he felt it himself. Because he had seen it in the faces of the dying.

“Get away from me.” The old man begged.

Silas backed away towards the door, hands still in prayer. “I don’t want to hurt you.” The words came out broken. He meant them. God help him, he meant them.

The old man scrambled for his pitchfork. “Get out!”

Silas saw the weapon rise. He saw the old mans trembling hands and the blood slipping between his fingers. Coating the wood on the weapon. He saw everything with a clarity he had not possessed since before the infection. 

Then hunger swallowed the world. 

The pitchfork drove into his side. Pain flashed white through him, bright enough to shatter the numbness for a single, glorious instant. He scarcely noticed it. He seized the old man and dragged him to the floor, the two of them crashing against the table. The old man screamed. The old man screamed. Silas heard the scream from a great distance. He felt the man’s fist striking his back, the desperate struggle of a body that wanted to live. 

He could have stopped. Somewhere inside him, he knew that. The knowledge was small and faint, a candle burning in a room whose doors had all been barred. 

Then his teeth found the old man' s throat. He didn't know how thirsty he was until he started drinking. Warmth flooded his mouth. The scream ended.

He drank until the hunger loosened its claws, until the trembling in his limbs subsided, until the terrible emptiness that had followed him through the dead city began, at last, to fill.

He had not known thirst could become pleasure. He had not known pleasure could be so monstrous. 

Silas staggered back, chest heaving, his hands slick with warmth and life not his own. Silence settled over the hut, dense and suffocating. For a long moment he sat, numb again, staring at the mess he had made, wondering what part of him had survived at all.

A sob rose in his throat. For one terrible moment, he thought he might finally feel grief. Silas stared at his bloodied hands until they stopped trembling. That frightened him more than hunger. 

Outside, the rain fell steadily, cold and unending, washing the city clean, or at least trying. Silas stepped into it, leaving the door hanging open behind him. Water sluiced over his bloodied skin, chasing away warmth he no longer felt. 

The streets glistened under the pale moon, empty as ever. The cathedral spires rose above the mist, their bells silent, their doors still chained. The capital belonged to the dead, to the hungry, to the rot that no god had stopped.

And somewhere in the hollow spaces of his mind, a bitter, familiar thought echoed: His god did not answer. But something had. 

Silas walked on, alone, the rain soaking him, the city silent, and something dark and unrelenting alive inside him, finally awake.