The Pestilence

It is the filthy thing, the overflowing chamber pot, the abattoir loud with lowing death, bright with blood spurts and buzzing with quick, eager flies. It moves in the midstream of pestilence and horror like a freshwater remora, feeding in spasms of appetite and dragged along by its master, the beastie of beasties, whose visage makes
its pocked, runny, whisker-scuffed face look like the tender smile of an innocent novice. This horizon-rimmed cauldron of hell is its home, it is servant to this house, and it serves well.

For now, it sits on the fresh corpse of a dog, pulling aside skin to get to the fruit beneath it, the fat and meat so rich and slick with life. It hums and grunts, then looks around for the vicious scavenger, the thief, the brute— no, it is alone with its feast. It resumes its humming, and picks and pulls and swallows.

When it is full, there is still meat left, which will soon rot or feed the smaller things more desperate than it is. The flies, who can and do live everywhere, shuttle around it impatiently. It swats at them twice and moves away.

The world seems to have wandered away from the sun; the sky has been a dull, low gray, lightning or darkening by day and night. There must have been light, once, for it remembers light. There is rarely rain, and there is rarely wind, and the implacable sameness of each incessant day is broken only by appetite and fear. There is noise, but that is almost always from a distance. Cries and shrieks echo from behind clusters of bent, leafless trees, but when it moves through the trees to the other side, there is never anything or anyone there that could have made the sound. Sometimes, there are distant fires, but never has it found the source when it has moved toward them.

A crunching of twigs and dried leaves sneaks up behind it, a startling sound. It turns. A man is there, surly and suspicious (though the man snuck up on it and not vice versa), with a collapsed shape that suggests that once the man had been plump. Nothing is plump anymore. Even the dead bodies are fallen on before they can bloat. The man has a club, and he asks it, “What are you up to?”

Nothing is plump anymore. Even the dead bodies are fallen on before they can bloat.

It protests its innocence with sharp, obsequious whining, which only serves to annoy the man and make him more suspicious. It has weapons hidden in its clothing, even a shard of glass hidden in the greasy knot of hair at the back of its head, but the bad man has caught it unaware, stupid it. This is how the flies are fed.

“Don’t give me that crap,” the man says. “Nobody is just looking around.”

It complains that it was hungry and was looking for food, and the man relaxes for a moment, then stiffens, and it assures him it would never eat him. Which is true, since he is alive. But the man’s suspicions will not weaken a second time. “There are people who’ll eat anything, who go ‘just looking around’—you can stay clear of me, if you don’t want a slice of this.” And he shakes the club at it.

It protests that it would never, and that two can travel, and hunt, more safely than one. This is again the truth, and the man is the sturdiest person it has seen in some time, which is good for protection and, if protection fails, for food.

The man thinks about it, with a terrible and dissatisfied frown, then agrees—but it must walk in front at all times. It complains, but the man is resolute, and it can only hope that the man is not as quick as he is clever. In fact, it has noticed that the man has a limp (amazing that he could sneak up on it, or was it that careless?), and this gives it the confidence to agree to the arrangement.

As they move along, slowly and cautiously, sticking to cover when they can and crossing open spaces hastily, it realizes that the man is clever and quick, but he is also a man of decency and consideration. When it fakes a stumble, the man moves to help it before his self-protective instinct holds him back. But it has found out what it needs to know in that split second of weakness: the man is food. It assures the man that it is okay, and the man nods with a clear doubt in his eyes, as if he knew he had been outwitted but was not quite sure how that had happened, or what that would cost.

It has found out what it needs to know in that split second of weakness: the man is food.

The man has some berries that he shares with it, bright red sweets with a tart and not an unpleasant sting in them. He laughs when it hesitates and pops a handful in his mouth. “These grow wild all over my valley.” He is suddenly sad. “We made pies with them every year. And jams for the winter.”

It nods with what it hopes will look like sympathy, and the man seems to accept that. He has been mostly silent all along, but the silence which follows now is a different kind, and it realizes that the silence before had been the most restful time it has had in ages. This is not because the two of them have come to any kind of warm understanding, but perhaps just that the silence with another person there is better than the silence of being alone. It realizes at once how ridiculous and dangerous that notion is.

When they find a cave and stop for the night, it is determined to creep away. The man offers to take the first watch, but it insists that it will, and the man grunts and agrees. “I hope you know I’m worth more to you alive,” he says, and it nods happily.

It is not sure why, but it stays. It wakes the man for the second watch—he is grumpy and it goes to sleep quickly, as if the man could be trusted.

They kill and eat two crows the next morning. It is always delighted to kill crows, as there is more to eat and less competition. They finish the last of the man’s berries and are both mildly saddened by that. They find some nuts on the ground and crack them open with rocks—a sound sharp enough to cut an ear. By the time they end this first full day together, finding a small deserted hut in a hollow in the woods that will serve them nicely for the night and maybe longer, they have each accepted that the other recognizes the benefit of cooperation. This is an easier and more comfortable peace than it wants, but the man is too much of a risk to try to kill, and too useful to leave. This can’t last forever, it knows that, but again it sleeps undisturbed, glad this time to take the second watch. The sky lightens slowly, after it has thought for a long time, and the thinking has changed nothing. This situation cannot be, but it is, and it cannot last.

The hut proves to be a good base. Some days, they hunt or gather together, and some days apart, but there is always food: meat, nuts, grass, seeds, and even another kind of berry, not as sweet or as bitter as the first kind, but good. The man shows him where the berries grow. He doesn’t keep the information to himself or trade the information for something it has.

At night, they are usually silent, although sometimes the man sings in a low, soft, uncertain voice, as if he were not quite certain that he wanted to be heard. The words are in a strange language that it has never heard, and the man assures it that they are holy words, directed at the malevolent creature who has created this hideous world but is for some reason praised and even thanked for such a creation. It does not understand this at all, but the songs are pleasant, and the words do ring of some unreachable truth. Unreachable, so uneatable, so useless. But still, there is the faint ringing which will not leave it alone. It grows to fear the onset of the songs, but it feels a sadness when they end.

Sometimes it sings too, crude, savage songs of bloody deeds, slaughters and rapes. The man laughs to hear them, and it laughs, and they feed with a slight air of ferocity after these songs. It wonders if the man likes both kinds of songs.

But at night, they are usually silent. The man perhaps thinks of different things, his valley or his family (it never asks him, but sometimes he volunteers bits of information concerning his prior life), and it thinks about what the man might be thinking about. He mostly stares out into the night, or frowns, but sometimes this is broken by a brief smile, like a flame which rises and vanishes at once. Sometimes it thinks about how lonely it was before he came, but it hates that thought and moves away from the slightest suggestion of fondness for the man whenever that slithers into its mind.

One morning, it wakes and the woman and the boy-child are there. It had the first watch. If it had the second watch, this would not be allowed to happen. Stupid it.
Trusting.

The woman is a wiry wisp, delicate and taut at once, with a face like a blade. The boy-child is noise. A meal which will eat anything put in his mouth. The man seems almost deliriously happy to have these two here to waste their food; it knows that the man would never think of fattening them for the feast; he is clever but stupid. And it will never get away with what must be done while the man is there. It has worked all this out while it rises and smiles at the woman, whose thin smile in return states plainly that she knows what it is thinking. When it goes to playfully poke the child—he has some meat on him, but can certainly bear more—she is reluctant to let it do so and pulls the child away after a moment. Of course, the man doesn’t notice this, but it does, and it and the woman exchange more smiles like little slashes with a dull knife: no wound, but the meaning is clear.

As several days go by, the hut grows smaller. There is not room enough for all of them, and it is not surprised at all when the man suggests that they need to look for a larger place to live. The woman glares at it, and it smiles, and the man is happily oblivious to all this. It volunteers to look for a place, and the man accepts readily. The woman is suspiciously grateful. This will get it away from them for long periods of time. The child is already ripening with the food they supply, and it can either find a place for itself and leave them here (oh, there will be plenty of room once it is gone, think of the joy they’ll have, especially the woman), or it can find a place in which a suitable trap can be set. The man is clever, and it will have to be very careful. It has seen the man kill, with stone and blade and spear and arrow, and once with the club: a stubborn and suicidal wolf which tried several times to kill them. The man had clubbed the vicious bitch to death and thrown the carcass down a hill, and it had to sneak back the next day. By that time those hateful crows had stripped the best of the meal, and the two pups which had crawled to the dead bitch and wailed weakly for milk barely had enough meat
on them to satisfy it.

The next few days reveal very few places which will do for either purpose. Of course, it finds two places which would be better for all of them, and it briefly considers offering the man and woman the directions to these places, and to leave it the hut for itself. But this would hurt the man, and for some reason, that bothers it. It is willing to kill the man, but not to wound his feelings. This is funny, and it laughs so loudly that it startles itself and ducks down and looks around for a split second before it realizes that the sound is an echo of its laugh.

At last, it finds a suitable spot, and it spends two days making ready the way to this new home. It will know the safe path through the trap, and they will not, and it will happily go first or last. Either way, the man will be taken care of, by the trap or when he goes to help the other two—and then the woman and the delicious child will belong to it. Oh, the feasting, the sweet, fat meat. . . even the woman, lean as she is, will be tasty.

But when it returns, the hut is empty. It follows the trail they have left. There has been no attempt to hide the tracks, to throw it off. The tracks lead to a river, and the man and woman and the fat child are almost across in a boat the man must have been building while it was off looking for their new house. The man seems both angry and sad, and even uncertain, though it knows at once that to trick him into coming back is impossible. The woman has a smile like a fire. They’re getting away, the boat shudders to a stop on the far shore, and the woman steps out and waves derisively. Stupid it. They will be long gone before it can figure out a way across the river, and there are so many ways they could go.

It shrieks and shakes its fist—the man shakes his head in response, disappointed, no doubt, the fool. As they go up the far bank (the man has pulled the boat ashore), it hears the wail of the child, plump and taunting, and it runs back into the woods to the bitter, empty hut. The man has left some of the food they had stored, and this makes it even angrier, so it hammers on the boards of the wall until they crack. There seem to be enough supplies for several days. It sits and sulks, nibbling dried berries and nuts, the bitter taste thick on its shriveled tongue.

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“The Pestilence” by JBMulligan and the artwork by Charlotte Park appeared in Issue 43 of Berkeley Fiction Review.

JBMulligan has been publishing for almost fifty years. He has two chapbooks (The Stations of the Cross and This Way to the Egress), two e-books (The City of Now and Then), and appearances in more than a dozen anthologies.

Charlotte Park is a senior at UC Berkeley who loves all things art and horror. Her favorite combination of styles are cute and horrifying. This is her first time publishing her art in a magazine and hopes she’ll be able to publish more illustrations. Furthermore, she’s an aspiring animator and wishes to animate her own short film one day.