The Plague

End of the year. The winter covers everything. Not just the fields and valleys that surround me or the trees that at the tiniest touch engulf you in a white cold mantle. No... The winter made its way into my soul and chilled everything. My feelings are frozen and my lips are cold. I think and I live. But my senses are dulled.

It’s been another year and the snowflakes that fall now build a bridge toward the new year. A year filled with hopes, of joy and happiness.

But not for me.

My existence is known by few and remarked by none. Nobody is all-present in my life.

My only friend. Confidant.

Sometimes betrayer.

I once dreamed of the life of a princess, of travels and adventures. Now it’s all dead in me and nothing can get me out of this state of… not melancholy. No. I’d lie if I’d say there is still a feeling like that live inside of my soul. More like… apathy. Yes. Apathy, distance and pessimism. Everything is black in me. Nothing white. Nothing grey.

Black. As the trees burned from a dark flame.

Black. As the snow – ash that falls from the sky.

Black. As the things that surround me.

Black. The favorite color of the crows and birds of prey that circle me.

Black.

As my soul.

The field that shows in front of me is just as dark. Filled with bodies and rotting corpses. The smell rises toward the sky. People burn everything in their path, protecting themselves from disease. But the sickness gets them. Kills them. And the bodies are too many to be buried. So they are left to the animals. But only the scavengers, the crows and eagles feast upon them.

And people die one by one. Soon only one person stands above a smoking pyre.

The smell is awful but nobody notices anymore.

A single person stands and watches as others die. And she doesn’t.

She can’t die.

She turns her back and departs, leaving behind only corpses and scavengers, disease and death.

Her only companion is her blackened lonely soul. Nobody accompanies her.

That person is me…