The sky is tender tonight, overripe and violet, just turning to blue on the eastern edge. To the west the sky is smeared with blood as the sun dies behind dark mountains, while overhead the first stars have yet to pierce through the softness of evening. I am walking, picking my way through the dirty, narrow streets, past bleak brown facades of boarded up houses. My hair has turned to copper in the sunset, floating about my bare arms as it is stirred by a gentle breeze. I know the scent that the breeze carries with it. I don't want to know. Better just to walk, barefoot amongst the filth, the ground still warm beneath my pale toes. The hem of my dress is tattered and frayed, but that doesn't matter. Nobody sees, they have closed their shutters against the coming night, and against the disease, the disease that doesn't respect locked doors. I am not afraid. I am already unclean, untouchable, though the men who touch me are exempt from the curses they heap on me.  Hypocrisy, of course, but what does it matter? This town is dying. Soon it will be empty, lifeless, and I will be forced to move on, just as all my life I've moved on, leaving so much behind. Memories, feelings, dreams, just so much baggage to haul from town to town, day to day. What matters is now, tonight, the money I need and the things I will have to do to get it. I'm immune to the horror, because I remember nothing better. Bleak landscapes, leering faces, and the rough comfort of another stranger's arms. Why do people cling to their past? Why try to drop anchor in a twitching sea, when the port's in sight from the beginning? Easier just to watch the water streaming past, without wondering whence it came or where it goes. Time passes, but people don't change. And memory's no blessing, so I've learnt how to forget.

        There are bodies strewn across the main street.  Festering shells of people I once knew. Some lie as if in sleep, while others wear expressions of agony, glassy-eyed in death as in life. Each one is alone, locked forever in its own private world of suffering.
        We knew it was serious when people began dying in the streets. They'd known a long time before then that something was wrong, of course, but it all happened behind closed doors. Walking past open windows, you heard the sick moan and the children cry, but you pretended not to hear. Everyone was so good at pretending, believing that the disease wasn't their concern, hoping that by sacrificing a few to its clutches early on they could avert the crisis. Then, as the number of deaths rose, they sacrificed whole families, imprisoning them in their houses if so much as one of their members showed signs of sickening, leaving them to die. It wasn't always the disease that killed them. Everyone knew that. Some were immune, they cried out to their guards to be set free, but no one listened. It could take weeks, the cries growing fainter as starvation set in and the stench of decay began to ooze from the cracks in the walls. Men and women began to carry charms, then, to ward off the evil. Some prayed to their Gods, others whipped themselves raw in penance for whatever sin they believed they had committed to merit such a punishment. No-one dared speak the name of the sickness, for fear that naming it would bring it down on their own heads. There were mobs, some determined to drink themselves to death before they sickened, others baying for blood, for cleansing. We were an easy scapegoat, a symptom of the sickness to be purified with fire and violence. So they dragged us through the streets to show that we had led people astray, raped us to show that we were unclean, killed one or two to show their mercy. Even this didn't save them. Some turned their energy to escape, but there were armed guards stationed outside the village. Some simply ran onto the guards' swords rather than wait for the inevitable. Others languished at home, preferring the soft reassurance of decay to the brutality outside. Bodies were heaped on carts as the graveyards filled, then even the carts were left standing as their owners succumbed. Now the place is almost deserted, the silence more eloquent than words could ever be of the horrors of the plague. 

        Why do I think of these things? I am still alive. Death hasn't come for me yet. The bodies in the street mean nothing to me, just so much flesh, passive and self-absorbed as ever. What is flesh, after all?  Just so much clay that the earth reclaims, teasing it apart with insistent green fingers. The traceries of decay on their bare skin are almost beautiful, more beautiful than anything they achieved in life. I tiptoe in between the corpses, glancing down at them, smiling at those I recognize. I have caused this, this desolation. In my corruption I have gained power, the power to damn, the power to curse. Any power is sweet to the weak. I walk unscathed through this haven of disease, revulsion easy enough to ignore, nagging at the back of my mind. Hardly the first time I have had to suppress revulsion, loathing the flesh I have had to caress, the lips I've kissed, the lies I've told. It occurs to me that I may be the last one alive, that I may have outlived all those who used me and needed me and left only cold coins at the end of it all. I want to touch them suddenly, these mindless, meaningless things. For the first time in too long, I want to touch. I reach out a hand, run it through thick, brown hair matted with sweat, smile at the way it catches the light. So fragile, these things. I am not like them. I am not fragile. The sickly sweet smell doesn't affect me, their agonized and frozen eyes don't scare me, even the sight of the little children, embalmed and entombed in their mothers' arms, doesn't move me to tears. If I am to blame for all this, then I am outside of it all. If I am the last one alive, then I must be able to survive on my own. I smile as I think this. Of course, it makes sense. I have never been one of them, that's why they treated me as they did, using and threatening, beating and begging. They were afraid. And now they are dead, and I am alive, a wandering angel, a goddess in the ruins of a world that held no love for her.
        So I walk these streets, savoring desolation, the lazy sound of flies buzzing in my ears. There was a time when you could hardly walk for the crowds, when the men would push and shove and let their eyes linger on me until their women called them sharply away. It was so easy. For the price of a night's shelter I could belong to anyone. But now there is no more shelter to be had, and the streets are clogged with bodies, stationary crowds that pay no attention to me.
        Keep walking. Step over their outstretched limbs, ignore their expressions, ignore the tainted colour of their skin.   The horror of it is only transitory; soon they will sink and seep into the ground beneath them. I must keep moving, stop thinking, survive in spite of them. The road ahead is blocked. An old hay-cart loaded up with bodies, its driver lying to one side, defeated by the same invincible adversary that gave him his cargo. At first there were individual burials, mournings, wakes, flowers. Then the death-rate went up, and the burials were quicker, out of town in shallow graves. Even when the carts became a necessity, at first they used to segregate them, one for men and one for women, like everything else in this world. Funny how people try to cling to their humanity, when it is so much easier to just let it slide. Bodies piled chaotically now, arms and legs splayed and dangling, male, female, child, what does it matter? It's all just flesh. And I have to get past, get out of this place. Ignoring the stench, ignoring the dank feel of their skin, I take hold of the side of the cart and haul myself up, balancing on the edge and trying not to look down. I don't know where to put my feet. It seems almost funny, these people helpless below me, naked and crushed together in mindless travesty. I have an urge to touch them, suddenly, to pick them up and make them spin and dance like puppets in my arms, my laughter ringing out in this dead town. The laugh turns to a sob in my throat as I stretch myself out across the cart, reaching for the other side, and my hand sinks into softness, decay. Don't look down. Keep your eyes fixed firmly ahead, on the clear road on the other side. Hold on, pull, drop down, don't look back. Never look back. I land on my feet in the mud of an alleyway, putting a couple of crows to flight. At least the carrion birds are feasting, at least something can survive in this place. I watch as they wheel around, glossy black wings beating the air, and return to the feast, tearing strips of overripe flesh from something that was once human. I smile; what else can I do? 

        The world is just a short distance away; I can see snatches of countryside through the gaps between houses that are less densely packed than I am used to.  I feel washed up, stripped of humanity, liberated from anything that tied me to this place. Time to move on. I take the first faltering steps towards the fading light of the street, forcing my bruised and dirty feet out from the tattered sanctuary of my dress, one after the other, cold and white and useless. For a while it doesn't matter; my eyes are fixed on the distance, working out how many more steps I must take to be free of Coorhagen once and for all. 

        Then I notice movement further down the street. A few men are pacing back and forth, dazed, unable to tear themselves away from the comforting rhythm of their own footfalls. Dismay; how dare they spoil my solitude, soil the evening with their graceless confusion? Then resignation; I know my part. I force my eyes to glitter, force the smile on my face to curve with suggestion, and turn my steps towards the nearest of them. He looks at me blankly as I approach, stupefied by horror, uncomprehending. Have things changed so much? Has he forgotten the sordid, easy comfort of living flesh? He stands frozen, indifferent, as I draw close, a vague dull fear in his eyes as I reach out a hand to touch him. Is my touch so deadly, so contaminated? The scent of death must hang over me. At the back of my mind it has become a perfume, a sweet inevitability like spring flowers. I want to lie down, submit to seductive apathy, lie down with the dead and feel the earth's embrace. I want to touch him, to believe that either of us would feel anything. Further down the street I can hear snarling, scuffling, the sounds of fighting beasts. Perhaps despair has finally taken hold of the others, forcing them to tear at each other in an attempt to get out. I don't care. Fingers outstretched, I continue to reach out, until my fingertips are about to touch his face, while he remains helpless, rapt, enchanted.
        A noise nearby causes me to turn my head, and I see a nobleman advancing up the street, sword in hand. As he gets closer I can make out more details; his pallid skin, his white hair, and finally his eyes. I know those eyes. They had looked at me contemptuously often enough, months ago, before the world turned mad.

        Strange that I should remember him. Perhaps I was grateful that he had hated me; his arrogance had saved me from the need to hate him. It was a comfort to know that some things were still unattainable in a city where everything was for sale. Now those eyes only register malice. He too has been stripped of humanity. Bloodstained lips twist into a cruel smile as he sheaths his sword and raises his arms, and I see energy hover about his hands, a flickering red glow.
        Then anger, blind fury, a desperate desire to kill and tear that leaves me with no choice. I watch in fascination as my nails rake down the face of the man standing before me. And sweet, oblivious chaos takes over. He stands in mute surprise for a moment, and something about the disbelieving expression on his face infuriates me, makes me claw at him again and again. What am I doing? Watch my hands move of their own volition, watch as I pull a knife from his wavering fingers, this isn't real, this isn't happening, it doesn't matter. I don't even see him fall. I am running, running towards the others, knife in hand, their terrified expressions just urging me on, this terrible, delicious, insatiable bloodlust burning through me. It's so easy, so sweet to cut them down. Release. I am a goddess, ruthless, inviolable, glutted on death and pain and dancing on as they tumble to the ground. There's a haze in my mind, red, pulsing, visceral and reassuring. I feel invincible, strengthened by centuries, by all the horrors of history. Turning, I notice that nobleman standing a short distance away, a wry smile on his face, and I hear myself snarl as I draw closer to him, as I strike the first blow.
        Then clarity. I am standing in a darkening and desolate street, before a creature somewhere between god and man. There is blood on my hands. Dropping the knife, I stare at them, at the wet scarlet glistening on them. What have I done? A low moan escapes my lips as images of the last few moments flash into my mind: torn flesh, fearful expressions, screams echoing in victims' eyes. And behind it all, his smiling face, watching the mad puppet show he had created. And I had submitted so readily to his spell.  I had thought myself a goddess, finally exempt from passivity, taking revenge for a wasted lifetime, in control. I had thought myself so strong, so free. I should have known, oh god, should have known, and now my guilt stains my fingers. A sob escapes, although I try to suppress it. Is this why I exist, to provide amusement for one man or another, to be a puppet, feelingless and docile? Is there no way out? This creature steps forward as if to touch me, but I don't want to be touched. Clenching my fists, I beat against his armour until my hands are bruised and sore, the tears streaming down my face as he looks on with mild amusement. I want to spit at him. This isn't a victory, you haven't won, these tears aren't for you, you weren't the one who broke me, I'm still alive. He catches my wrists and I struggle helplessly in an iron grip, knowing what this means and refusing to give in. He just lets me writhe and twist, his fingers digging into my skin, until I have tired myself, sunk back into stillness and silence. I am a bound animal; what choice do I have? Submit. 
        The tears have already dried on my cheeks. I want to lie down, lie down with the dead and sleep dreamlessly again, but he holds me up, releasing one of my arms and gently tilting my head back so that I am forced to look in his eyes. There is a sadness there, behind all the anger and hate and brute desire. A lost poet stares out at a decaying world and tries to become immune to the horror without and within. He is not what he once was. We have these things in common: corruption, contortion, solitude, life-in-death. Looking into those eyes, I feel understanding dawn, feel my resentment melt away. I am to blame for all the sins I have committed. I do not repent. And as he leans forward, as I feel the sting of his teeth on my throat, I simply relax, feeling the life flowing out of me with every beat of my heart. Stillness, silence, these are my virtues. Silence.