It was the City of the Bridges, until it was not. The Disease snaked along the uneven cobble stones and crept up the vine covered walls, a ravenously unforgiving force in search of every man, woman and child. We traded milk and bread, until we traded sickness and death. Bodies dropped like leaves in autumn and anguish swam over the city. All along the watchtower the soldiers witnessed unspeakable inhumanity. The fathers and mothers wailed till dawn, the husbands and wives waited for death to do them part, the children cried and crawled in pain as The Disease sliced their every vein. Everywhere I turned, putrid air impaled my nostrils; death and decay and life going into death. Helpless cries filled the air as the apothecaries trudged through masses of the dying begging for help.

Bread and milk were no more- the marketplace was abandoned and all alone. The Disease knocked from door to door- and then invited itself in, the dying gasps of those infected were all I heard. It was appalling. Everyday was a fight against The Disease and a fight for survival. The rotting bodies piled up on the cobble stones invited vermin and darkness- a very hospitable atmosphere it was. The City of Bridges was in the hands of the horseman every man feared. The bridges were burnt down and the city was abandoned. For weeks we lived like rats, trying to escape the horror and ghosts of the past while in search of our daily bread and milk. Every new day was a new challenge as we made our way out of the city- the city we lived and breathed, which was now the epitome of hell, or even beyond.

We came down to I, The Disease told us it would not leave anyone behind. But it left me, it granted me salvation, it delivered me from death and horror. As I gathered the shredded hem of my dress and jump on to the dusty, broken and newly dismantled end of the bridge, I hear it. I hear the booming cry of the bell in the City of Death reverberate behind me. It cuts through the air as soft as velvet on skin. I turn around to take one last glance at the home I left behind. In the distance, in the misty dark aura blanketing the city I once lived and breathed, a figure rings the bell and stares back at me. It’s the Archdeacon of the church, or so it seemed to be. His deathly pale face and Disease shrouded body wrapped in shrivelled rags bids me farewell, as I cross the bridge that now separated the death and dying from the alive and living.