try until nothing is left

You had been raking gravel out of the yard, tiny stones kicked off the path into the kempt lawn by prancing horses and wagon wheels, when Lucy and the other nun, Esme, had caught your attention with their dense gossip. 

They regarded your approach with less caution than they would have had with their other Sisters, as gossip was deemed inappropriate, a violation, a flickering serpent’s tongue carrying covert temptations leading to luscious sins and debauchery.

They saw you—poor, morose, the groundskeeper's only child and reminder of loveless trysts—and thought nothing of snaking you into their prattle. You were not the sort to divulge anyone's secrets without gain, without reward, and you knew that the nuns kept nothing to their names once they took their vows and donned their habits.

“Father Shaw,” you encouraged the discussion, now intrigued, mostly from the fact that he was very new, very young, and modestly handsome, “why was he awake so early? Why was he in Father Marius’ chambers? Curious to me.”

Neither of them gave much caution to your questions, shrugging as if to dismiss your ambivalence and accusatory tone. You were bold in the way that the faithless and lost always tended to be: asking senseless things, always concerned with the wrongdoings of others, always suspicious, always inquiring—forever inquiring.

“Oh, my, you're so defensive,” Esme struggled to whip a yellow bedsheet out into the air, still heavy with water and the smell of mildew. “If that’s how you're going to be, then: why does your father stumble around the yard at night with a lantern, swinging around a pistol like a madman? Won't he hurt someone?”

Because he's a godless, superstitious drunk. Perhaps, even, a bit disturbed in his mind, but you couldn't bear to think that way, that he might be the type to need his head locked in a metal cage, gagged, arms bound, and padlocked in some damp, distant corner of an asylum.

“He's a good man,” you relented, taking your hands from the top of the weathered handle of the rake and resuming your task. The gravel made an awful, coarse sound as metal teeth collected pieces of stone and led them back to the rest. “He's served this monastery well. I don't mean offense about Father Shaw, I'm simply curious about what transpired, is all.”

“No offense taken,” came a voice from behind, startling both the twittering nuns and you with a flinch. They saw it to be Father Shaw standing there, hands cuffed behind his back with a particularly demure disposition, hiked their skirts and whisked themselves away back inside. “Ah, am I really such a frightful figure? I couldn't really find an opening during your conversation to invite myself in. I apologize.”

You were of a similar fretful nature, quickening your clawing and the reach of the rake. “Nay, Father. I think it's simply because you're a strange man to them still; a handsome face, a warm voice—mysterious. Give them time. They'll come around.”

“Have you?” Father Shaw asked, taking measured strides in a half-circle around to your front. He concentrated on where the teeth of your instrument struck next, tips temporarily wedged into the soft dirt before being ripped up with chunks of earth and gray gravel. “It wouldn't do for me if you… were still ill at ease with me as well. I consider you my one true friend in this place.”

Your father held a certain distaste towards Father Shaw that you'd never witnessed before, saying nothing but that something was terribly wrong with him and not to place yourself in a position to be alone with him. This, you attributed to his unsoundness, but it was always the sudden flicker of a sharp breath against candlelight—a jarring shift in his demeanor when he spoke about the Father. He'd grow neurotic and throw things about the cottage interior, convincing you to pay some mind to what he was saying.

“And, you're a great friend of mine as well.” You’d hoped you sounded coherent and paced your words evenly enough. “I'm sorry if you thought I was accusing you of something, sir. I really meant nothing to it.”

Father Shaw’s lips sprawled tight and pale into a fond smile, never showing his teeth, though the imprint of them seemed massive and the skin of his lips startlingly thin across them. “I know. You have nothing to fear. My feelings were not affected. If you'd like, come to my chambers later, we may pray together first, and I'll tell you everything you wish to know about what I saw to sate your curiosity.”

“That seems improper, sir,” you said.

“How so?”

“Inviting someone to your chambers at night seems an unbecoming venture for a pious man of status, such as yourself,” you continued, now standing upright beside your rake, “if any of the sisters were to witness it, worse, another priest, aren't you afraid you'd be horribly chastised? Even worse, excommunicated altogether?”

Although Father Shaw’s dark eyes reflected no light, holding such demanding depth to them that it was hard to keep your bearings whenever you realized you'd been staring, his entire face was alight in amusement.

“Wherever did you learn to speak like that?” he asked candidly, still glowing despite his pallor. “Forgive me when I say, but your father is not an educated man. I mean no offense. Please don't look at me in such a way. You are so well spoken, I only wish to know more about you.”

“I've lived here my entire life,” you told him. “The nuns taught me how to read.”

He looked impressed. “You can read?”

“I can!” From a near distance, you could make out your father’s haddard form, bent sideways on a walking cane and limping towards the pair of you. You looked up at the priest’s smooth face. “It'd be best for you to leave before my father can speak to you. He isn't the kindest soul after a long day.

Father Shaw didn't react with any semblance of worry, but agreed that other things needed to be done and began walking away. Just as he passed you on his way towards the monastery, he let his hand rest atop your shoulder and leaned you towards him to whisper in your ear: “Come to me tonight. I'll be waiting for you.”

There was something so luxurious and cooling about his voice, like fine silks sitting in the shade during autumn, gliding across your bare skin, wrapping your neck, your chest, your nether parts. His voice was a fine, chilly mist after the first rains in spring. It felt refreshing and new after a glacial winter, yet still had the capacity to soak you to the bone. It was a nighttime breeze caressing your cheek, sweeping through your hair, making your skin burst all over with bumps.

“I don't like the way he looks at you,” said Father with a mouthful of beige porridge. Dinner for the night and every night for the next week. “He looks at you like you're a slab of meat! Some prize after a hunt. I don't like him, love. Not one bit. You'd do well to stay to mind yourself and do your chores and nothing else, y’hear?”

After the meal, you cleaned up and swept the floors with hard bristles. You snuffed all the lights except for the fireplace where your father sat in his old chair, fiddling with his favorite pistol. 

“It's time for bed, old man.” You watched him fit a couple of small bullets into the loading chamber. They glinted against the orange flames. “Goodness. What have you gotten this time? Something new?”

“Aye!” he grinned in a sickly way, almost toothless, ravaged by blackened decay with what remained. “Went to market the other day while the nuns bullied you and picked out some fine bullets from the silversmith.” He cracked the two halves of the pistol shut. “Better to be prepared.” 

You waited until sometime later, once he was finally asleep, possibly after midnight, before leaving the humble cottage sitting on the fringes of the massive monastery yard and rushing across the grounds to get inside. 

Once, they'd kept a guard dog on the property, one of those meaner breeds that were used for gambling, but the poor thing wound up shot dead in the middle of the night by a traveling friar who'd come to seek refuge at the monastery. You and the sisters were horribly distraught by the entire ordeal, and all vetoed the consideration of bringing another dog here.

Since then, it was no task for you (or anyone else) to get inside the building and shuffle along the shadows through the corridors. At night, the place stirred with patient insects, feral rodents large and small in the pantry, and hungry owls tamely whining from the rafters when something startled them away from their hunt of vermin. 

Your feet were a light sound on the masonry below, padded by thin leather soles, alerting you of your own enthusiasm as the thwap thwap thwap became louder, aggressive as you closed in on a wall and turned down another hallway for a sturdy wood door at the end of it. 

As your knuckles rapped, hoping the sound wouldn't disturb the animals’ nighttime caroling, a swift darkness moved across the floor from behind the door, briefly blocking out the soft light seeping out from underneath. 

The next moment, you were being pulled inside and sat at a small table tucked to the side of Father Shaw’s rather generous room. It was a simple space sparsely furnished for the barest of comforts—only for what was needed to live—but what had been made for him was of exquisite craftsmanship, some made of teakwood, which Shaw assured you was remarkably durable and highly resistant to rotting. 

“It's wonderful for boats,” he said, pouring a light amber colored brew from a metal kettle he'd heated a short while ago. “It’s good for all elements, really. Exceptional longevity. I've heard it has become a popular option in the city for burying the deceased.”

“Will Father Marius be buried in a teakwood coffin, then?” you asked, sipping politely from the cup even though you had no appetite for it. You already felt ill at ease enough having disobeyed your father by sneaking into a priest's personal chambers at night. The things the sisters would say about you—

“He will be entombed underneath the monastery with the rest who have served here and passed. I believe that is all stone down there, my dear.” Father Shaw smiled tepidly, kettle aside, no tea of his own. “But, I know that your curiosity led you here to me with questions, yes? About the state I found Father Marius in, yes?”

You tried to disguise your intrigue by drinking more of the tea, of whatever it was he had given you, and listened to the sounds of your fingertips sticking to the porcelain from sweat and steam. 

“If you wouldn't mind sharing…”

“I wouldn't!” he leaned on his arms on the table, closer towards you as though with a secret. “As I've said, you are truly the only soul here whom I can confide in. You are not a sheep. And you do not fear sin as the rest do. So, you can ask me anything, and I'll tell you everything.”

“Tell me about Father Marius, then.” 

Father Shaw reached across the table for one of your hands. His fingers were far larger, much longer, and colder than your own as they clamped around yours as he recounted the event.

“Dreadful sight, it was. It was, oh, perhaps sometime after three o'clock when I heard a massive racket; a struggle. When I knocked, all of the noise subsided at once, and there was complete stillness. Silence, my dear, silence so deep, dark, and damning that I knew something awful had happened.

“I didn't knock again, I was too afraid to! But Father Marius was getting on in age, so I couldn't just stand by, either. I kicked the door in—just once was all it took—and I rushed inside to see the room was a complete mess. A fight had clearly taken place, and the walls—oh, the walls—”

His remorse was performed, stiff and uncertain, reflected nowhere within the vastness of his black gaze. You were moved by the vulnerability he was trying to show you, going so far as to abandon your drink to place your warm hand on top of his.

“The walls, my dear, were a mess of blood. Something vicious and awful had happened in that room. But then, I found Father Marius lying there on the ground next to a broken window. I think he'd tried to throw himself through it. His face was shredded to pieces, his eyes gouged. When I got closer, I noticed that his tongue had been severed from his head!”

You were holding Father Shaw’s hands in a bloodless grip, face ashen, teeth chattering behind your lips. “What on earth! That is not only horror, but cruelty!”

"Oh, my love, it gets worse!” Father Shaw held you mesmerized in his void. “Closer still, Father Marius’ face was locked in one of pure terror, I've—I’ve never seen a human react in quite a way such as that before, to fear. The man unhinged his own jaw in a hideous scream, and it seemed to me he was skeletal. By that, it's like he was, well, quite dry.

“So, I crouched down so much lower and inspected him all over. Do you want to know what I found?” 

“Yes.” You spoke breathlessly.

Father Shaw had moved out of his seat and was on one knee in front of you, both of his frigid hands on your face to smooth across your cheeks, pushing away pieces of hair obscuring some part of you he'd wanted to see. 

“My love, I saw marks in his neck. Two, beautifully, wonderfully symmetrical marks that were far too clean to be of any animal that we know of. The bite was clean; it was patient and cunning. And the fangs that had sunk into his tender flesh had drained him of blood, of the very essence that kept his heart beating until the very last.”

“Sir—” your stomach plummeted, falling forever, when he smiled, teeth longer than any human should be shown through to you. He wouldn't let you go when you went to move out of his hands, away from him. “Father Shaw, please—”

“I wish you could have seen it, my love. It was a breathtaking sight, and I longed for someone else to admire the beauty of my work alongside me.” 

It was unthinkable that a vampire could walk on these holy grounds and in the bright of day, yet Father Shaw had for countless days. Evil held you sweetly by the cheek and in your hair, kissed you with a corpse’s cold lips, and laved the skin of your skin with a long, serpentine tongue.

“O’, my merciful lord…”

Father Shaw bent your head back with a fistful of hair and spoke from your throat:

As it turned out, he was a collaborative gift from your father and a new alchemist's guild that had set down roots in the city. The product of limitless financial prowess and unbridled research endeavors, which would likely now be funded ad infinitum, as your father's absolute delight and marvel of the knight was unmistakable.

You hadn't understood the reason for his fascination until the knight, still having said nothing of his new oath, looked up into your eyes. No face of a man gazed up at you, only impenetrable blackness surrounding two glowing pink orbs inside the helmet where his eyes should've been. You had expected a weathered but handsome man with eyes the shade of warm honey, or brown, or blue, or just something human.

To sate your curiosity and confusion, you took your fingers away from the knight and lifted the helmet straight up off his head. It was heavy in your hands, yet not enough to unbalance you until you looked inside the armor and saw nothing. There was also nothing inside the helmet. Both were empty.

You gasped and dropped the helmet, eliciting a joyous yelp of laughter from your father and others in his court (who mimicked him).

"What in God's name are you?" you asked on a winded breath.

The knight, unperturbed, retrieved his helmet and replaced it, then bowed to you once more as if to continue emphasizing that he was there for you. Only you.

He was not capable of giving you an answer, but your father was: "He is to be your protection in these coming dark days. I pray that you will not need him. But, it has come to my attention that one of my very own court harbors unforgivable malice towards me and mine. Just this morning, the taster perished after eating the breakfast porridge meant for me. They will be coming for you, too, my precious one."

Whispers in the audience chamber erupted into hysterics that reverberated all around and penetrated your skull. It was an unnecessary act to bring an assassination attempt to light in such a public manner, but your father knew no subtlety, nor did he know kindness in his punishments. Quartering would be a mercy in comparison to what else he would do.

"He is to stay with you, always," said your father, without a trace of humor.

In the distant corner of the audience chamber, covered by a shroud of dark and unnoticed in the uproar, your husband and cousin scowled at the man sitting on his throne of tyranny.

With the knight always only a few paces behind you at any given time, the days lapsed into months; one season seamlessly melding into another. The assassination attempts continued undaunted, and the bodies of tasters were kept in the cellar, frozen on ice, in the hopes of being able to extract information on the poison being used. Perhaps most interesting was that none of the attempts had been directly on you.

"My father is a hated man, Galiger," you told the knight walking in your shadow. It was springtime now, cool in the mornings, the air always full of dense mist and dew on tree leaves. You liked to flick the droplets off with your fingers. "I… you mustn't say anything, but I don't blame the hatred. He commits abominable acts in the name of God. He says God wants war with the Solyites because they're heathens, but is that true? Is that the will of God, or the will of man, Galiger?"

Galiger was incapable of speech, but the soul infused into the armor had once belonged to a faithful knight from another time. He would carefully absorb your every word spoken and take it as his own gospel. Nothing else mattered to him; the world at large was full of trivialities and hatred, none of which directly impacted you because you were sheltered behind walls of stone and metal, and him.

"I don't think my father is long for this world," you confessed, shivering in the morning breeze and thick mist. You tried to diffuse your anxiety by plucking tree leaves and tearing them in your hands. "Once he dies, then what? Mother is dead. I am the only heir, aside from my cousin. My husband is pushing me to prepare for ascension, but I don't want it. I don't want… I don't want to die. My father has made enemies of the world, Galiger."

You startled when his heavy red cloak was draped across your shoulders, his hands lingering on your body. Perhaps it was your insurmountable loneliness; the long nights alone in your chambers while your husband philandered the castle and city for his fill, or simply the pressure of an unknowable future, but you threw yourself into Galiger's cold armor and leaned against him.

He would not push you away; that would've been an offensive act, but you hadn't expected his arms to surround you in a reciprocating embrace. You hadn't thought that he could feel much of anything at all, even with his soul intact.

Enough nights had passed of you divulging your most sinful secret thoughts and desires to him because you believed that he was only an enchanted suit of armor. At no point had it occurred to you that, perhaps, a soul could still belong to a man and that that soul was still the man he had once been while he was alive. Devoted to a fault. Kind. Loving, even.

These revelations made your body burn, gave deeper meaning to the way Galiger held you close in his arms. If he had been an ordinary man, you were certain he would've tried to kiss you, and you wouldn't have been able to find it in yourself to deny him. You had told him once that you sometimes liked to pretend there was flesh and a cock inside his armor, and rough skin to touch you with.

You couldn't believe your own foolish bravery.

Even later that night, while in the bath, your recent past haunted you. Galiger was guarding the room just beyond the white linens hanging from the ceiling. They created a lovely, opaque curtain of privacy that billowed like ladies' party gowns when a breeze trickled into the room.

Ordinarily, knights would never be given the privilege of watching over their liege as they bathed, but, like you, the alchemists and your father had underestimated the human soul and assumed him to be just a suit of armor.

"My husband never touches me anymore. I have not shared a bed with him in over a year. I think that he is in love with my cousin. Interesting, isn't it?" This was said aloud to the room. No voice returned confirmation to you, only the clamor of his armor increasing the closer he got to your linen curtains. "It's okay. You can look at me. I want you to look at me. Please."

Whether as a man or a knight, he obeyed and brushed the curtain aside with one of his arms. You were submerged up to your chest in a wooden bathing vessel. A sickly-sweet floral aroma wafted around the enclosed space in a thick haze that made your head feel a little heavy.

"Touch me, Galiger. I'm… so alone," you said, lifting one of your legs over the rim of the bathtub. "You can do anything to me, and I'll take it. If… if that is your desire as well, of course." Unlike your father, you found no comfort in taking things that did not belong to you, nor what did not want to belong to you.

But Galiger has always been yours. He had been made for you. He wanted you as well.

He placed his leathery hand on the leg you left out for him and caressed your skin as he followed the obvious path up the length of your body to your core. There, he went no further and focused on your face despite how provocatively revealed to him you were in this moment. Your displeasure could not be disguised, even as he touched your face with the palm side of his gauntlet. The sharpened fingertips of steel gently grazed your skin. His leather-clad thumb came to rest across your lips, touching them. He memorized their shape and how you wrapped your hot tongue around his false appendage, mindful of the way his armor protruded.

Maybe even living armor could experience arousal, because he trailed his other hand down the expanse of your body to grope your chest, anywhere else he could grab before plunging into the water and laying the first strokes on you. The abruptness of his touch made you jolt, hands fast to grapple the edges of the tub.

You let out a sigh that quivered from both excitement and relief. His strokes began to smooth out, grew into long, languid motions that you could follow by thrusting your hips in time with his hand. As he worked you up, you tried to imagine what it would be like to have his cock inside of you, what that would look like. Maybe he'd be a normal length with enough girth to spread you wide open. Maybe he'd have just the right amount of curve to hit you where you need it the most.

Maybe, when he fucked you, it was unlike how he would behave while in armor. While he donned his persona and protected you by day, by night, he would be a fervent lover and take you with wild, hard, greedy thrusts that made the room spin around you. He would always moan when he came, and finish on your body because neither of you could take the risk.

It was a delicious fantasy that sent you over the edge. Hard. You had to bite around a wad of white linen to keep your moans quiet as Galiger's hand worked you into a searing orgasm. It was a spectacular light behind your eyes, like the night sky brightening with explosive fire before settling back into darkness.

You held onto his wrist as he stroked you through it, and then slowed once you were no longer writhing against his hand and your moans had slowed, evened into deep breaths.

He took his hand away from your core, but let it linger on your leg hanging off the edge of the bathtub still. You allowed him this as you were satisfied, not thinking that you would ever face qualms of his touching you after this. That was when you sat upright in the bath and grabbed the helmet off his shoulders.

You sank back into the lukewarm water, smiling at the glowing pink orbs staring back at you, and kissed the cold metal visor.

a/n: sorry to the anon whose friend wanted swordplay, it wasn't going to fit in with this particular version of the prompt.

if y'all want more of this, you've got three options:

1) a larger one shot of this specific prompt

2) you're the alchemist who brings the armor to life, except now the knight is loyal to you. possibly swordplay here

The doctors had argued it was to prevent grieving families and grave robbers from clawing through the ash in search of bones, scraps of clothing. Valuables were discarded with the bodies of nobles. But none of that made any difference, as there was greed and loss, far too much of it to keep people out of the fireplaces and from digging and stealing and reclaiming.

You hadn't been so driven to search for your husband’s things because you still possessed more wealth than he had been burned with. He had been blistered with black and purple pustules of infection and plague before he died, so you feared that breathing him in (breathing anyone in) would fill your lungs with them (with him) and kill you, too.

But that did not mean that you did not grieve, because you missed the beauty that he brought to your life. You missed his gentle wit and loving mind, how he always sent you exquisite clothing from wherever in the world he had gotten off to now.

My love, this is your color!

-Samuel

Every color was your color in his eyes. And, every piece he had delivered to you became a part of your collection of things. An opulent display of his devotion and good status to show to your friends; anyone sitting with you for quaint tea and distantly sourced food untouched by the town.

Meeting Great Death had come long after the burning of plague bodies, now hushedly called The Incineration, and months since the cortège had first appeared during each waning crescent.

The wagons had filed into town with their thunder, pulled by dead horses that made the ground shiver under your feet. Many townsfolk, including yourself, had been roused by the commotion and hurriedly made themselves decent to check outside. It became a spectacle of groaning complaints, white nightdresses, and bright orange lantern light floating midair in bloodless fists.

All light was to the wagons, which had formed a tight, silent ring around the poisoned fountain spouting brown plague water, and the disoriented chatter had ebbed into anticipatory shushing.

Then, the townsfolk jumped as the windows with their blackout lace fell forward as though forced from the other side, landing flat like a counter-top. The darkness beyond the windows was as dark and dense as it was infinite, smothering pulsing glows from the lanterns as some fearless men awkwardly inched closer to the wagons.

“O’ woe! Tragedy! Tragedy has befallen your home! It has taken your friends and family. It has crushed your souls and stolen theirs. But, have no fear, for we have come to return what once was yours!” said Great Death from somewhere within the throng of wagons and wet skeleton horses.

“What are they worth to you? The souls of your dearly departed. What are they worth to you? To be reunited with those that you loved so dearly and so terribly lost. Wouldn't you do everything you could to have them back? Pay any price? Come! Come! Come all! Let us speak!”

And then, bone-white beaks and hollow eyes emerged from the darkness within the wagons. Every window was filled with these spectral merchants. Frightening monstrosities in black cloaks and wide-brimmed hats and long fingers pushed into leather gloves.

One townsfolk had communicated what you, what everyone else had thought, seeing them, “What are the doctors doing? Haven't we suffered enough because of them? They've burned everyone we loved, and now they're trying to sell them back to us as souls? This is madness!”

“They are not our doctors! Look! Look!” wailed another, a paranoid man, “those are not masks. Those beaks are bone and skin. They are demons coming for the rest of us! Run! Run for your lives! Seal your doors! Hide!”

You were pulled along with the scattering crowd, the dispersing lantern light, and slamming doors, but you did not flee inside as everyone else had. Instead, you were coaxed back towards the wagons by a leathery hand and nodding beak, gesturing for you to come close.

The wagon was larger than the rest, as was the creature leaning out of the window. There was fleshiness to his long beak, waxen with green veins that throbbed in the swaying light.

Great Death looked at you with nothing eyes, and nearly bent his head sideways onto his shoulder as if his true stature were cramped inside the wagon. When he spoke, he did so clearly, even without his beak splitting into halves like separate jaws.

“How joyous! You didn't run away. Your grief must be immeasurable. Please, come even closer to me. Come here. Yes, yes, what a lovely thing you are.” Great Death giggled in delight of your obedience, or your foolishness. “You do not wear rags. You are well kept. You possess no healthy amount of suspicion, yet I suspect you are still mourning someone. Who might it be? You can tell me. Who? Who?”

You sensed he was mocking you with that jaunty voice of his. He asked you like someone who already knew a secret, but who'd wanted to hear the great revelation straight from the source.

“My husband.” You told him. “He was a wealthy merchant who owned many ships. He sailed for more months out of the year than he was home. He could've found someone else far more beautiful, more handsome than I, but he kept me. He always came home.”

Great Death stayed at his sickly angle with his head as he leaned out the window further, both hands grasping the edge of the window-counter top. “Ah, I see. And I assume that this wonderful, merchant husband of yours succumbed to the plague? Yes. Yes, he burned with the rest, didn't he?”

“He burned with the rest,” you said.

“A hideous shame! You do have my condolences. I must ask, have there been any other cases of plague since The Incineration?” His gloves scuffed as he fluttered his fingers outward, away from you and towards the lightless houses and barricaded doors. “I won't hear an answer from anyone else, as you know.”

You couldn't hold his empty gaze, those sockets of penetrating black, and looked over his shoulder, hoping to see inside at something.

Somewhere far, somewhere deep, you noticed a faint glow. Tiny hums of light blinking in and out of existence like fireflies. Little sentient creatures with will and action of their own. But these were colors: mostly bright white, some were yellow and orange, and a few were searing white-blue.

“No,” you said, at last, remembering the question, “there haven't been any more cases since the burnings. Since—”

“The ships stopped sailing.”

“Yes,” you said.

Great Death then withdrew into the darkness of the wagon with his crooked neck and leathery hands. You considered leaving for your home, padlocking the doors and pushing furniture up against them because it was clear that this creature—all of these creatures—harbored no good intentions.

They were not your doctors who had incinerated hundreds of bodies, claiming it as a necessity, saying that there was no other way to protect the rest of the town. At the time, houses quarantining the sick had been forcibly broken into by the doctors and other men in masks and gowns. They offered no apologies, no desire for absolution, no mercy.

The plagued were dragged from their deathbeds, their salt baths, their favorite chairs, and out onto the streets with no dignity, in whatever way they'd been found. They were taken to the fireplaces, thrown inside those great, lashing lion flames, and died screaming as they became smoke and ash. Outrage only came afterwards, as it had all happened so quickly, no one had expected it.

The doctors had said nothing. Offered few sympathies, yet promised that this sacrifice, this purge, had saved the rest of the town. That there would be no more plague.

Sometimes, the fireplaces still wailed, but not as they'd had then.

“What is your husband's soul worth to you?” asked Great Death, now back in his window with his sideways head and hands clasped on the counter top.

He'd been there for a while, it seemed. And you were still standing in front of his wagon, instead of being tucked away behind the safety of locks and walls.

“You—do you have him in there with you?”

“Oh, possibly,” he said, calm and unrevealing. His hands lightly thudded on the window-counter top, rattling the glass that it was made from. “I have a little bit of everyone in here, I suppose you could say. What is your husband's soul worth to you?”

You said nothing because how could you measure the worth of a soul? Did a soul cost as much as your vast wardrobe? Did it cost as much as your house? Was it worth the same as one of your legs, or a cluster of pubic hairs cut with a razor?

“Do you think his soul is worth your fortune?” Great Death saw your stricken expression just then and let out a breathy laugh. A satisfied laugh. “Is he worth you giving up your clothes? Your house? Your comfortability? Do you love your husband enough to live in rags for the rest of your life?”

You rushed up to his counter top and grabbed his hands with yours. For once, your heart was beating something awful, foul with hot-cold dread that felt wet under your skin. “I—what else is there? What else would you be willing to take? Anything else?”

Great Death was terrible up close, freezing to the touch. Pale. Dead. Not of this realm. The air around him was dense, stagnant, like it had a breath to hold. It simply did not move in his presence. The feeling of his fingers wrapping yours, pinning them to the counter top, suffusing you with his cold and his darkness made your neck hairs stand upright.

He was enjoying this.

“I will consider it a fair exchange. Everything material that you hold precious in exchange for the man you love. Wouldn't you say that sacrificing your wealth would be worth it if it meant reuniting with him?”

“I've earned everything that I have after a lifetime of scraping around the slums. I will not return to that,” you said, low in your throat, borderline vicious. “Anything else?”

He let out a windy sound, perhaps a breath, or a hum that meant he knew too much. His thumbs, much larger than your own, caressed the peaks of your knuckles, stroked the backs of your hands, and pressed down on your veins while he contemplated.

“Come inside, then. Just around the corner.” Great Death moved his slanted head slightly right, indicating a black door at the rear of the wagon, which had been camouflaged by darkness. “I'll open it for you. Come along. Come. Come.”

The interior became familiar to you each month thereafter. But, you would always remember how disoriented you'd been first stepping inside of the commodious space filled with all manner of things vile, fascinating, and mystifying.

Great Death was able to fix his neck when he wasn't hunkered by the window that reached only waist-height for him. He and the rest of the soul vendors were like afterimages of each other, seemingly indistinct, grayer when you stared at one long enough and then looked to another. Great Death, however, came with a heavier beak that curved more sharply; a carrion face capable of tearing through your viscera.

He was one with the semi-darkness, his shapeless silhouette a seamless mesh with air and shadows, of which the yellow tallow candlelight did not fully reach. When he moved, it was swift, inescapable; he glided rather than walked, and you could only follow his pallid features appearing to float midair.

“Forgive me for the mess; it is so rare that I have guests come inside to visit me. Transactions are better done outside, after all,” explained Great Death, already unfastening, untying, disrobing you, and laying you out on a wooden slab of a table. “My, you are lovely, aren't you? I wonder if what I see is what your husband saw in you as well? Ah, that is unlikely.”

You bled on his cock that night as he savagely fucked you into the table. His nothingness had been moved away, parted in halves to reveal gray and blackened purple hardness. An emaciated belly of similar tones was eye-catching and harsh and familiar, but a view which became unimportant as he impaled you, yanked your head back by hair closest to your scalp, and forced your gaze to the ceiling.

There, you watched the serpentine emptiness coil across the ceiling of the wagon, watched the formations in the wood grain come alive with writhing, yawning faces that never lasted long enough to know if they were speaking to you, because Great Death thrust too hard, made you cry, bleed more, but you never told him to stop.

This was the price you were willing to pay. So, you lay beneath him motionless, sore, regretting your own stubbornness for just a moment until he let out a shuddering breath of release, rutting you with his cock still twisted with your insides. He flooded your walls with cum that felt wrong, gluey, membranous. It oozed out slowly once he removed himself; the pain of his having been there was worse now that there was nothing left.

"Even I experience lust and crave a human’s touch, their soft flesh. Humans are an indulgence we are rarely afforded. Souls, well, as you can imagine, cannot do much,” said Great Death once cloaked in his darkness again. He redressed you, starting with the sleeves, and helped you off the table with encouraging pats to your lower back. “I greatly enjoyed myself. Thank you for this exchange.”

“My husband's soul, I want it.” Now, as he ushered you towards the end of the wagon, towards the black door concealed in staticy shadows, you ached in countable pulses. “Give it to me.”

Great Death giggled, pressed his hands down onto your shoulders, and nuzzled his lethal beak against your neck.

“Come back to me next month.”

And, that's how it went on from there on out. Each month during the waning crescent, a persistent bright, sharp sickle in the sky, he led the cortège into the town square and allowed you through the threshold into his sacred place. He served no others in town, but had expressed certain morbid appreciation to you, saying that because of your brazenness, more of the vendors were being skittishly approached by those deluged in grief and delusion.

“Oh, oh, oh, how joyous, my lovely.” He fucked you on the floor as he spoke, ramming you cruelly, until you whimpered and moaned. You wondered if he was trying to make you scream. “What a boon you've become to us all. They're all so happy. Your people. Mine. The souls. None is so happy as I, though.”

Before he'd penetrated you again, before he'd let you through the door, he met you at his window-counter top and asked, “What is your husband's soul worth to you? Have you considered letting go of your fortune? My lovely, you know that you cannot possibly take it with you once you perish and rot, yes?”

Always frightened by the thought and obstinate, you let him have you in whatever way he pleased. The pain eventually washed over with numbness. At times, his long strokes against your walls felt good, and occasionally, you would come on his gray and purple cock. Focusing on how thick he felt inside of you, and the white streaks of lightning crackling behind your eyes.

Without fail, he flooded you and made it stay for a short while as if relishing your prolonged discomfort and disgust that he was still there. It would leak slowly, abnormally, as he redraped himself. Concealed his sallow body with protruding ribs, jagged angles, and dark slits spread throughout.

He was corpselike; he looked like rot. His rot inched out of you for days after he was long gone, and then the sickness would set in. Red hot fevers and bone cold shivers kept you bedridden for weeks, tended to by cautious maids unsure what to make of your recurrent episodes.

Nothing showed, but you felt festering beneath your skin. Unexplainable in that you saw no such lesions, no lumps lurking in the layers of your anatomy. But, you soothed and scratched yourself like something was there. The maids were worried that your grief had made you spiral into hysterics, and they considered calling one of the doctors to your bedside.

“I will ruin all of you if you bring one of those—those murderers into my house!”

At these times, you could not be reasoned with. There was too much itch, too much sensation, too much boiling under flesh and bone, too much crawling, too much pain, too much hunger, too much vomiting, too much too much too much too much too much…

“What is your husband's soul worth to you?” Great Death had returned during the waning crescent, said you looked unwell. “Will we continue our exchange as we usually do? I am not opposed, you know that. I am very fond of you, my lovely. Come inside.”

You were fragile and fatigued from fighting illness, so it didn't much matter how hard he fucked you into the floor. Skin slapped and moistened with fluids and sweat, and Great Death’s moans broke the stillness in the air.

“Oh, my lovely, I look forward to coming to this town because I know that you're waiting for me.” He said it dreamily, like in reminiscence of a bleary, beautiful memory. A faded photograph lost between the pages of a book of someone once loved. “Perhaps I see a little of what your husband saw in you. No. No, I see deeper than he ever could. I see through you into your core. I see your soul. Oh, how hideous it is.”

His body was revealed to you. The dark slits covering him twitched and opened wide into tens of dozens of pupilless black eyes, and lipless mouths with needle-teeth. Purple-red tongues lashed out of the mouths at you, making you scream and struggle beneath his weight.

“This wasn't part of the exchange! I just want my husband’s soul!” you pleaded, searing with panic through every ounce of your being. “I'll give it to you. I'll give you everything. My clothes. My house. My fortune! It's all yours!”

His fucking had slowed, stopped entirely as a bulbous, flickering light had drifted out from some hidden place in the depths of the wagon. It was gently orange at its center, emanating a pale aura outward, which pulsed like a heartbeat and buzzed with familiar warmth.

You thought to reach for the little thing doomed to be smothered by the dark. All light eventually was.

“He's waited for you all along, my lovely,” said Great Death softly. He followed the floating marvel with his nothing-eyes as it circled your joined bodies. Eventually, it came close enough to snatch out of the air and snuff out in his leathery fist. “Yes, such a beautiful soul he was. I no longer want it.”

Your breath snatched in your throat, mouth agape. Shock had invited in a swell of watery cold that you were unable to acknowledge what had just happened. That you'd lost your husband for a second time; this time forever.

There was no telling smear of blood or glittering orange residue in his open palm when he showed it to you. It was as if it had been a brilliant trick of candlelight extinguishing without a trace.

“Your soul is most foul, but it will be my prize. My lovely, for as long as I find you beautiful and repulsive, you will live on. Yes. Yes, I'll keep you here with me so that I may always be able to admire you.”

Before you could've launched yet another scream into the immense void of the wagon, he thrust his carrion beak into your chest. He wedged it deep through your muscle and blood, piercing cartilage and bone to reach your heart.

Great Death used his hand to rip out the throbbing, glistening organ from the rest of you. He observed blood filling the cavernous well he'd left inside you, saying nothing as it backed up your throat and spilled profusely from your mouth. Once you died, the bright red that had stained your teeth darkened to exquisite purplish-red.

He tore your heart apart into consumable pieces and fed them to his mouths. The piranha teeth and long, licking tongues chewed eagerly; meanwhile, the eyelids on his body closed, knowing that the mouths would soon be sated by the decadent meal.

Thereafter, he waited.

He had to wait for a long time because souls were often far more timid than their human husks. There was nothing left to protect them from vendors on the prowl, vendors who had built collections across uncountable millennia.

But, eventually, your soul did appear before him in stuttering pink light. He caught you easily, let you rest in his hand while he decided which jar he owned that could possibly be enough to house your beauty.

You would turn sinfully red as you matured, became strong, and forgot who you used to be.

You had been raking gravel out of the yard, tiny stones kicked off the path into the kempt lawn by prancing horses and wagon wheels, when Lucy and the other nun, Esme, had caught your attention with their dense gossip. 

They regarded your approach with less caution than they would have had with their other Sisters, as gossip was deemed inappropriate, a violation, a flickering serpent’s tongue carrying covert temptations leading to luscious sins and debauchery.

They saw you—poor, morose, the groundskeeper's only child and reminder of loveless trysts—and thought nothing of snaking you into their prattle. You were not the sort to divulge anyone's secrets without gain, without reward, and you knew that the nuns kept nothing to their names once they took their vows and donned their habits.

“Father Shaw,” you encouraged the discussion, now intrigued, mostly from the fact that he was very new, very young, and modestly handsome, “why was he awake so early? Why was he in Father Marius’ chambers? Curious to me.”

Neither of them gave much caution to your questions, shrugging as if to dismiss your ambivalence and accusatory tone. You were bold in the way that the faithless and lost always tended to be: asking senseless things, always concerned with the wrongdoings of others, always suspicious, always inquiring—forever inquiring.

“Oh, my, you're so defensive,” Esme struggled to whip a yellow bedsheet out into the air, still heavy with water and the smell of mildew. “If that’s how you're going to be, then: why does your father stumble around the yard at night with a lantern, swinging around a pistol like a madman? Won't he hurt someone?”

Because he's a godless, superstitious drunk. Perhaps, even, a bit disturbed in his mind, but you couldn't bear to think that way, that he might be the type to need his head locked in a metal cage, gagged, arms bound, and padlocked in some damp, distant corner of an asylum.

“He's a good man,” you relented, taking your hands from the top of the weathered handle of the rake and resuming your task. The gravel made an awful, coarse sound as metal teeth collected pieces of stone and led them back to the rest. “He's served this monastery well. I don't mean offense about Father Shaw, I'm simply curious about what transpired, is all.”

“No offense taken,” came a voice from behind, startling both the twittering nuns and you with a flinch. They saw it to be Father Shaw standing there, hands cuffed behind his back with a particularly demure disposition, hiked their skirts and whisked themselves away back inside. “Ah, am I really such a frightful figure? I couldn't really find an opening during your conversation to invite myself in. I apologize.”

You were of a similar fretful nature, quickening your clawing and the reach of the rake. “Nay, Father. I think it's simply because you're a strange man to them still; a handsome face, a warm voice—mysterious. Give them time. They'll come around.”

“Have you?” Father Shaw asked, taking measured strides in a half-circle around to your front. He concentrated on where the teeth of your instrument struck next, tips temporarily wedged into the soft dirt before being ripped up with chunks of earth and gray gravel. “It wouldn't do for me if you… were still ill at ease with me as well. I consider you my one true friend in this place.”

Your father held a certain distaste towards Father Shaw that you'd never witnessed before, saying nothing but that something was terribly wrong with him and not to place yourself in a position to be alone with him. This, you attributed to his unsoundness, but it was always the sudden flicker of a sharp breath against candlelight—a jarring shift in his demeanor when he spoke about the Father. He'd grow neurotic and throw things about the cottage interior, convincing you to pay some mind to what he was saying.

“And, you're a great friend of mine as well.” You’d hoped you sounded coherent and paced your words evenly enough. “I'm sorry if you thought I was accusing you of something, sir. I really meant nothing to it.”

Father Shaw’s lips sprawled tight and pale into a fond smile, never showing his teeth, though the imprint of them seemed massive and the skin of his lips startlingly thin across them. “I know. You have nothing to fear. My feelings were not affected. If you'd like, come to my chambers later, we may pray together first, and I'll tell you everything you wish to know about what I saw to sate your curiosity.”

“That seems improper, sir,” you said.

“How so?”

“Inviting someone to your chambers at night seems an unbecoming venture for a pious man of status, such as yourself,” you continued, now standing upright beside your rake, “if any of the sisters were to witness it, worse, another priest, aren't you afraid you'd be horribly chastised? Even worse, excommunicated altogether?”

Although Father Shaw’s dark eyes reflected no light, holding such demanding depth to them that it was hard to keep your bearings whenever you realized you'd been staring, his entire face was alight in amusement.

“Wherever did you learn to speak like that?” he asked candidly, still glowing despite his pallor. “Forgive me when I say, but your father is not an educated man. I mean no offense. Please don't look at me in such a way. You are so well spoken, I only wish to know more about you.”

“I've lived here my entire life,” you told him. “The nuns taught me how to read.”

He looked impressed. “You can read?”

“I can!” From a near distance, you could make out your father’s haddard form, bent sideways on a walking cane and limping towards the pair of you. You looked up at the priest’s smooth face. “It'd be best for you to leave before my father can speak to you. He isn't the kindest soul after a long day.

Father Shaw didn't react with any semblance of worry, but agreed that other things needed to be done and began walking away. Just as he passed you on his way towards the monastery, he let his hand rest atop your shoulder and leaned you towards him to whisper in your ear: “Come to me tonight. I'll be waiting for you.”

There was something so luxurious and cooling about his voice, like fine silks sitting in the shade during autumn, gliding across your bare skin, wrapping your neck, your chest, your nether parts. His voice was a fine, chilly mist after the first rains in spring. It felt refreshing and new after a glacial winter, yet still had the capacity to soak you to the bone. It was a nighttime breeze caressing your cheek, sweeping through your hair, making your skin burst all over with bumps.

“I don't like the way he looks at you,” said Father with a mouthful of beige porridge. Dinner for the night and every night for the next week. “He looks at you like you're a slab of meat! Some prize after a hunt. I don't like him, love. Not one bit. You'd do well to stay to mind yourself and do your chores and nothing else, y’hear?”

After the meal, you cleaned up and swept the floors with hard bristles. You snuffed all the lights except for the fireplace where your father sat in his old chair, fiddling with his favorite pistol. 

“It's time for bed, old man.” You watched him fit a couple of small bullets into the loading chamber. They glinted against the orange flames. “Goodness. What have you gotten this time? Something new?”

“Aye!” he grinned in a sickly way, almost toothless, ravaged by blackened decay with what remained. “Went to market the other day while the nuns bullied you and picked out some fine bullets from the silversmith.” He cracked the two halves of the pistol shut. “Better to be prepared.” 

You waited until sometime later, once he was finally asleep, possibly after midnight, before leaving the humble cottage sitting on the fringes of the massive monastery yard and rushing across the grounds to get inside. 

Once, they'd kept a guard dog on the property, one of those meaner breeds that were used for gambling, but the poor thing wound up shot dead in the middle of the night by a traveling friar who'd come to seek refuge at the monastery. You and the sisters were horribly distraught by the entire ordeal, and all vetoed the consideration of bringing another dog here.

Since then, it was no task for you (or anyone else) to get inside the building and shuffle along the shadows through the corridors. At night, the place stirred with patient insects, feral rodents large and small in the pantry, and hungry owls tamely whining from the rafters when something startled them away from their hunt of vermin. 

Your feet were a light sound on the masonry below, padded by thin leather soles, alerting you of your own enthusiasm as the thwap thwap thwap became louder, aggressive as you closed in on a wall and turned down another hallway for a sturdy wood door at the end of it. 

As your knuckles rapped, hoping the sound wouldn't disturb the animals’ nighttime caroling, a swift darkness moved across the floor from behind the door, briefly blocking out the soft light seeping out from underneath. 

The next moment, you were being pulled inside and sat at a small table tucked to the side of Father Shaw’s rather generous room. It was a simple space sparsely furnished for the barest of comforts—only for what was needed to live—but what had been made for him was of exquisite craftsmanship, some made of teakwood, which Shaw assured you was remarkably durable and highly resistant to rotting. 

“It's wonderful for boats,” he said, pouring a light amber colored brew from a metal kettle he'd heated a short while ago. “It’s good for all elements, really. Exceptional longevity. I've heard it has become a popular option in the city for burying the deceased.”

“Will Father Marius be buried in a teakwood coffin, then?” you asked, sipping politely from the cup even though you had no appetite for it. You already felt ill at ease enough having disobeyed your father by sneaking into a priest's personal chambers at night. The things the sisters would say about you—

“He will be entombed underneath the monastery with the rest who have served here and passed. I believe that is all stone down there, my dear.” Father Shaw smiled tepidly, kettle aside, no tea of his own. “But, I know that your curiosity led you here to me with questions, yes? About the state I found Father Marius in, yes?”

You tried to disguise your intrigue by drinking more of the tea, of whatever it was he had given you, and listened to the sounds of your fingertips sticking to the porcelain from sweat and steam. 

“If you wouldn't mind sharing…”

“I wouldn't!” he leaned on his arms on the table, closer towards you as though with a secret. “As I've said, you are truly the only soul here whom I can confide in. You are not a sheep. And you do not fear sin as the rest do. So, you can ask me anything, and I'll tell you everything.”

“Tell me about Father Marius, then.” 

Father Shaw reached across the table for one of your hands. His fingers were far larger, much longer, and colder than your own as they clamped around yours as he recounted the event.

“Dreadful sight, it was. It was, oh, perhaps sometime after three o'clock when I heard a massive racket; a struggle. When I knocked, all of the noise subsided at once, and there was complete stillness. Silence, my dear, silence so deep, dark, and damning that I knew something awful had happened.

“I didn't knock again, I was too afraid to! But Father Marius was getting on in age, so I couldn't just stand by, either. I kicked the door in—just once was all it took—and I rushed inside to see the room was a complete mess. A fight had clearly taken place, and the walls—oh, the walls—”

His remorse was performed, stiff and uncertain, reflected nowhere within the vastness of his black gaze. You were moved by the vulnerability he was trying to show you, going so far as to abandon your drink to place your warm hand on top of his.

“The walls, my dear, were a mess of blood. Something vicious and awful had happened in that room. But then, I found Father Marius lying there on the ground next to a broken window. I think he'd tried to throw himself through it. His face was shredded to pieces, his eyes gouged. When I got closer, I noticed that his tongue had been severed from his head!”

You were holding Father Shaw’s hands in a bloodless grip, face ashen, teeth chattering behind your lips. “What on earth! That is not only horror, but cruelty!”

"Oh, my love, it gets worse!” Father Shaw held you mesmerized in his void. “Closer still, Father Marius’ face was locked in one of pure terror, I've—I’ve never seen a human react in quite a way such as that before, to fear. The man unhinged his own jaw in a hideous scream, and it seemed to me he was skeletal. By that, it's like he was, well, quite dry.

“So, I crouched down so much lower and inspected him all over. Do you want to know what I found?” 

“Yes.” You spoke breathlessly.

Father Shaw had moved out of his seat and was on one knee in front of you, both of his frigid hands on your face to smooth across your cheeks, pushing away pieces of hair obscuring some part of you he'd wanted to see. 

“My love, I saw marks in his neck. Two, beautifully, wonderfully symmetrical marks that were far too clean to be of any animal that we know of. The bite was clean; it was patient and cunning. And the fangs that had sunk into his tender flesh had drained him of blood, of the very essence that kept his heart beating until the very last.”

“Sir—” your stomach plummeted, falling forever, when he smiled, teeth longer than any human should be shown through to you. He wouldn't let you go when you went to move out of his hands, away from him. “Father Shaw, please—”

“I wish you could have seen it, my love. It was a breathtaking sight, and I longed for someone else to admire the beauty of my work alongside me.” 

It was unthinkable that a vampire could walk on these holy grounds and in the bright of day, yet Father Shaw had for countless days. Evil held you sweetly by the cheek and in your hair, kissed you with a corpse’s cold lips, and laved the skin of your skin with a long, serpentine tongue.

“O’, my merciful lord…”

Father Shaw bent your head back with a fistful of hair and spoke from your throat: