estdeus_innobis | Walkin' through the cities of the plague

South of Excolo
May 5th-9th

Walking for five days. Walking itself is awkward to begin with, stolen flesh uncooperative. The body's bare feet are tough, but the roadway makes them sore. When they start bleeding I rip the shirt and wrap them in it.

The body moves, sweats, voids itself, sleeps. It carries its own memories. Sun burns it, rain wets it. I am indifferent. I have no memories, only a sharp pull onwards. I have no curiosity about what I am. I think perhaps I am a temporary thing, pulled into consciousness for some purpose, but what it is I neither know nor care.

There are few people on the road. I ignore them until the third day, when the body is too hungry to go on. At twilight there is a man sleeping by the ashes of a fire, and I make the body's hand pick up a rock and strike his head. What is left of the youth whose body this was resists, but it is not strong enough. I do not think the man is dead, but I take his food and his boots.

The boots chafe as I walk. I walk through the night, through the day, sleep when the body fails. I am close: I can feel it, the pull growing stronger. I walk faster, through the pain. (There is something like a memory here, but it does not come. If there was something before this consciousness, I cannot reach it.)

By the fifth day the pull is almost unbearable. There is a sign on the road: Excolo, and a distance. The distance means nothing to me, but the name is like a bell, a struck gong. I will make this body rest one more time, and then I will find why I am here.

Closed