It only took a couple of phone calls to learn where I could find the sociopaths that murdered my love. Once I knew where to find them, most of them anyway, I debated the best way of handling them. The most direct and efficient way lacked any real imagination or flair, and ultimately, adding a little color to the proceedings would not add much time while providing the benefit of additional anonymity.

So I went to the plague chest.

****

During the Plague, doctors such as myself wore various contraptions to provide some measure of protection as we traversed the dead and attempted to heal the dying. Looking back on it now, both modern medicine and my own experiences make the garb of “the plague doctor” slightly tragic and humorous, but I still remember the peace of mind it afforded me to have that dark, heavy cloak and thick, almost raven-like mask between me and a world that had grown so hostile with madness and death.

It didn’t protect me from the bubonic plague, of course. I caught it and ultimately died, though it was but a temporary state thanks to the tender mercies of Pina and her sister. They accomplished what I had failed to do in twenty years of work—thwart death. Or perhaps the better phrase, the more correct idea, would be that they struck a bargain with death. For my resurrection came at the cost of others’ lives. As Pina always reminded me, everything must be paid for.

Pulling the plague doctor mask on, I faded out into the night.

****

“Fuck, stop okay. Just fucking stop!”

I had found a group of seven of them, clustered up in a dark corner of a club across town. My sources had told me the murderers liked to make the rounds, and this was one of their frequent stops during the week. The man who was screaming was one of two survivors, though that title would be, like so many things, brief and fleeting. I had already gotten close enough to smell him, to know what he did and didn’t do. I had already gotten close enough to the girl, the leader, to know that she led in butchery and cruelty as well.

To her credit, she didn’t cry or beg, even when I ripped the head off the last of her compatriots. I could hear her heart hammering, but the only external noise she had made the entire time was when I first appeared in their dark corner of the club and began killing them without word or explanation. It was the sound of surprised confusion—perhaps at my arrival or perhaps at the fact that no one else in the club seemed to notice or care. I offered no explanation and she asked for none, but then I reached for her and she stabbed me in the arm.