He pulls his sword from the monster’s warm corpse and spits. All over the land they have crawled from shadows and across the thresholds of life. Tearing into serf, knight, and lord alike. They’re no longer giving Christian burials to the dead but instead throwing them in giant pits. Mountains of bodies.
He knows not how long ago it began but he knows it can’t have been that long. The ordinary days did not seem so far away and yet, they feel as if they belong across a border they can no longer go back to. The good days are past, he thinks. Doomsday approaches.
They look like us, these things. You might not be able to tell one from a real person at a glance, but if you look close enough, you can see the details of them are wrong somehow. Like the familiar, unfamiliar people you see in a dream. Or you see a person you know is dead and that is a giveaway. For most people, if you are that close, it is already too late. But his expensive plate proves too tough for them to bite through. So far.
So he keeps on slaughtering. Butchering his way through the dreamed and the dead, elbow-deep in gore. It’s endless work that amounts to nothing. It will not halt the end of days, nor even delay it. But what else can one do? Roll over and die? No. That is what separates us from them. The real from the mimic. The spirit within, that kicks, and screams, and refuses to let go.
Paddy Dobson
15th December 2022