He was exhausted and nodded, losing consciousness, but the smell of the rotting bodies keeps him awake.  His eye had met the dawn in the mist.  The field was full of staked dead bodies.  All the people that followed him, who held up the head of the sick while he gave medicine; they had all been targeted.  The fields of the dying wasn’t a myth as he had thought.  The madness of the king Zander was real.  He had truly ordered the death of everyone that had help cured and willfully assisted his own people.  It was a madness he couldn’t understand.

The love for his own was missing.  What leader was not true to their own blood, their own kind?  He wanted no help for them, just misery and eventually their death.  Was he killing them?  Was he infested with the same sickness that his people had?  Suicide?  They were willing to burn down their temple.  The rape of their women and children, as if they never had a future, was puzzling.  They had no hope for their future.  Nothing.

Hew saw the bodies, but thought only of the true dying.  It was the bodies of the king’s people that was staked, bleeding to death.  It was their moaning of agony that he heard, when they suffered through the parasites that riddled their bodies.  It was their blood stains he saw, the very ones that he cleaned up.

The soldiers emptied the cart, one dead body at a time, leaving the dying for last.  They dragged him off the cart and threw him onto the ground, pulling him by his feet.  He was their parasite.  A healing and cleansing that they had to endure for themselves.  

Hew laughed to himself.  His real truth had presented itself, saving them was really saving himself and all of his people.  Their fate was set.  There was no future for them.  He saw it in their blood.  He saw the parasites feed from their bodies and spread.  It was a foreign deadly germ that mutated.  This world was unadaptable for them and there was nothing that he could do to help them.  They couldn’t possibly return to where they came from without causing further mutation.

The planks were ready.  His carted roommate was taken first, but before they tied his feet up he was already dead.  His eyes rested on the soldier as if he had condemned his assailant to the very death he had received.

“Aah, relief”.  Hew sighed.  He knew what had happened.  The energy of his neighbor had passed through, from a life stolen from him.  It was what his people called a curse.  It was his turn.  His palm was taken and scored against the plank.  His feet were still tied together.  There was no need to score it, instead they tied it up to the wooden plank.  He was dazed and was barely there.

His wife had become a memory, but she was safe.   It’s what he thought as they erected him into the ground as another planted seed in the field of what was once the dying and have now become the dead.  The pain had reached a new climax, gravity was pulling down his flesh of his hands, tearing into it.  It was nonsensical.  

Hew’s dream state was full of what he had learned the day he was born.  A little boy who had learned the meaning of his existence had come full circle with his life.

“I am me.  I am all that I am.  Hew, you.  You and I.  You and Hy.”  Hew mumbled barely getting the order of the words straight.  His mother would routinely celebrate life every month, every morning and every night.  They had to be thankful for what was given to him.  Thankful.

The light of the day fell suddenly leaving him with just his memories.  His body felt heavy as he felt the blood drain from his body.  His eyes fell dormant as he struggled to keep it open.  There was nothing more to see and for a moment he thought there was nothing left to smell, but there was something familiar, something better than death.  It was the smell of hope.

He heard the whispers.

DOWNLOAD THIS