Author: Karen Schauber

The massive harvest table swelled with Soylent, Guinea Fowl, Sicilian oranges, Pule cheese, pandemain, honey, cloves, and black cardamon for the wedding. The dead bride propped in the cathedra. Her garland of Delphiniums shrivelling. A suckling pig, still shackled to the spit, its trotters tanned, skin crispy, made me swoon. We approached slowly uncertain if we would be welcome. They waved us forward, their hand motioning like the pope, partially outstretched with fourth and little fingers curled inward. Jerzy didn’t budge. Waited for me to do my thing. My garment concealing the weapon. Darkness obscuring everything, and nothing.

Through the wee hours we gorged on the spoils, sucking bones and roux, leaving nothing but crumbs. Reclined in the winter garden beneath a mangled grapevine canopy until dawn, smoking fat hand-rolled cigars, the toothy wrappers full of dark flavour. When morning broke, the mayhem and horror of the previous night was laid bare. Stone walls executed with torrents of sticky-sweet crimson blood, trickled and stained, thick like impasto. Bloodthirsty rapier flies a-buzzing. Overhead, a blue tourmaline sky spread electron waves far and wide. The cosmic resonance dizzying. Jerzy slipped through without second-guessing. Ours was a well-trodden path.

Next on the itinerary, the Bishop’s Abbey, where we would find the same cruel devastation. As if an indeterminate war or crippling pestilence had blown through. The air sour and hushed like an abandoned rendering plant. The main church, cloister, chapter house, refectory, library—all empty. Bodies piled in the summer garden. Someone, something, had prepared the remains.

Supper that night was cold, with very little meat and no fat. We washed up in the fountain and dined in the calefactory. The stone table lit by lamplight. We rolled bits of diced cabbage, turnips, carrots, and peas, around our plates. Taste buds uninspired. Next day, we stumbled upon smoked fish, salted venison, and roasted swan pie in the larder, coarse black bread and ale in the stockroom. Upon surveying the acreage, we picked lemons, oranges, pomegranates, and figs in the orchards. Gathered enough provisions for several days, lived like kings for weeks. Jerzy fat and lazy. At night we slept wedged between tapered whitewashed walls under a single vaulted wooden ceiling. Our dreams crowded with roving, ghostly whispers. A giant brass crucifix hung high above, its power anaemic. Me, with no relief, always an eye to what may be lurking around the corner.

And so began the time after the end of time. We were blessed, immune…or so we thought.