| Do you believe in god?� the small child asked, taking the hand of her grandmother. �No, my dear, I used to, but I stopped believing in him a long long time ago.� She said, putting a strand of white hair behind her ear and then chuckling. �Why Grandma, why don�t you believe in god?� the child asked. �Well, let me tell you about something that happened a long time ago. It was in 1347, and I will never forget that year.� The women shifted in her rocking chair, preparing to tell a long story. �That year was the year I was going to get married, and I was the happiest girl in the world. I was young, rich, I had a very handsome and loving fianc�, and I was about to have a child, life couldn�t have been better. So on the night of our wedding, my fianc� and I went to Paris, but when we reached there, we had gotten word that my parents had fallen very ill. However, the doctor said that it was nothing and that we shouldn�t worry. Oh, we were there for a very long time, we went sightseeing, we went to cafes, and I had a beautiful baby girl, and we named her Alyra. But then we had to go back, and when we got back we were mortified. On the streets there were corpses, covered with mud, and it smelled very bad. And when we got home, my parents were sprawled on the floor, dead. And as soon as I saw them, I ran into the bathroom and threw up my lunch. We had found my parents with black spots on their arms and legs, and their throats and armpits were swollen, and it was swollen so badly, I didn�t even recognize them. �What happened next grandma, what was it?� the little girl looked at the old women with such curiosity, so that the old women continued. �It was the Bubonic Plague; we later found out, it was a disease from the fleas of black rats. My mother always said they were disease ridden. We had found out that so many people had died. When we went to see our neighbor, and my beloved friend, Sarah, she was on a chair, dead and decaying; with her toddler son dead beside her. Seeing this, I clutched Alyra to my chest and ran out the door. Life for my husband and me was horrific, we cried at times, for our parents, our friends, we even cried for ourselves. Other than upset, we were very scared; the church had said that the world was ending and that we were all going to die very soon. And we believed it, because everything was chaotic. People ran wild in the streets, breaking into stores and houses. We were even threatened to be given the plague by a man if we didn�t give him our money, so we gave it to him. But in the end, it was in vain. My husband had fallen ill, and so had Alyra. I stayed up all night with them, I prayed and I prayed, and begged god to spare them, because the amount of love I had for them was inexpressible. I brought them hot tea, herbs for sicknesses, but no matter what I did, they seemed to get worse. Alyra would cry all night, but then one day, she just stopped, and when I looked at her she was dead. � A tear fell down the woman�s face. �My child was dead, so that night I went outside and buried her in my garden of dead flowers. My husband, however, was still alive, and I did everything to help him, but then he as well as Alyra had died. He was the last of my family, last of the people I knew, and along with him, I went to. I was sure I was going to die, but I wanted to, life was already over for me. So I went into my room and lay down on the bed and slept. I don�t know for how many days, but I just slept, I would wake up at times, to the sound of screaming and crying women and men outside, but I just went back to sleep. Until one morning, I woke up and went outside. The sun was shining, and it seemed as if the plague was gone. There was music playing and people dancing, and even though I had lost those who I loved, I joined in. We danced and danced, and at the end of the night, I found your grandfather, and even if it took awhile, we started a life together. We didn�t believe in god anymore, because the Church had said it was the end of the world, and it wasn�t. �Do you think it will ever happen again?� the young girl asked. �I hope not.� The woman said and smiled. |
| I did this for my Global Studies class, we had to write a story describing how people would've felt during the Bubonic Plaque, i got a 94 on this. |