Arrow Rock Literary Journal

“I must finish my work,” said the doctor, breathing in the dulling scents.

Bonifacio closed the door behind him, silencing the mother’s wailing as he closed it shut. He did his best to ignore the specter that stalked him. He was sure that if he reached the next house, the phantom would leave him.

The thick, leather suitcase was heavy on his right hand. All around him echoed the coughs of the damned. The people around him silenced themselves as Bonifacio passed them by, holding in the vomit and blood they desperately wanted to spew out onto the floor.

Bonifacio simply took a deep breath, smelling the sassafras, rose petals and spices inside his beak-like mask. The specter was always on the corner of Bonifacio’s eyes, on every street corner, just within his view for him to know it was him.

“Remember when you pulled the puss from my body.” It was a whisper now, half-mocking, half-lamenting. The child wore rags like tassels of putrid flesh. “The sacks of puss wriggling and bursting. Then you made me bleed from my arm.

Why won’t you turn to look at me?”

It was like the voice wormed its way inside his head and was playing with the underside of his own skin. The streets were an orgy of misery and foul odors, miasma was a scourge upon the air. It was a street abandoned by God.

“Lie to them, doctor.” It was the voice of the specter, his eyes more hateful than the uncaring plague. “Tell them everything will be okay. You are good at that, aren’t you?”

Bonifacio breathed in the sweet fragrances inside his beak, over and over.

It’s nearly over, he thought. I just have to reach the next house, then my work is done.

“Do you even know if it works?” The child asked him, his jaw falling to the floor and cockroaches skittering from his upper jaw. “You bled me dry and I died. You enjoyed it, didn’t you, Bonifacio?”

Bonifacio shook his head as he quickened his pace towards the final house. The wood and stone was bent and contorted like a zit about to burst. It didn’t have a roof and only a pale, gaunt man stood outside.

Bonifacio still couldn’t bear to look at him. All that he could take in were those arms, the arms that now served as cascades of blood.

“Go in peace where you belong, Delfino. I’m doing the best I can.” He croaked out. The physician was so much less than what he was. “The treatments work, I know they do!”

The man, Coronato, stood outside the house, he looked malnourished. He looked up and met Bonifacio’s gaze. He tried to greet him but Coronato raised his hand and gestured to the entrance door.

“Make it quick… if only.”

Bonifacio walked towards the house and opened the door. Coronato sighed as he walked right behind him. The physician went over all the solutions and treatments he remembered when treating The Plague. He peaked around the corner.

A woman, her hair disheveled, stood in front of a large bed. She brought her hands together and shook her head slowly in denial, lips quivering.

“Why did you call him? Our baby was just getting better!” She yelled.

“Diana, please.”

Coronato’s weak body was barely enough to lead his wife away. Diana’s body stopped blocking the bed, revealing the patient.

He was going to be six next year.

The child coughed violently into his hand, the arm had already been swarmed with grotesque, swelling growths. His eyes were red and puffy. Walking over to him, the floorboards creaking, Bonifacio sat at the edge of the bed.

The patient let out a weak giggle.

“That’s a very… silly face, mister.”

Bonifacio opened his suitcase and unpacked his belongings. First came out a glass cup, then a knife, a small hammer and a jar full of leeches. The physician looked down at his gloved hands, and a thought occurred to him.

How long had it been since he’d taken them off? He couldn’t remember. Then again, how did he know where the bedroom was? Coronato was the one behind him.

“How will he scream when you fail?” the specter whispered, Bonifacio could hear the leeches all over its body still suckling on his dead flesh. “Do you think he will cry for his mother for help or for you to stop first?”

Bonifacio breathed in the scents, dulling his senses. He lit a candle by the table and heated the rim of the glass cup with it. The child looked up at him and spoke weakly.

“What are you doing?”

The physician took the chance to justify himself.

“Heating the rim of the cup, then I’ll put it over your lymph nodes to make them burst sooner.” He explained, feeling the heat emanating from the cup’s rim before removing the child’s cover. “Lift up your shirt.”

The child obeyed and showed him his torso. It was a black, mess of contorted skin lost in a sea of infection. Bonifacio put the glass rim around a big lymph node. The child writhed in pain, until the lump burst into the cup. Bonifacio repeated the process seven times.

“Thank you, now stand and walk to the chair.” Bonifacio instructed.

Sniffling, the child got off the bed and walked with difficulty. Bonifacio took out the small hammer and knife, a familiar chill running up his spine as he grabbed them.

The specter of Delfino lumbered behind him, hanging in the air as if suspended by a noose. Pulling out a bucket from his bag, Bonifacio placed it to the side.

“Your arm, please.”

The child presented his arm.

“What’s your name? My name is–”

“You don’t need to know my name.” He interrupted, placing the fine metal prick on the child’s arm, right in the opposite end of the elbow. “I will now reestablish your natural balance by draining your blood. I need you to count for as long as you can, after that, we will use leeches on your nodes to drain them.”

Bonifacio could tell the child hung onto every word he said. With that, he held the child’s arm down and knocked on the knife with the hammer. The child yelped as blood spurted from the hole, pouring down into the bucket.

“Will I be okay?” The child asked.

“Just follow the treatment,” he replied.

Wrapping a bandage around his arm to stop the bleeding, Bonifacio laid the child to the bed and brought up a jar full of leeches. They squirmed inside the pungent, putrid water.

The walls around him had eyes scorched into the wood. The very house seemed to breathe and sag. He walked away from the child and pulled at his mask, but he couldn’t take it off. He felt like he was pulling at his own flesh.

“You must finish your work, doctor.” Like a puppet, the specter moved him back to the child. Bonifacio narrowed his eyes, thin strands of meat that extended upwards coming from his wrists.

“My veins.” He said, coldly and stumbled.

Above him gibbered the wide expanse of the void. His hands moved on their own. The leeches suckled on the lymph nodes of the child, who did not move or made a sound. The specter’s hand retreated back into his chest.

The child’s head pivoted towards the doctor, his jaws could only move up and down.

“Say my name, doctor.” But it was the specter’s voice.

The eyes in the walls narrowed and cried streams of thick, yellow slime. One of the parents banged on the door outside, Bonifacio could hear their fists bludgeoned and bloodied until the skin stuck to the wall. The mother cried, calling out.

“What are you doing to my Delfino?”

Delfino reached out, his arms caked in blood and puss. Bonifacio’s veins pulled his arms around the child. His stare, dead and fishlike bore into his soul.

“You must finish your work, doctor.”

The door broke behind him and Diana bolted in. Coronato followed her, the same meaty strands poking out of his limbs as he walked. Crumbling down at the foot of the bed, Diana cradled the fading body of her child, his eyes were nothing more than fish-like discs of milky white.

Coronato gave Bonifacio a small purple bag full of spices and herbs. Walking outside, Bonifacio followed the strands of meat that extended from his body with his eyes. It led to a distorted tree in the far distance where a plague doctor hung by a noose. The tree had hands on every branch, and every hand had strings that extended all over the land.

Bonifacio looked to the far distance, to the same street, the same people and to the same bloated house. He knew this is all he would see, forever.

“I must finish my work,” said the doctor, breathing in the dulling scents.

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Ernesto Ignacio Gomez Belloso was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, November 3rd, 2000. Ever since he was little, he had a passion for storytelling, especially stories in the realm of fantasy and science fiction. Bizarre stories, conflicted characters and struggles between good and evil always fascinated him. At the age of five, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and struggled with social interaction throughout his school life. Ernesto discovered his passion for writing through reading One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the original Lord Of The Rings movies. He graduated from Full Sail Universities with a Bachelor on Fine Arts and currently pursues his masters degree at Lindenwood University. He also likes to help people to write essays when he’s free, because the only thing worse than writing is not writing at all.