The years 1348 to 1350 were not good ones for human kind. A wave of infectious diseases, varied but overshadowed by the bubonic plague, swept across the globe, killing indiscriminately. Typhus, Influenza, and Small Pox were all prevalent. In just two years the population of Europe was cut by a quarter. The town of Toulouse was home to 30,000 souls in 1335 and only 8000 a century later. 1,400 people died in just three days in Avignon, the seat of the papacy. There was, officially, nowhere to hide. Not a single one of those dead men, women, children, fathers, mothers, lovers, or friends knew that their death was simply one part of the greatest culling of the human race ever known, a simple mark in the "ones" column for the greatest disaster in history. Death has a belt, and he notches it just once, no matter who you are. Not one of those people appreciated the big picture, the great number, over the extinguishing of their life, their loves, their woes and memories and happinesses. Not one of them saw it for what it was.
"And I waited in Rome for that sun to go down, that never-setting sun, for it to disappear upon the city,
but night never fell, like there was a wall around me, and I could not move for it's closeness, blocking out not light but dark, and there was nowhere I could go to cover my face, to rest my eyes from it's glaring,
and every stone was hot, and I could not stand still,
and the fire that heated it was deep within the city, deep under all the earth they used to dig their trenches and their sewers and their cemeteries,
and I moved back and forth and lifted my feet and shook my shackles
but it sent it's fingers into me
every second of every day all the same
and I left that place where
they will never stop, they will never, ever stop
naked but for my pain, with nothing but horror and burning skin and innocence around me."
