Chapter 11: A Sense of Solitude

Even after less than a minute without my original rag, the cold had seeped deep into my bones, a damp and creeping thing. This new body was so terribly, hopelessly weak. A clammy heat radiated from my skin; the fever was worsening. I had no choice but to quickly don Jared's clothes, pulling on the rough-spun trousers with clumsy, fumbling haste. They were too large for me, the sleeves and trouser legs swallowing my frail limbs whole. They weren’t much thicker than my old rags, either. Even with the clothes on and the rough, stolen blanket pulled tight around me, I was still shivering, a constant, ague-like tremor. There couldn’t be many transmigrators in the multiverse who’d had it this rough. My apologies to the rest of them; I was truly a pathetic excuse for a protagonist. But it wasn’t my choice. My luck was just irredeemably, damnably rotten.

Seeing that I had obediently dressed, a small, relieved smile touched Jared’s lips. He pulled the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders. “You wait here for a bit,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m just popping out.”

“Wait!” The words escaped me before I could think, a raw note of panic in my voice. He was leaving. A sudden, unexpected, and utterly humiliating fear gripped me—the fear of being abandoned, of being left alone in this suffocating darkness. It was strange. When he had cast me out into the street that morning, I hadn’t felt a single shred of reluctance to see him go.

“I’m just going to get us something to eat. I’ll be right back,” Jared said, crouching down to my level, his voice a soothing murmur. “Parula must be hungry, right?” He reached out and gently stroked my head. Normally, I would have recoiled from such a touch, especially from a boy my own age. But in that moment, in this place, it felt… comforting. And his words reminded me of the gnawing abyss in my stomach. The hunger was so intense it was making my head swim, the dark corners of the alcove tilting and swaying.

“You’ll come back quickly?” I asked, my voice small, barely a whisper. It was incredible, and pathetic. I had known this person for less than a single day, and already I was building a desperate sense of dependence on him.

“Of course. I’ll be back before you know it. You be good and wait for me, Parula.” With that, he turned and slipped out of the alcove, a shadow disappearing into the greater darkness of the tunnel. I noticed that the ill-fitting, dead man's clothes hampered his movements, making him seem clumsy and slow. The thought pricked at me: the clothes I wore, his clothes, were the ones that fit him properly. If I had just swallowed my pride and worn the dead man’s rags, he wouldn’t be at this disadvantage. He was the one who needed to move freely, to be agile in the dangerous, predatory streets above. The thought flickered and died, extinguished by a wave of revulsion. No. I still couldn’t accept it. I would rather have frozen to death.

Though Jared had promised to be quick, finding his hidden cache of food in this wretched city would take time. As I waited in the dark, cramped alcove, every minute felt like an hour, stretching into an eternity of fear. A sense of profound helplessness began to grow, coiling in the pit of my stomach. Before, when I had been detached, when I had accepted my fate, I felt no fear. Death was just a word, an inevitability I had already faced once. I expected no one to save me; in this strange new world, everyone was a stranger, and I was utterly alone. But now… now that someone had shown me a sliver of kindness, now that a desperate, foolish hope of survival had taken root in my heart, I could no longer face my fate with such grim equanimity. I was afraid of the solitude. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of dying. I was a helpless invalid, unable to move, able only to wait, trapped in this stone coffin. This passive, agonizing wait was a torture all its own.

As time stretched on, a new, nameless dread began to creep over me, cold and sharp as a shard of glass. It felt as if some unseen shadow was circling overhead, a predatory presence in the dark that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. It was the same primal, instinctual warning a small animal must feel when a great beast of prey passes nearby, its gaze sweeping the undergrowth. The city had fallen into a deep, sepulchral silence. Every small sound—the drip of foul water from a crack in the ceiling, the distant, frantic scuttling of a rat, the mournful sigh of the wind in the tunnels—made me jump, my heart hammering against my ribs. Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed from the street above. They were too heavy, too ponderous, to be human. It sounded more like some great beast, an elephant perhaps, or something worse, lumbering past, its steps wet and sloppy, as if treading through mud and offal. Then, from the canal just outside my alcove, a sudden, violent splash. The sound was too loud for an ordinary fish. It was the sound of something large, thrashing in its death throes, a frantic, convulsive struggle that echoed horribly in the confined space, followed by an even more horrible silence. Could a canal this small, this choked with filth, support such a large creature? And what was causing its struggle? An attack from another of its kind? I couldn’t know. I couldn’t go out to see. I could only lie there and imagine.

And then, the silence of the night was shattered by a woman’s scream. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror, sharp and piercing as a blade. It cut off abruptly, halfway through, as if a hand had been clamped brutally over her mouth, leaving only a fading, ghostly echo hanging in the damp, cold air. What was happening out there? A woman, attacked… or worse? My mind immediately leaped to the darkest, most violent conclusions. Whatever the cause, that scream was not a good omen. The woman was likely beyond help now. I pulled the blanket tighter, burying my face in its musty fabric, but I couldn’t stop the violent trembling that seized my body. I was utterly, completely powerless. If any of the city's brutes, any of its madmen, were to wander into this alcove now, I would have no means of resistance, no strength to even cry out. I was even worse off than the screaming woman. At least she had been able to scream.

Just as my fear was beginning to curdle into a suffocating, mind-numbing despair, I heard a light, quick set of footsteps approaching. They ran to the entrance of the alcove, and I looked up, my heart pounding with a desperate, painful hope. Yes. It was Jared’s familiar silhouette, a beacon in the oppressive darkness. In his arms, he clutched a large, dirt-stained sack.

“You’re back!” I cried, my voice cracking with a joy so intense it was painful. I had never, in either of my lives, been so happy to see another person. The moment he appeared, tears I didn’t know I had in me pricked at the corners of my eyes. The fear and the cold, lonely dread that had been gnawing at my soul vanished in an instant. The trembling in my body ceased. It’s no exaggeration to say it was like seeing the sun rise in the dead of night. Even the bone-deep chill that had settled in my marrow seemed to lessen. It was nothing short of a miracle.

“Yes, I’ve brought food,” he said, a tired smile on his face as he set down the sack. It was covered in dirt, confirming my suspicion that it had been buried. “You haven’t been waiting too long, have you?”

“No,” I lied. Though it had felt like an eternity, an age of terror, I knew in my rational mind that it had only been a trick of my fear. Looking back, I estimated he’d been gone for twenty minutes at most. He opened the sack, revealing its contents. Stale bread, greasy-looking sausages, a hard, dry flatbread. To my old self, it would have been a mediocre meal at best, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. But to Parula’s starving eyes, to this body’s desperate needs, it was a feast of unimaginable luxury. All of it stolen, of course. Food he’d pilfered and then hidden from MacDuff, who would have either consumed it himself or hoarded it away, never sparing a crumb for the likes of Parula. In preparation for his escape, Jared had been squirreling away anything that would keep, and now his stash was considerable. The large sack was filled to the brim, nearly as tall as he was.

Two conflicting thoughts warred in my mind, a battle between who I was and what I had become. One part of me, the modern, cynical part, was picking it all apart with disgust. The bread had spots of green-furred mould, the sausages were likely made of offal and gristle, perhaps even tainted meat from some diseased animal, and the flatbread was just that—a plain, unadorned, unappetizing disc of dough. But the other part, the part that was Parula, the part that was this starving, desperate body, screamed with a primal, overwhelming longing. This is the most delicious food you have ever seen. This is life. Eat. Eat now! While I was still hesitating, trapped between revulsion and need, an overwhelming wave of hunger, so powerful it was like a physical blow, surged up from the depths of my being. Before I knew what I was doing, my hand shot out, grabbed a piece of the stale bread, and stuffed it into my mouth.