The Burnt Monastery

The blackened monastery lay on top of the hill like a wounded panther. Lighting struck and set it ablaze. The people of the town took it as a sign that they had offended god. Those who could, left their homes, those who were too poor to leave stayed.  Their scorched and rotting houses that wound down from the peak. Every year those who stayed grew older and poorer, many died.

The dying town on the hill became a spectacle for tourists. People came to take pictures of the preserved decay. They liked to look at the old fashioned people with their old fashioned homes, as they went about their drudgery. They were unaware of the beliefs that festered in the bones of those who remained. 

God had forsaken them; he had torched their monastery, the sanctuary where they had been married, where their children had been christened, where they said their prayers for their dead. 

I thought it was abandoned. It looked dead. Many of the houses had been torched. There was no one about. I took my camera. I wanted to get a shot as the sun reached its height before it disappeared behind the hills.

I wound along a railing up to the monastery. The cobbled stones were mossy like little hairy beans. 

The railings fell away into an overgrown compound. There was a little rotten shack below. I peered down and saw two white dogs. They looked anorexic. I could see their ribs. They were barely alive. I peered down. I rummaged in my bag and tossed one of my sandwiches down. One of the dogs picked up the sent of the ham. It leaped from its slumber and made for it. The other was too late. The first one devoured it. 

Where there were dogs there must be people. The town of mount Ledoni was still alive. Someone was living in that shack beneath the railings. I leant over to take a photograph of the dogs. They would look good in black and white. I slipped and tumbled over.

I hit the ground back first. It knocked all the wind from my lungs. I choked out the breath. After the shock of the fall wore off I tried to move. I was able to sit up. My back was sore but it didn’t feel broken. My right elbow was cut and I couldn’t move it. Considering the fall I was lucky to be alive. 

My camera was shattered. 

I saw the dogs eying at me. They  were cautious at first. They moved closer. I saw a figure in the threshold of the shack. 

“Hello, can you call me an ambulance please... my phones out of charge...I think I’ve broken my arm.”

I said it in my best Quadish. 

The figure didn’t reply. They shut the door of the shack. 

By this time the dogs were very close. They were boxers. They were drooling. Their rotten fangs teeth out of their mouths. 

They started to growl and bark.

“Get out of it,” I shouted. 

They stopped advancing then started again. 

“Can you call your dogs off please.” 

The shack was silent. 

One of the dogs leapt at me and snapped its jaws. 

I kicked it away.

The second one took a bite of my leg. I screamed out forgetting that my arm was broken. They came at me biting and snarling. I was being mauled. I fought them off my throat. 

“Help me, get them off,” 

The figure was back. 

“This is God’s will.”


 

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