Ive tried to calm down purple prose in this one by getting rid of rambling imagery. Its quite simplistic and if you dont think it is then say. Im not after language crits Im after comments on
1) Plot and story
2) General things about the simplicity and ease of reading
3) Did this interest you?
Chapter 1: A little village called Blesser
The man coughed loudly, spouting frothy liquor onto the nurses sheets. She scowled and wiped it off. The man was dying from an endless life of drink, and the nurse was obliged to serve him.
“Just die!” She found herself standing. It had been three days of vomiting whiskey smelling sick and three days of constant fetching and carrying. The village usually had little need for her and she usually was left alone to earn money through other ways.
The man murmured and his eyes closed, falling into silence. She stared at his white face with passing clarity. Death had appeared before her many times. She smiled and rang a bell attached to the wall. Two great men entered and rapidly carried the body away, she followed, out of boredom if not for air.
A garden flourished outside with life. Such a contrast. Death and life within a few strides. The nurse smelled the flowers only briefly before pacing onwards, following a mud trail into the village.
Floral smells were replaced with dung and rotting pine of the village square: a wooden stand with stocks in the middle. The dead man was hauled onto the platform and the black carrier began to speak to a merging crowd.
“This day, Derren of Blesser town has died.” There was little sadness among the people, from what the nurse had found he was nothing more than a whore’s client – quiet and perversely silent in village affairs.
She observed the body being thrown into an iron basen, a splint then fire. The body burned away taking any illness he was carrying. After the plague before her time she had encouraged Blesser town to burn the dead. Derren was probably the fiftieth burnt in her life. The ritual was always the same. The carriers would be summoned to her meagre hospital, wait, then the body announced in the village centre before burning. She watched the flames for a split second before gathering her gowns and heading back to the hospital.
A hissing noise filled her ears, she glanced around. A man in red velvet hid in a side alley and beckoned her over. She was cautious at first, he could be a rapist, but when ever did a rapist wear velvet?
“I am Carrion, velvet of the Emperor.Are you the nurse of Blesser town?” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Derren told me to give this,” he held up a parcel, “to the person who cared for him last.
“It can’t be of any value,” she sulked, snatching the parcel and shaking it ungratefully.
“Derren wasn’t just a man of the night.” The velvet said. “As you will see. It would be best you told no one of our meeting. The suns and moons and the Emperor shall be our only witnesses.” He bowed. “May the Emperor thrive off the souls of his people.”
“I offer my soul for thriving,” she replied formally and nodded her head, watching Carrion walk away into a stage coach looking ornate against the drab buildings.
She was reluctant to follow the hospital trail now she had the parcel. She turned back on herself and walked to the smell of bitter, salty meat and fresh wine. A chewed sign said simply: INN. She walked inside and observed the idle chit chat of merchants over the buzz of a fire and the rinky-tink of an old piano in the corner.
Sitting, she unravelled the parcel to reveal a smaller box. She unravelled it to find an even smaller box. This went on until the parcel diminished to the size of her hand. Frustrated she clawed it open again and again, a manic glint in the nurses eye. “Just open,” she yelled at it. But the box wouldn’t reveal its innards, just more box. It had stopped decreasing at her palm size and just seemed to never stop. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at it in spite, she puzzled to why it had so many layers that seemed to never end.
She spent the next three hours taking the packaging off in different styles and speeds: still nothing.
“You!” She shouted a brute of a woman over and explained the situation. She tried and about another eight calls later the parcel had gone to the baker, butcher and Blesser town judge, all of them puzzled by the parcel.
“Witchery, that’s what it is,” boomed the judge above everyone else and ordered his men to move everyone aside. “Those things arnt welcome in Blesser and never have been, Magic is evil. Evil is death. We have had too many deaths already.” The nurse sighed. Magic seemed unlikely, she had never seen it happen, many thought that it was completely gone forever and some thought it never existed. She believed the box was a cruel trick – cleverness concocted by the velvet. But why did a velvet deliver a box? How the hell did Derren know a velvet?
“A velvet gave it to me!” She told Blesser town’s judge amidst the chaos.
“A velvet you say? An Imperial guard?”
“Yes, yes, the very same.”
“Then the parcel must be burned, the Empire have no business with their tricks in this part of the world.” Much agreement came and before the nurse had chance to disagree she was been carried back to the town square where the smell of Derren still lingered from a few hours ago.
“Flog the bitch and flay her soul!” They all chanted as one, like a many hearted beast.
She felt her skin collide with wood on the platform and it quickly bruise, she scowled and turned to see the judge’s men preparing whips around her. A fire ignited a little way away and she heard the parcel being dropped in. But the grinning crown soon surrounded her with their battons and whips.
“Flog the bitch and flay her soul! Flog the bitch and flay her soul! Flog the bitch and flay her soul!”
The words echoed through the town as she felt the brunt of the weapons and her blood spurting from her skin. “Stop, please stop,” she begged with them.
“Flog the bitch and flay her soul!”
“No, no more, stop it, stop it now!” She found herself screaming and felt the blood rippling with the sound waves from her voice.
“Stop,” the judge called and his men restrained the village people. “The bitch has been punished thoroughly but the parcel was unaffected by flame.”
Laying there, battered and clubbed, the nurse struggled to breath. She managed to pick up a few mutterings about the godly parcel and cursed the velvet for doing this. But, he warned her against it and she ignored his words. Blackness stormed her vision as she faded into unconsciousness.
