The Rot by Honey Morales

The year was 1347, and the town of Blackthorn nestled in the moors of northern England was already a cursed place. The skies were perpetually overcast, a grim ceiling of clouds that seemed to press the land down, squeezing life from it. Crops withered before they could be harvested, and livestock was prone to wasting diseases. It was as if the land itself had given up, and something foul had taken its place.

The first sign of the curse began with the well.

Margery, the town's healer, had been drawing water one autumn morning when she noticed the bucket felt heavier than usual. When she hoisted it up, the stench hit her before the sight. The water was thick and black, swirling with bits of what looked like rotting flesh. She recoiled, the bucket slipping from her fingers, crashing back into the well with a sickening splash. Her hands were covered in the dark sludge, and no matter how much she scrubbed, the smell wouldn't leave her skin.

That night, the children of Blackthorn began to cough—a dry, hacking sound that echoed through the narrow streets like the whispers of something terrible. By morning, they had fevers, and their skin took on a strange pallor. But it was what came next that truly terrified the townsfolk.

The children’s skin began to rot.

It started around their mouths, small lesions where the flesh turned black and soft. Soon, their cheeks gave way, teeth exposed through necrotic holes. Their eyes grew cloudy, like milk left to curdle in the sun. The mothers wailed and the fathers looked on in horror, powerless to stop the decay.

Father Ambrose, the town's priest, called for an emergency gathering in the church. He stood at the altar, voice quivering as he spoke of a curse, of a sin that must have angered God. The townspeople demanded answers, their voices rising in fear and desperation. But there were no answers. Only the rot, creeping across the town like a disease.

It wasn’t just the children. The plague began to spread to the adults. Farmers and cobblers alike found blackened sores on their hands and feet, their skin slowly peeling away like the bark of a dying tree. Flesh sloughed off in wet chunks, leaving raw muscle and bone exposed to the cold autumn air. The smell of rot hung over Blackthorn like a shroud, clinging to everything—clothes, food, even the air itself.

The rot was not content to stop at flesh.

Buildings began to crumble. First, it was the old windmill at the edge of town, its stone foundation cracking as dark veins snaked up its walls. The wood rotted overnight, collapsing into a heap of decayed beams. The rot spread to homes next, creeping across floors, walls, and ceilings. Black mold oozed between the cracks of stone, turning wood to mush and straw to dust. No matter how much the villagers tried to scrub or burn the affected areas, it always returned, stronger and more aggressive.

People began to lose their minds. Sarah, the innkeeper’s wife, was found in the town square one evening, her eyes wide and wild, clawing at her own face. “I can feel it inside me!” she screamed, as she tore at her cheeks, pulling away strips of flesh, exposing the bone beneath. Others claimed to hear whispers at night, voices coming from the very walls of their homes, telling them to give in to the decay.

In the third week, the animals went mad. Dogs howled in the streets, their fur matted with pus-filled sores. Cows collapsed in the fields, their bellies split open, organs spilling out in a gruesome display of festering meat. Ravens circled overhead, drawn to the scent of death, their caws mixing with the dying groans of the townsfolk.

Father Ambrose had become a shadow of himself, pacing the church, eyes hollow and rimmed with dark circles. He prayed constantly, but no answers came. The curse seemed unstoppable, a punishment far beyond any sin the town could have committed.

Then, on the fourth week, something changed.

Margery, the healer, had secluded herself in her home, her own skin now blackening, her fingers rotting down to the bone. But she had discovered something, or at least, that’s what she claimed when she staggered into the town square one final time. Her mouth was a gaping maw of rot, her tongue a withered husk. She could barely speak, her voice a wet gurgle.

“The roots,” she rasped, pointing towards the forest just beyond the village, “it’s in the roots.”

No one knew what she meant, but those were her last words before she collapsed into a heap of decayed flesh, her body rapidly decomposing before their eyes until nothing but a dark smear was left on the cobblestones.

Desperate, Father Ambrose gathered what few able-bodied men remained, and they ventured into the forest. The trees were twisted and blackened, their bark oozing the same foul liquid that had tainted the well. At the center of the forest, they found it.

A massive, ancient tree, its roots stretching deep into the earth, pulsing with the rot. Its bark was covered in faces—twisted, screaming faces—frozen in expressions of eternal agony. The ground beneath it was soft, like a sponge soaked in blood. As they approached, the stench was overwhelming. One of the men vomited, his bile black and thick, as if his insides had already begun to decay.

Father Ambrose fell to his knees before the tree, weeping. He had seen the truth. The tree was no mere plant—it was alive, ancient, and hungry. It had fed on the town for generations, slowly poisoning the land, the water, the people. And now, it was fully awake.

The ground split open beneath the priest, roots wrapping around his legs, pulling him into the earth. His screams echoed through the forest, but there was no one left to save him. One by one, the men fell, their bodies consumed by the rot, becoming part of the cursed tree.

Back in Blackthorn, the town continued to decay, its people little more than walking corpses, rotting from the inside out. The last to die was the butcher, who stood in his shop surrounded by spoiled meat, his own flesh hanging from his bones like slabs of rancid pork. He let out one final breath, a cloud of blackened rot escaping his lungs, before collapsing into a pile of filth.

And then, silence.

The town of Blackthorn was no more, consumed by the rot, its people forgotten by the world. The forest reclaimed the land, the cursed tree standing tall and silent, waiting for the next village to fall under its spell.