The sky over Schroon Falls was the color of an old bruise, a permanent state of perpetual gray that promised rain but never delivered, content to hang heavy and oppressive over the souls unlucky enough to live beneath it. The year was 2034, but in Pilgrim's Passage, it was always 1675. The air, thick and damp, carried a carefully curated cocktail of smells: wet wool, tangy woodsmoke, and the rich, dark scent of freshly turned earth. The woodsmoke came from an electric puffer hidden in a hollowed-out log, and the earthy aroma was sprayed every morning by a man in a maintenance uniform, but the tourists didn't need to know that.
Down the muddy track of Plague Alley, a small family wandered, their bright, clean sneakers a stark contrast to the muck that seemed determined to swallow them. They were the Westbrooks, a trio of earnest faces soaking in the manufactured history. Leading the charge was Mr. Hernandez, a man whose passion for the 17th century was matched only by the profound historical inaccuracy of the wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. They glinted in the flat, gray light, a modern trespass on his otherwise immaculate pilgrim costume of starched white collar and buckled shoes.
"And as you can see," Mr. Hernandez announced, his voice booming with the forced enthusiasm of a man who had given this exact speech four times already that day, "life in the colony was a constant struggle. Every day was a battle for survival against the harsh elements, the threat of starvation, and, of course, the specter of disease." He gestured with a grand, sweeping motion towards a line of crude, timber-framed huts, their thatched roofs dark with moisture.
The Westbrooks followed his gesture, their expressions a blend of pity and fascination. Mr. Westbrook, a man with a soft, kind face, nodded gravely. His wife, clutching a large purse to her chest, shivered, though the air was more damp than cold. Between them, their eight-year-old son, Alex, armed with a toy wooden musket from the village gift shop, looked less concerned with the historical struggle and more interested in the potential for imaginary warfare. The musket, a mass-produced piece of pine, was already nicked and scuffed.
Donnie Keller heard them coming. The squelch of their shoes in the mud was a prelude to the performance, a familiar rhythm of approaching boredom. From his position on a straw-stuffed cot, he tracked their progress. One set of heavy, authoritative steps—Hernandez. Two sets of lighter, hesitant steps—the parents. And one set of small, shuffling, occasionally scuffing steps—the child. He could map their entire journey down Plague Alley just by listening.
He lay inside a one-room hut, the air thick with the smell of stale straw and his own quiet resentment. The light was a dim, watery gray, filtering through a single, grime-smeared window and the open doorway. His eyes were closed, not in sleep, but in a state of profound, meditative tedium. A look of deeply etched weariness was carved onto his gaunt face, a face that seemed all sharp angles and pale skin. The costume, a rough burlap tunic designed to signify his status as a plague victim, was a size too large. It hung off his thin frame, enhancing the illusion of an emaciated man in his final hours. The itchy fabric was a constant, low-grade torture, a perfect complement to the job itself.
He was Cholera Victim #3. The title, in his mind, was the punchline to a very long, very unfunny joke. What had become of Cholera Victims #1 and #2? He pictured them promoted, perhaps to Corpse Being Hauled Away on a Cart, a role with slightly more dynamic movement. Or maybe they had simply quit, unable to bear the sheer, mind-numbing pointlessness of it all. Donnie, however, remained. He needed the money, and this was, if nothing else, a job that demanded very little of him. All he had to do was lie here and pretend to be dying. It was a role he felt uniquely qualified for, not because he was a good actor, but because he'd felt like he was quietly expiring for most of his thirty years on Earth. The footsteps stopped just outside his doorway. The show was about to begin.
Mr. Hernandez, his face arranged into a mask of solemn importance, ushered the Westbrook family to the threshold of the hut. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial, respectful hush, as if they were entering a sacred tomb. "And here," he said, his voice resonating in the small space, "in this humble dwelling, we see the grim reality of the 1675 cholera outbreak. A tragic, but important, lesson."
The family peered inside, their silhouettes blocking what little light Donnie might have enjoyed. Mrs. Westbrook's hand flew to her mouth in a pantomime of distress. Her husband placed a steadying hand on her back. Little Alex Westbrook, however, was captivated. He stared at Donnie, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and curiosity. He clutched his toy musket a little tighter, its wooden barrel pointed vaguely in Donnie's direction as if to ward off the invisible germs of history.
Donnie remained perfectly still. This was the part of the performance he had perfected. It was an exercise in absolute control, a testament to a strange, innate discipline he possessed. He slowed his respiration, taking only the shallowest of breaths, just enough to sustain him without producing any visible movement in his chest. He could feel the individual fibers of the scratchy burlap against his skin, the lumpiness of the straw beneath his back. He focused on these sensations, using them to anchor himself in the stillness. He was performing minimalism, embodying the slow fade from existence with a perfection born not of theatrical training, but of a deep, personal understanding of wanting to simply disappear. He was not acting the part of a dying man; he was simply allowing the part of himself that was already dying to come to the surface.
Mr. Hernandez cleared his throat, launching into the educational portion of the tour. "Cholera, you see, was a terrifyingly swift and brutal disease," he lectured, his tone that of a professor addressing a particularly eager class. "It would strike without warning. The primary symptoms were, of course, gastrointestinal, leading to... well, leading to a rapid and catastrophic loss of fluids." He paused for dramatic effect, letting the grim reality sink in. "This, in turn, resulted in severe dehydration."
The words hung in the damp air. Severe dehydration.
A spark flickered in the vast, empty expanse of Donnie's boredom. It was a tiny, malicious, and wonderfully creative spark. The script, the one Hernandez had emailed him and that he had deleted without reading, probably said something like, 'Lies quietly on cot.' It was a simple, elegant direction. But it was also, Donnie decided, a missed opportunity. Mr. Hernandez wanted accuracy. He was always going on about historical accuracy, even as he peered at his 17th-century world through 21st-century lenses. Very well, Donnie thought. Let's give him some accuracy.
His lips, dry and chapped, parted just a fraction. He let the saliva pool in the back of his throat. Then, using a subtle muscular control he'd spent countless hours refining out of sheer lack of anything better to do, he began to work the air up from his diaphragm. It wasn't a cough. It wasn't a gasp. It was a low, wet, gurgling sound. It was the sound of liquid sitting where it shouldn't, in the hollows of failing lungs. It was a complex and layered sound, medically precise and deeply, unsettlingly unpleasant.
It wasn't loud, but in the quiet of the hut, it was everything.
Mrs. Westbrook, who had been leaning forward with a look of morbid pity, flinched as if he'd reached out and touched her. Her hand, which had been at her mouth, now pressed against her chest. Her husband's comforting expression faltered, replaced by a flicker of genuine alarm. The sound was just... wrong. It was too real for a historical reenactment that also sold fudge and toy muskets in the gift shop.
From the corner of his eye, Donnie could see Mr. Hernandez. The manager's jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles in his cheek stood out like knots in a rope. He shot Donnie a sharp, furious glare, a silent, desperate command to cease and desist. His eyes, magnified by his glasses, were wide with a mixture of anger and panic. This is not in the script, Keller, the look screamed. You are ruining the historical ambiance!
Donnie Keller, a man whose entire existence was a monument to ignoring unspoken and spoken commands, ignored the glare. He held Mr. Hernandez's furious gaze in his peripheral vision and found it nourishing. It was the first interesting thing that had happened all week. He decided to reward his audience with an encore.
He let the gurgling sound intensify, pitching it slightly higher, making it sound more desperate. Then he added a physical component. His fingers, which had been lying limp at his sides, began to twitch. It started as a small tremor, a subtle flicker of nerve endings firing at random. Then, the twitching grew more pronounced, his fingers curling inward until his hands clenched into tight, claw-like grips, digging into the straw of the mattress as if trying to hold onto a life that was slipping away.
He wasn't done. He added a new layer to the auditory horror. While maintaining the wet gurgle, he constricted his pharynx, forcing the air through a smaller passage. The result was a faint, high-pitched wheezing, a thin, reedy sound that spoke of closing airways and the body's final, futile fight for oxygen. The gurgle was the bass line, the wheeze was the melody, a terrible harmony of biological collapse.
Mr. Westbrook's hand was no longer resting gently on his wife's shoulder; it was gripping it. He pulled her back a half-step, putting himself slightly in front of her, a primal gesture of protection against... a sound. The family's faces, once filled with a kind of educational curiosity, were now clouded with genuine, creeping dread. This wasn't fun anymore.
Young Alex Westbrook, however, was made of sterner stuff than his parents. Or perhaps just more naive. He saw not a performance, but a person in distress. He wriggled free from his father's side and, with the misplaced bravery of an eight-year-old, took a hesitant step closer to the cot. His toy musket was no longer a weapon, but a forgotten accessory, held loosely at his side.
"Is the pilgrim okay?" he asked, his small voice cutting through the awful symphony of Donnie's dying breaths. It was a question of pure, childish concern.
It was the perfect cue.
In response, Donnie decided to give them the finale. He drew in a breath, a shuddering, ragged thing that sounded like tearing fabric, and then he unleashed the full, unscripted horror he had been building towards. A deep, guttural, final-sounding death rattle tore from his throat. It was not a sound of the living. It was a sound of pure biological shutdown, a symphony of expiring flesh. It was resonant, complex, and utterly, horribly convincing. It contained the vibration of loose vocal cords, the final expulsion of air from collapsing lungs, and the hollow echo of an emptying vessel. The sound filled the small hut, bouncing off the damp timber walls and seeming to cling to the very air. It was the sound of a period at the end of a life sentence.
For a moment, there was absolute silence, save for the echo of that terrible noise.
Alex Westbrook's eyes, already wide, seemed to double in size. The last vestiges of his bravery evaporated in an instant. His face crumpled. A tiny gasp escaped his lips. The toy musket slipped from his fingers and fell with a soft thud into the mud and straw on the floor. Then he burst into tears, a loud, terrified wail that was all the more shocking in the wake of the rattle. He spun around and buried his face in his mother's coat, his small body shaking with sobs.
The spell was broken. The Westbrook family, as one, backed away from the doorway. Their movement was no longer hesitant; it was a full-blown retreat. Mrs. Westbrook gathered her sobbing child into her arms, glaring daggers at Mr. Hernandez over her son's head. It was a look of pure maternal fury, a glare that said, 'You and your sick historical village have just traumatized my child for life.' Mr. Westbrook, his face pale, guided his family away, hustling them down Plague Alley as if the disease itself might leap from the hut and chase them.
Mr. Hernandez stood frozen for a moment, watching them go. His face, which had been merely tight with anger, had now bloomed into a shade of crimson that clashed spectacularly with the crisp white of his pilgrim collar. He looked like a man who had just swallowed a lit firecracker. His manufactured enthusiasm had been replaced by an authentic, volcanic rage.
As the sound of the family's hurried, squelching footsteps faded, replaced by the muffled sobs of the traumatized Alex, Mr. Hernandez turned. He didn't walk into the hut. He stormed into it, his buckled shoes making angry thuds on the packed-earth floor. He found Donnie lying perfectly still on the cot. The performance was over. The gurgles, the wheezes, the death rattle—all gone. Donnie's breathing was slow and even. His face, once a canvas of theatrical agony, was now a perfect mask of neutrality. He looked like a man who had been peacefully napping.
Mr. Hernandez planted his feet in the center of the small room, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. His whole body trembled with a fury that seemed too large for his frame.
"What in God's name was that, Keller?" he hissed, his voice a choked, strangled whisper.
Donnie didn't answer right away. He swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up slowly, a deliberate, unhurried movement. He looked down at his burlap tunic and began to brush away a few stray pieces of straw, his focus entirely on this small, mundane task. Finally, after a moment that stretched into an eternity for the fuming Mr. Hernandez, he looked up. His expression was calm, almost philosophical.
"That," Donnie said, his voice even and devoid of any emotion, "was the sound of end-stage cholera. Vibrio cholerae bacterium causing acute diarrhea and fluid loss, leading to electrolytic imbalance, hypovolemic shock, and eventual cardiopulmonary failure. You said you wanted accuracy."
Mr. Hernandez's face seemed to inflate. A vein pulsed in his temple. "Accuracy?" he sputtered, his voice cracking and rising in volume. "The script says 'lies quietly'! It does not say 'perform a live audio autopsy'! That was not historical reenactment, that was psychological terrorism!"
Donnie considered this for a moment. "A subtle distinction," he finally conceded, giving a small, almost imperceptible nod.
That was the final straw. The carefully constructed dam of Mr. Hernandez's professionalism burst. "I have a terrified child, a furious mother who is probably already composing a one-star review that will mention me by name, and the lingering sound of a man gargling his own lungs to death in what is supposed to be a family-friendly educational experience!" he roared. He jabbed a trembling, accusatory finger toward Donnie. It was a finger that shook with the righteous indignation of a man whose perfectly curated world had just been desecrated by a sound effect. "Get your things. The two weeks' pay is on my desk. You are fired, Donnie Keller. Your services are no longer required at Pilgrim's Passage."
Donnie received the news without a flicker of surprise. There was no argument, no pleading, no denial. He had been anticipating this outcome from the moment he had decided to improvise. In fact, a part of him had actively courted it. He simply gave another small, weary nod. It was the nod of a man who has been told something he already knows. It was the quiet, tired acceptance of the inevitable. He stood up from the cot, the burlap tunic falling around his gaunt frame like a shroud.
Without another word, Donnie Keller walked past the trembling, crimson-faced manager. He offered no apology, no explanation, no goodbye. The silence was his only response, a final, passive act of defiance that was more infuriating to Mr. Hernandez than any curse or insult could ever be. He stepped out of the dim, musty air of the 17th-century hut and into the flat, gray light of his own time.
His eyes fell upon the discarded toy musket lying in the mud where young Alex Westbrook had dropped it. The symbol of the boy's shattered innocence, a casualty of his own performance. On a whim, Donnie bent down and picked it up. He didn't bother to wipe the mud off. He held the cheap pine toy by its barrel, letting the stock hang down.
He walked away from Plague Alley, leaving the fuming Mr. Hernandez and the ghosts of 1675 behind him. He had already mentally changed out of his itchy costume and back into his own dark, modern clothes. He was once again just Donnie Keller, a gaunt figure moving through a world he didn't quite fit into. He dragged the toy musket through the mud, its stock carving a thin, wavering line behind him. The look on his face was not one of sadness, or anger, or even disappointment. It was an expression of profound, misanthropic resignation, the look of a man whose lowest expectations of the world and its inhabitants had, once again, been perfectly met.
He was, once again, jobless.