Donne senza nome

My latest strategy for getting inspiration on days I don't have it is to go to the random wikipedia article and get inspiration from the title (and nothing else).

I managed to go to Donne_senza_nome - almost skipped it, but then I got an idea and ran with it.
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"Donne Senza Nome"

The priest stood quietly in front of his congregation, his eyes to the ground, his hands raised in prayer as he spoke the words - quietly, but with purpose.

"Donne Senza Nome"

The tiny chapel was filled with people dressed in black and clinging to rosaries as they joined his chants, or voiced their own silent prayes.

A much loved man had died in this small fourteenth century Italian village, and this congregation was mourning him. The mysterious Plague had struck another victim.

This was not the black plague, it was something different.

"Donne Senza Nome"

The priest repeated. The congregation all said the words, too, praying that the man would pass into heaven and join their god in paradise.

Then, a woman stood up and began to speak. This elicited dissaproving murmurs from the shocked congregation.

"This monster should not have a christian burial!" She cried out in rage.

The crowd looked at her in silence.

"Don't you see? God is sending this plague as a punishment! It is only those of us who are the most wicked that he strikes down!"

The dead man's son stood up. "You mean to say my honourable father was wicked?"

"Yes! Otherwise, why would the lord have taken him? Think! None of the best people in the town are being struck down; the ones who died before him, they were the men who gambled away the bread they needed to feed their children, the women who disobeyed their husbands, the children who threw rocks at the dogs!"

"Where is your husband?" The man's son asked, glaring at the woman.

"He succumed to the plague; he was a gambler."

"And you survived because you are a good woman, I suppose?"

"Yes. I survived because there is justice in this world!" She cried, her eyes wild.

"Leave us." The priest spoke up, finally. "We need to pray in peace."

The woman left without saying another word.

"He was a wicked man."

She murmured to herself, casting a bitter look at the almost undetectable bump in her stomach. At the child she had named Romeo, the child the dead man had put there despite her screams.

She took a scrap of lined paper out of her coat, and, underneath the dead man's name, wrote the following:

"Romeo. Miscarriage."

She pictured the dead man's face, and hoped it would be good enough.
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If you didn't understand the ending, it's because this is technically DeathNote prequel fanfic.

Death_note