Now enjoy Bryan Murphy's short horror story The Day Before.
The author wishes to point out that it was written for a Hallowe'en gathering in 2017, and was not intended to be a prediction.
The Day Before
The Pope was dead. The luminaries of the Christian world´s largest Church gathered in Rome and were sequestered in the heart of the Eternal City until they would succeed in choosing a new leader.
“I’m getting out of here for a day. Want to come?”
It was natural for Cardinal Healy to have struck up a friendship with Cardinal Varela. Not only were they by far the youngest at the Conclave, they were also both from the New World, Healy being an Irish-American from Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Varela hailing from São Paulo in Brazil.
Cardinal Varela coughed a few times, then drew breath and answered, “I am with you. But how we get away? And back?”
“I know some hidden passages. This place is riddled with them.” Healy’s eyes gleamed with more than the slight fever he had picked up.
“They will miss us, no?”
“No. There’s nothing on today. Just the Chamberlain droning on about procedure.”
And so the two young cardinals went out into the city, unobserved.
The Chamberlain, Cardinal Grugliasco, however, did not drone on about procedure. Instead, he came straight to the point.
“I am joyful to announce my conversion to the one true, true faith, to which I submit, and for which I shall be a martyr. Yes. I have infected myself with a virus that will soon kill me. We are taking this rare opportunity to eliminate the foremost members of our main rival, in numerical terms. Most of you already have the virus, and it will kill you, too. All of you. It dies with its host, so the killer disease will spread no further than this sealed environment; we are not mass murderers. My dear Cardinals, I urge you to convert while you can, to turn your pointless deaths into meaningful martyrdoms. If you do, you too will receive the martyrs’ rewards in Paradise.”
Later, while the few Cardinals who still had the strength were slowly beating Grugliasco to death, Healy and Varela were tucking into rich Italian cuisine in a crowded Roman restaurant.
Healey beamed as he dried his pale face with his napkin. “Sure, it’s good to be alive at a time like this, eh?”
“Indeed.” Varela reached for his blood-stained handkerchief yet again. “Life is wonderful!”
[end]