Plague Doctor

It’s an ordinary night in for roommates Cosmo, Casey, Roz, and Filomena. They bicker over chores, surf Netflix, and fend off the medieval Plague Doctor who haunts the corners of their apartment. But tonight, they’ve found a new way to relieve the monotony: a storytelling contest with perilous stakes. As they spin their tales, genres weave together and fictional worlds spring to life — and the good Doctor wants in.

This piece is an almost irresponsibly loose retelling of The Decameron, a 14th-century series of novellas about a bunch of twentysomethings swapping stories while quarantined in the Italian countryside. They, too, are waiting out a plague. The characters are less concerned with the foibles of the clergy than they are with their own stagnant careers and social lives and the dismal state of the world. But the spirit remains the same: storytelling is humanity’s refuge in dangerous times. And Plague Doctor masks are just freaking scary.