Fiction: Life for a Life
(Originally published here) Conway stood with the other parishioners, a thick crowd pressing in on each other and reeking of ostentatious piety and desperation. The decrepit church wasn’t the biggest, but droves forced their way in from Carey’s Lane every Sunday. A man six feet away was coughing as if his life depended on it, and maybe it did. Cholera had ripped through Cork a little more than ten years ago, carrying away thousands, including three of Conway’s children. Now…