Day 2,516

Water runs heavily down the old church walls, pooling around the shins of the silent parishioners whose heads haven't lifted from prayer in days. The vicar is collapsed over the stained pulpit, the water beneath him has long since run clear though the faint metallic tang of blood still lingers in the air around him.

Outside the church the rain pours as if a second flood is coming, not that the parishioners would notice nor care. They are beyond that now, as close to dying as they are to living as they are to drowning in the water that continues to rise around them.

It'll take weeks before they are fully submerged, baptised by death himself and welcomed into a slumber far more peaceful than any they've ever been blessed with before. They will not remember dying, the struggle to raise their heads from prayer as the waters rise so very slowly.

They won't remember the sound of their neighbours struggling to breathe nor their own frantic coughing and gasping against the ripples created by their collective struggle. They won't lift their heads, won't stand up and walk outside, won't even open their eyes and look at each other one final time.

Water runs heavily down the old church walls, pooling inside the indentations made by the feet of a long dead parish. Nobody will visit them when it rains, though they'll be seen hovering in the exact place where they passed. Nobody will know what happened to them.

Only the rain.