walk with me
“Sorry I’m late.”
Everyone froze when Death walked in the room, smiling sheepishly as if we had been waiting for him all this time (hours and hours of sitting in the same uncomfortable chair, listening to the weak beep of the heart monitor, watching, watching, watching the person on the bed). They sucked in their breath as he closed the door softly behind him, as if they could feel him there, coming closer, looming and dreadful.
But I was the only one who looked up and caught sight of him as he strode purposefully across the clean, sterile floor to the bed (adjusting the cuffs of his suit, white against black against white. I found it strange how hospitals were supposed to be a haven for Life, safe from sickness and pain and disease, but Death just walked right in, unchallenged and unquestioned, silent and proud as if he owned the place. Maybe he did).
I sat in quiet horror as Death came closer, his perfectly pale face and smooth white skin the most monstrous and terrifying thing I had ever seen. You’d expect him to be disgusting, to be hunched over with the weight of all the lives he’d taken, hands rotten and skeletal. You’d expect to face Death and be able to say: ‘yes, this is evil, this is fear, I should fear this.’ You don’t expect to see Death for the first time and have his pale, eternal beauty steal your breath away.
You wouldn’t expect it, but that was exactly what happened.
My body wouldn’t move. My muscles were clenched, tensed, ready to- to what, I didn’t know, but it was as if the presence of Death made Life freeze in silent fear. I waited for my father to stop him (with my dad’s broad shoulders and beefy arms, surely lithe Death would never stand a chance), but my father didn’t even look up, never turned away from the figure on the bed.
My heart pounded in my chest, (Life resisting, always fighting). Death was a breath away, his crisp suit immaculate. No blood, not a frayed thread. He swept past me, light as air, not a sound, just the faintest of scents. I almost expected him to smell of rotted, decayed flesh, but there was no overpowering odour that brought tears to my eyes, just a whiff of musk, of earth, of something that I couldn’t name; I found myself leaning forwards instead of away.
Death didn’t even spare me a glance. It was as if none of us in the room (not my dad, my sister, my aunt) existed to him- his eyes, his smile were only for the person waiting on the bed. Realization nearly threw me off my chair (he was here for her. He was going to take her away and no one was going to stop him) and I remembered why I was there, who was on that bed and that I couldn’t let Death take her.
So I reached forward at the last minute and grabbed the tail of his suit, my fingers curing in the fabric. For a moment I forgot myself, lost in the softness of the material (smooth and fine and worth more than anything on this earth).
He stopped. Suddenly, there was a terrible silence, so complete and utterly quiet that it snapped me out of my daze. I jerked in surprise and my blue eyes snapped guiltily up to Death’s face, as if I was a child and my hand was stuck in the cookie jar and not the dark material of his jacket.
Death’s head turned slowly to lock his gaze to mine, his eyes dark and impossible to read. I shook in my seat, because he was too close, too close to me, too close to my life. But Death never looked away. He held my eyes in his and even though I couldn’t read him, I knew he was seeing something in me (seeing my soul, my secrets, seeing me more clearly than I’d ever been seen before). Neither of us moved for a long time, frozen in the tableau as we were (him searching me while I tried not to cower away and I knew my eyes were asking something that only he understood).
Then his hand was on mine, gently loosening my grip and pulling my fingers away to hold between his. I was shocked to find how warm they were. The warmest thing I’d ever felt. My heart melted with it.
I stared down at our hands and tried to remember to be afraid. His fingers were soft on mine.
“Not this time,
Bryan.” He said. His voice was deep and smooth, like maple syrup as it slides down your throat. It sent a jolt through me.
Then he was gone and I knew he had taken my mother with him.
I gave a loud cry, jumping to my feet and the world started moving again. My dad snapped at me, startled (Sit down,
Bryan) while my aunt mopped her face with a handkerchief (weak and useless and just sitting there wile Death took her sister), but I was out of my seat and running to the door. I threw it open, startling a passing nurse, and peered out into the too-bright hallways.
White and white and white and- there. A black figure disappearing around the corner. I didn’t think, just forced my legs to move and run. The long, flat line of the heart monitor an endless, crying note in my ears.
Nurses and doctors rushed by me to the room I’d just left, but I sprinted the opposite way. They were trying to fight Death, but only I knew where he went.
My sneakers were loud on the tiled floor, beating down the steps and all the time I wondered what the hell I was doing, chasing after Death in the middle of the night with no one but my Life to keep me company.
It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered when you faced Death. Only your Life and Life’s hold on you and the people you cared about. Selfish, greedy, but that was what humans were.
I shouldered past visitors, dodged wheelchairs and ignored the angry shouts that followed. Far away, nearly lost in the crowd, I could see Death getting away, rippling through the mass of people as if none could touch him. He was leaving. He had found what he came here for; everyone else was safe for the night.
I knew he’d return soon (this was a hospital after all, one of Death’s regular spots), but I couldn’t wait another hour or day for someone else to call him back. He had my mom
The night air was cold and biting as I burst through the heavy hospital doors. I shivered, my t-shirt nothing against the winter wind. For a second, I was motionless, my breath fogging out in front of me. I searched through the darkness, past waiting cars carrying people who only wanted to get out, and squinted into the park that seemed just as dead as the leaves on the ground. I thought I lost him. Death was gone (he never stayed for long, always busy, busy, busy with his work. Not a moment’s rest for Death). Greif crashed through me and nearly brought me to my knees. I swayed in the wind, frail and thin like the dying leaves hanging onto a tree’s branch.
Then, against all the black I caught a flash of something white. It looked like a ball of the purest light shining through the darkness, slowly moving further and further away. I forced my feet to move, sucked in a deep, chilled breath that seemed to freeze in my lungs and lunged ahead.
The wind pushed against me, urging me back to where I’d come from. I fought against it, keeping my eyes trained on that light even as it became fainter and fainter.
I was running in a dead sprint, but I was getting no where. The light never got any closer. It was like a nightmare. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough, like I was running through honey. Death was leaving, getting away and I couldn’t catch him. Panic oozed its way into my chest and I panted with the weight of it. Tears fogged my vision, thick with desperation and sorrow.
“Wait!!!” I cried, my voice shattering the quiet of the night. I was surprised I had enough air to yell so loud. “Wait!!!!”
The light stopped moving. I gave a quiet cry of relief that sounded more like a sob. The light slowly became closer and closer, until I stumbled the last few steps, my legs shaky and wobbly and feeling as if I’d run a marathon when the hospital doors were only a hundred feet away.
Death was waiting for me; his dark eyes watching silently as I finally came close enough to see him. He was near invisible in his black suit. The only thing that separated him from the night was the soft white glow coming from his jacket pocket.
I instantly knew what it was.
“Give her back.” I gasped, nearly doubled over in an exhaustion that didn’t feel real. I reached for him, for that ball of light, as if I could snatch it right out of his pocket. “You can’t take her. I won’t… I won’t let you.”
I didn’t know what I expected Death to do. Maybe he’d ignore me, turn away and disappear for good, maybe he would offer me some comfort, spew some sweet words about how it was her time and that she would be happy in the place he was taking her. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but he didn’t do either.
He laughed. It sounded like the ringing of an old, old church bell, covered with rust and dents.
It was far from pure, far from the warm laugh of a friend, but it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
“
Bryan,” my name fell from his pale lips like honey, a sweet, smooth sound. “She’s dead.”
His words sent a jolt through me, fast, hard and unexpected like a stab to the heart. It hurt just as much.
“But… But…” I looked for the determination and courage that had lead me out here, but found only fear and grief. My hands lay limp at my sides; I considered balling them into a fist, throwing them at Death’s perfect face to see if it would make a dent (would he bleed? Would it hit him at all? Could Death even feel pain?), but my fingers didn’t even twitch. “You can’t…”
Death raised his eyebrows into an expression so very human I almost laughed.
“Why are you fighting me, Bryan?” he asked.
I stared at him, my mouth gaping, sucking in cold, frigid air that froze my words in my throat. Death waited for an answer as if he knew I didn’t have one. A moment of silence passed, without even the wind to break it. Finally, he sighed, as patronizing as a parent.
“People always complain about how hard Life is, how they can’t stand it, how they wish that it would end. And yet when I come to take it all away, no one wants to leave. I find it a bit offensive, to tell you the truth, but life is addictive,” his grin was sudden and shocking. “My job is to help you give it up.”
Anger shot through me, hot and searing against the cold in my chest. This time, my hands did curl into fists. My short nails dug into the skin of my palm, the pain sharp and clear in the mess in my head.
“What if we’re not ready to die?” I demanded. My arms ached to reach out and steal the light Death took from my mother. I wanted to snatch it away from him, cradle it in my hands like the most delicate thing in the world. I wanted to take it back to the hospital, up those stairs and past those stupid nurses and doctors who thought they knew Death. I wanted to place it back in my mother’s chest and listen to the heart monitor beat with her Life. “Who are you to decide for us?”
Death didn’t answer, as if he knew that I wouldn’t understand it if he did. I wanted to scream, to shout, to throw something at him that would wipe that infuriating calm off his face.
But who was I to take on Death? Even Life wouldn’t dare.
“One day…” I whispered, angry and desperate and needing some sort of victory. “One day there’ll be no sickness or disease. We’ll cure it all and get rid of you for good.”
My voice was harsh and cold, my words cutting (and childish, so childish), but Death only smiled and I thought I saw some sad irony twist in his face.
“Ah, but Bryan,” he purred, cooing as if to a small child. “The world can’t live without me.”
I opened my mouth to retort, feeling my dry lips split and bleed, but I had no answer, no words to combat Death’s.
My silence was like a surrender. Death gave me one last smile, his lips smooth and untouched by the cold (untouched by everything- I had to remind myself he wasn’t human). I had just enough time to reach forward, my hands grabbing for his jacket, wanting to stop him again, to keep him from leaving and taking my mother with him (I knew there was no way I could save her, but once Death left, her loss would seem so much more real).
He vanished into the night, as quick and sudden as he had appeared in the hospital just minutes before. I stood there and my fingers closed around air. The wind had returned, unafraid now and cutting through my thin shirt. I barely noticed it. I could only hear my pulse, echoing in my ears. Life fighting, always resisting even though it knew it could never win. But I wasn’t scared anymore. The realization swept through me like a sudden, warm gust of air. I wasn’t afraid. Even standing there, surrounded by trees, dead and skeletal (Like Death was supposed to be. Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t), the chill of the night ripping at my skin like claws and raising goosebumps on my arms. I wasn’t scared.
I stood there and looked into the dark, as if I could still see him in the distance, the soft, pure glow of my mother lying carefully against his chest (where his heart would be) and I remembered Death’s smile, his ringing laugh and warm hands and wondered why everyone was so afraid of him
End
Everyone froze when Death walked in the room, smiling sheepishly as if we had been waiting for him all this time (hours and hours of sitting in the same uncomfortable chair, listening to the weak beep of the heart monitor, watching, watching, watching the person on the bed). They sucked in their breath as he closed the door softly behind him, as if they could feel him there, coming closer, looming and dreadful.
But I was the only one who looked up and caught sight of him as he strode purposefully across the clean, sterile floor to the bed (adjusting the cuffs of his suit, white against black against white. I found it strange how hospitals were supposed to be a haven for Life, safe from sickness and pain and disease, but Death just walked right in, unchallenged and unquestioned, silent and proud as if he owned the place. Maybe he did).
I sat in quiet horror as Death came closer, his perfectly pale face and smooth white skin the most monstrous and terrifying thing I had ever seen. You’d expect him to be disgusting, to be hunched over with the weight of all the lives he’d taken, hands rotten and skeletal. You’d expect to face Death and be able to say: ‘yes, this is evil, this is fear, I should fear this.’ You don’t expect to see Death for the first time and have his pale, eternal beauty steal your breath away.
You wouldn’t expect it, but that was exactly what happened.
My body wouldn’t move. My muscles were clenched, tensed, ready to- to what, I didn’t know, but it was as if the presence of Death made Life freeze in silent fear. I waited for my father to stop him (with my dad’s broad shoulders and beefy arms, surely lithe Death would never stand a chance), but my father didn’t even look up, never turned away from the figure on the bed.
My heart pounded in my chest, (Life resisting, always fighting). Death was a breath away, his crisp suit immaculate. No blood, not a frayed thread. He swept past me, light as air, not a sound, just the faintest of scents. I almost expected him to smell of rotted, decayed flesh, but there was no overpowering odour that brought tears to my eyes, just a whiff of musk, of earth, of something that I couldn’t name; I found myself leaning forwards instead of away.
Death didn’t even spare me a glance. It was as if none of us in the room (not my dad, my sister, my aunt) existed to him- his eyes, his smile were only for the person waiting on the bed. Realization nearly threw me off my chair (he was here for her. He was going to take her away and no one was going to stop him) and I remembered why I was there, who was on that bed and that I couldn’t let Death take her.
So I reached forward at the last minute and grabbed the tail of his suit, my fingers curing in the fabric. For a moment I forgot myself, lost in the softness of the material (smooth and fine and worth more than anything on this earth).
He stopped. Suddenly, there was a terrible silence, so complete and utterly quiet that it snapped me out of my daze. I jerked in surprise and my blue eyes snapped guiltily up to Death’s face, as if I was a child and my hand was stuck in the cookie jar and not the dark material of his jacket.
Death’s head turned slowly to lock his gaze to mine, his eyes dark and impossible to read. I shook in my seat, because he was too close, too close to me, too close to my life. But Death never looked away. He held my eyes in his and even though I couldn’t read him, I knew he was seeing something in me (seeing my soul, my secrets, seeing me more clearly than I’d ever been seen before). Neither of us moved for a long time, frozen in the tableau as we were (him searching me while I tried not to cower away and I knew my eyes were asking something that only he understood).
Then his hand was on mine, gently loosening my grip and pulling my fingers away to hold between his. I was shocked to find how warm they were. The warmest thing I’d ever felt. My heart melted with it.
I stared down at our hands and tried to remember to be afraid. His fingers were soft on mine.
“Not this time,
Bryan.” He said. His voice was deep and smooth, like maple syrup as it slides down your throat. It sent a jolt through me.
Then he was gone and I knew he had taken my mother with him.
I gave a loud cry, jumping to my feet and the world started moving again. My dad snapped at me, startled (Sit down,
Bryan) while my aunt mopped her face with a handkerchief (weak and useless and just sitting there wile Death took her sister), but I was out of my seat and running to the door. I threw it open, startling a passing nurse, and peered out into the too-bright hallways.
White and white and white and- there. A black figure disappearing around the corner. I didn’t think, just forced my legs to move and run. The long, flat line of the heart monitor an endless, crying note in my ears.
Nurses and doctors rushed by me to the room I’d just left, but I sprinted the opposite way. They were trying to fight Death, but only I knew where he went.
My sneakers were loud on the tiled floor, beating down the steps and all the time I wondered what the hell I was doing, chasing after Death in the middle of the night with no one but my Life to keep me company.
It didn’t matter, though. Nothing mattered when you faced Death. Only your Life and Life’s hold on you and the people you cared about. Selfish, greedy, but that was what humans were.
I shouldered past visitors, dodged wheelchairs and ignored the angry shouts that followed. Far away, nearly lost in the crowd, I could see Death getting away, rippling through the mass of people as if none could touch him. He was leaving. He had found what he came here for; everyone else was safe for the night.
I knew he’d return soon (this was a hospital after all, one of Death’s regular spots), but I couldn’t wait another hour or day for someone else to call him back. He had my mom
The night air was cold and biting as I burst through the heavy hospital doors. I shivered, my t-shirt nothing against the winter wind. For a second, I was motionless, my breath fogging out in front of me. I searched through the darkness, past waiting cars carrying people who only wanted to get out, and squinted into the park that seemed just as dead as the leaves on the ground. I thought I lost him. Death was gone (he never stayed for long, always busy, busy, busy with his work. Not a moment’s rest for Death). Greif crashed through me and nearly brought me to my knees. I swayed in the wind, frail and thin like the dying leaves hanging onto a tree’s branch.
Then, against all the black I caught a flash of something white. It looked like a ball of the purest light shining through the darkness, slowly moving further and further away. I forced my feet to move, sucked in a deep, chilled breath that seemed to freeze in my lungs and lunged ahead.
The wind pushed against me, urging me back to where I’d come from. I fought against it, keeping my eyes trained on that light even as it became fainter and fainter.
I was running in a dead sprint, but I was getting no where. The light never got any closer. It was like a nightmare. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough, like I was running through honey. Death was leaving, getting away and I couldn’t catch him. Panic oozed its way into my chest and I panted with the weight of it. Tears fogged my vision, thick with desperation and sorrow.
“Wait!!!” I cried, my voice shattering the quiet of the night. I was surprised I had enough air to yell so loud. “Wait!!!!”
The light stopped moving. I gave a quiet cry of relief that sounded more like a sob. The light slowly became closer and closer, until I stumbled the last few steps, my legs shaky and wobbly and feeling as if I’d run a marathon when the hospital doors were only a hundred feet away.
Death was waiting for me; his dark eyes watching silently as I finally came close enough to see him. He was near invisible in his black suit. The only thing that separated him from the night was the soft white glow coming from his jacket pocket.
I instantly knew what it was.
“Give her back.” I gasped, nearly doubled over in an exhaustion that didn’t feel real. I reached for him, for that ball of light, as if I could snatch it right out of his pocket. “You can’t take her. I won’t… I won’t let you.”
I didn’t know what I expected Death to do. Maybe he’d ignore me, turn away and disappear for good, maybe he would offer me some comfort, spew some sweet words about how it was her time and that she would be happy in the place he was taking her. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but he didn’t do either.
He laughed. It sounded like the ringing of an old, old church bell, covered with rust and dents.
It was far from pure, far from the warm laugh of a friend, but it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
“
Bryan,” my name fell from his pale lips like honey, a sweet, smooth sound. “She’s dead.”
His words sent a jolt through me, fast, hard and unexpected like a stab to the heart. It hurt just as much.
“But… But…” I looked for the determination and courage that had lead me out here, but found only fear and grief. My hands lay limp at my sides; I considered balling them into a fist, throwing them at Death’s perfect face to see if it would make a dent (would he bleed? Would it hit him at all? Could Death even feel pain?), but my fingers didn’t even twitch. “You can’t…”
Death raised his eyebrows into an expression so very human I almost laughed.
“Why are you fighting me, Bryan?” he asked.
I stared at him, my mouth gaping, sucking in cold, frigid air that froze my words in my throat. Death waited for an answer as if he knew I didn’t have one. A moment of silence passed, without even the wind to break it. Finally, he sighed, as patronizing as a parent.
“People always complain about how hard Life is, how they can’t stand it, how they wish that it would end. And yet when I come to take it all away, no one wants to leave. I find it a bit offensive, to tell you the truth, but life is addictive,” his grin was sudden and shocking. “My job is to help you give it up.”
Anger shot through me, hot and searing against the cold in my chest. This time, my hands did curl into fists. My short nails dug into the skin of my palm, the pain sharp and clear in the mess in my head.
“What if we’re not ready to die?” I demanded. My arms ached to reach out and steal the light Death took from my mother. I wanted to snatch it away from him, cradle it in my hands like the most delicate thing in the world. I wanted to take it back to the hospital, up those stairs and past those stupid nurses and doctors who thought they knew Death. I wanted to place it back in my mother’s chest and listen to the heart monitor beat with her Life. “Who are you to decide for us?”
Death didn’t answer, as if he knew that I wouldn’t understand it if he did. I wanted to scream, to shout, to throw something at him that would wipe that infuriating calm off his face.
But who was I to take on Death? Even Life wouldn’t dare.
“One day…” I whispered, angry and desperate and needing some sort of victory. “One day there’ll be no sickness or disease. We’ll cure it all and get rid of you for good.”
My voice was harsh and cold, my words cutting (and childish, so childish), but Death only smiled and I thought I saw some sad irony twist in his face.
“Ah, but Bryan,” he purred, cooing as if to a small child. “The world can’t live without me.”
I opened my mouth to retort, feeling my dry lips split and bleed, but I had no answer, no words to combat Death’s.
My silence was like a surrender. Death gave me one last smile, his lips smooth and untouched by the cold (untouched by everything- I had to remind myself he wasn’t human). I had just enough time to reach forward, my hands grabbing for his jacket, wanting to stop him again, to keep him from leaving and taking my mother with him (I knew there was no way I could save her, but once Death left, her loss would seem so much more real).
He vanished into the night, as quick and sudden as he had appeared in the hospital just minutes before. I stood there and my fingers closed around air. The wind had returned, unafraid now and cutting through my thin shirt. I barely noticed it. I could only hear my pulse, echoing in my ears. Life fighting, always resisting even though it knew it could never win. But I wasn’t scared anymore. The realization swept through me like a sudden, warm gust of air. I wasn’t afraid. Even standing there, surrounded by trees, dead and skeletal (Like Death was supposed to be. Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t), the chill of the night ripping at my skin like claws and raising goosebumps on my arms. I wasn’t scared.
I stood there and looked into the dark, as if I could still see him in the distance, the soft, pure glow of my mother lying carefully against his chest (where his heart would be) and I remembered Death’s smile, his ringing laugh and warm hands and wondered why everyone was so afraid of him
End