The Girl in Death's Lap

"Give me your heaviest burden, little one," Death rasped, his voice a cold, heavy weight against her clammy skin. There were rows of poor, unfortunate souls lined up behind her as she stood nervously before the hollow abyss.

The voice continued—"Your deepest darkness, my dear girl. Let it wash over you. Carve it into the marrow of your brittle bones. Let the taste of iron and ash awaken your senses and choke you. Pull the regret from your very chest and strip it of everything but the brutal truth of what you saw and what you heard and what you know, or pretend to know.”

Her response was small and trembling, the voice of the fragile girl she had always hid inside.

"You want a memory from my soul, but my soul is completely empty, sir. I didn’t live long enough to form one. There is no grand heartbreak or tragic loss in my past. I never even got to have a job. There was nothing else to lose, except for myself."

Jane Doe was entirely unremarkable, save for the fact that she was dead. She existed only as a ghost of the ordinary girl she used to be. Yet, her mind clung to every microscopic detail of her forgetful life. She memorized her own existence out of one simple paralyzing fear—that if anyone truly looked at her, they would discover something repulsive, something completely rejectable—that hers was a life most unlived.

Nestled inside a quiet, virtuous sort of demise, born from total isolation. She had never actually loved a real person—only the idealized phantoms she built in her head. It was a half-life, suspended within a slow, agonizing ache for all the things she would never know, never experience, never see.

**

Jane Doe let out a faint sigh, her shoulders dropping under the weight of a narrative that was never truly hers to own. She looked up at Death. Tired of holding a burden no one else could see.

"I can tell you about someone else instead. A different soul, a person just as insignificant as me, since I can’t give you my own past,” she whispered softly, “I can give you someone else’s, instead. Their story is entirely unremarkable, but burned into my mind forever, nonetheless. A story one can’t simply overlook, and hopefully you will see why.”

Death mused, curious as to what this little girl could possibly have seen or known that would intrigue him so. A cold spark of interest flickered in his gaze. He leaned forward slightly, his presence heavy with delight as he waited for her to weave her next few words together.

**

Jane Doe sat in the hollow bend of his lap, as though she herself weighed less than any memory she could imagine. The cloaked fabric of his robes gathered around them, a heavy pooling of midnight and outer space colliding together, bleeding out at the edges, swallowing them whole. Below, the River Death uncoiled, stretching lazily for as far as the eye could see, evaporating into further darkness as thousands of murky spirits snaked past like veiled heads, swimming toward places unknown. Schools of faceless, nameless fish cutting in and out of the water, carving phantom paths through a current that didn't exist.

“Tell me,” Death whispered, ever the more curious to know what she held so close. She hadn’t lived long enough to harvest her own secrets, only to recognize them for what they were—currency. They were passage, the sole price of admission to a place she would literally die to live in.

The river below continued its endless journey.

“When I was alive, before I came here, there was an older woman, Cordelia Blackwood. She lived at the edge of town in a small house nearest Hollister Thorns. Stories were whispered about her, some true, some not, about how she waited for her husband to come back from the River. She left candles in the windows, a fire in the chimney. That sort of thing.”

Death nodded, having remembered Cordelia well.

“Yes, dear-girl, go on.”

“She sat in the window of her first-floor townhome. Watching the night, waiting.”

“Yes.”

“Everyone around town, mothers, fathers, kids, grandparents—all believed it was because he had run away, and she couldn’t let his memory go.”

Jane Doe stilled, shaking her head, her lips terse with truth.

“She wasn’t waiting because he was coming home, she was waiting because she was afraid.”

Death grew still, his body colder, more tense.

The River Death seemed to pick up pace, the water splashing upwards, tickling her skin.

“When Cordelia Blackwood was twenty-three, she pushed her husband Robert into a well-fed river, just like this one.”

Jane Doe paused, looking down at the River Death. Death’s own eyes narrowing slightly, curious as to how this little girl would know such details, as he himself did not.

“But Robert Blackwood never sank in those waters,” Death replied, coldly.

“I know.”

Jane Doe smiled, sadness in her eyes— “he let the currents take him down river, to a gate where he climbed out. He went back to their house to confront her and found her collapsed in inconsolable tears at the thought of losing him…”

Death sat back, even more curious than before.

**

“He forgave her for pushing him. Said it was an accident and they never spoke of the matter again, not once.”

The river’s pace quickened even more, whipping past the boat, bobbing it around Deaths solemn anchor.

“She spent the next few decades of her life waiting for him to mention it, to be angry.”

Jane Doe’s voice fell, tears caught her throat.

“He never did.”

Death smiled.

“He knew she regretted what she had done. As did he...”

Jane Doe nodded, a hint of understanding in her tone.

“She loved him deeply, dearly. Even in death.”

**

Death sparked, recognition exciting him further.

“Yes, dear-girl, yes. That is right...but that isn’t the entire story.”

The old man had truly passed a peaceful, happy man, but the same couldn’t be said for Cordelia Blackwood, she still lived in turmoil up until today.

“Every night after his death, Cordelia has waited for him to come back, as though she didn’t recognize his death.”

Silence settled between them. Both Death and Jane Doe looked out over the endless waters.

**

“So, what was the secret,” Death asked.

Jane Doe’s lips curled into a smile even the devil wouldn’t mind, “She didn’t just push him into the water,” she whispered, her voice cutting through the chill of the river.

“She knew his secret.”

Even the River fell silent.

“Robert Blackwood had been planning to leave. He was leaving to marry someone else. Cordelia found out. He had fathered a child with Clara Marie Vance, a woman who died shortly after childbirth. He stayed because he realized he had caused such grief, for both women, such turmoil that he couldn’t break Cordelia’s heart any further. He never did tell her he knew she pushed him. He never did tell her he had a child, a son.”

Death stared into the dark waters, they weren’t moving as quickly as before, and for the first time, he had a bit of normalcy about him. His soul seemed to warm.

“She didn’t know?” he asked.

“No.” Jane Doe barely replied, her hands twisting silently in her lap.

“She believed he forgave her, and maybe he did. It was almost fifty-years later and she still held her secret.”

Death let out a nervous laugh, having witnessed every such manner of death, he found himself surprised.

“Both of them hid a secret hidden inside a secret…clever…”

Jane Doe smiled, “was this enough for me to get passage,”

Death considered, curious still to know how she acquired such a story. But he figured, most of his greatest secrets rarely involved murder or sin. Maybe just innocent luck and the knowledge that two people can spend an entire lifetime loving each other, while still harboring two different versions of the same wound, the same truth and never having the two meet, never repeating the same history again.

“Yes, you may pass, dear-child.” he whispered, “May it be forever in your favor that you don’t carry anything heavy to the grave, for you have been forgiven, absolved of all your burdens, and are now blessed to go forth in peace.”

Jane Doe smiled, “do you know why I chose that story?”

Death shook his head, almost forgetting to row.

“Because neither of them ever told you.”

Death frowned, his own shoulders dropping.

“You took them both, and didn’t even know. Cordelia Blackwood passed through here before me, about an hour or so ago.”

For the first time, Death realized he had carried two souls across his river without understanding the very thing that had shaped their lives and deaths—and that, Jane Doe thought, was a secret worthy of her passage.