When Death Waited

Death stood on the curb, he wore a long black coat that went down to his thighs with a bowler hat. I keep on expecting him to pull out a cigarette. No one paid him any attention. He faced away from me, watching the sun rise over the horizon. Red staining the sky and clouds, slowly morphing to orange and then gold.

I stare until I can’t look straight at it anymore.

This wasn't the first time I saw him.

The first time I met him was at grandma's funeral. He sat in the back watching, he wore a suit then. The shiny black material reflecting the lights over head. His hair was dark to where I couldn’t tell if it was brown or black and his eyes were a shade of blue that reminded me of the sky, clear and translucent framed by a tanned face.

My grandma sat next to him, hands clasped together. She watched us and he watched her, leaning in close whispering. I remember pointing it out to my dad and he told me to sit down.

He didn't see me then, instead he kept on whispering to my grandma. She smiled in a sad way. She watched all of us, never paying him any attention.

At the end he took her hand and they left. She saw me then, kneeling on pew waving back at her. She smiled again, did her little wave where she raised her hand and only her fingers waved up and down. I watched them and mom said I had an eccentric imagination.

I never saw grandma again.

The second time was another funeral, when my aunt Stacy died of an aneurysm. He sat at the back with her as well. She cried, hands covering her face while she bent over in her seat. He rubbed her back in slow moving strokes like he was comforting a child. I was 10. This time I ran back there when no one was looking, at the end of our family church and sat next to her on the green velveted bench.

She looked at me then tears streaking down face with blood shot eyes. “You see me?”

I nodded, and he looked at me then too. Head cocked to the side, like this had never happened before. This time I realized, his eyes were more than just blue, they had a core of silver. It was hypnotic.

It would be a few more years before I understood what he was. Who he was.

The third time I saw him it was when he took my friends. I still remember that day, we had been driving to the Re-Bar, it was my birthday and it was in the next town over. A whole hour drive away without traffic. We had the radio turned up all the way, singing at the top of our lungs.

Megan and Jordan were in the backseat. Dancing to the beat on the radio. Laughing like this was the best night of our lives. I was the youngest so it probably could have been.

There were so many more nights ahead of us now. So many more doors were open to us now, a thousand more in a year but at that moment we were free together.

We had done nothing for years but stared at books, studying till our eyes seemed to burn and words blurred together. Taking our classes online over the computer. Trapped in our small town.

We felt unstoppable.

I still remember, vaguely, that silver truck running the stop sign. My scream as I reached over the center console gripping Amy's seat. Amy swerving, missing the truck, and then nothing.

Not absolutely nothing, just the nothingness of sleep. The feeling that you're still here but the mind is elsewhere.

I remember waking up, the car was upside down.

My arms dangling against the roof, all the windows shattered, glass everywhere. Amy next to me still seat belted in but Jordan and Megan were nowhere to be seen.

Amy's face had been smashed in, her nose pointed away towards her door, a gash that went from temple to chin was on the side of her face and both eyes were beginning to swell.

Blood covered her face, dripping onto the roof below. It glistened in the little light from the street. All I could see was blood, I couldn't see her skin, I didn't even know if she was alive.

“Amy,” I croaked. Pushing on her shoulder, pain laced it’s way through my body, swaying back and forth as I dangled from the seat belt. I screamed for help for anything. It was the silence that killed me. The unbearable cold silence that seemed to leak it’s way into every crack.

I don’t really remember how I undid my seatbelt but I did remember falling face first into the roof, my body trailing after me. For a second I didn’t feel anything, like my body and soul separated.

And then I came back, and I felt it. The feeling of every bone had shattered. Every twitch was a new experience of needles jabbing into me. Glass slicing it’s way into my skin. Blood pooling into the roof.

Rolling onto my side, I cried out. I had to get out of the car but I couldn’t leave Amy. Shaking her shoulder, I called out to her, “Amy! You need to wake up.”

I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. All I knew was I couldn’t leave her like that. Reaching up, I had never fought against gravity so hard in my life. Like every inch was a hundred pounds weighing down on me. Pressing her seat belt button, she fell. I had used my body as a cushion as her dead weight crashed into me.

Pressing my back into shattered glass, slicing open my skin, peppering it with splinters.

Everything became numb at that point. A blurred world.

I dragged us out through the broken windshield, glass slicing deeper into me, I didn't feel it. Not really, everything hurt, a dull numbing throb mixed waves of pain. Like the aftershock of getting slapped across the face.

It didn't hurt like the slap itself, but the stinging aftershocks lingered longer. The memory that something had happened. The memory that violence had happened.

I dragged us out to grass, the sky had clouded over, the only light was from the street lights on the vacant road, I didn’t ever remember it being that vacant. We were absolutely alone, just darkness for miles.

“Jordan! Megan!” My screams echoed into the night, unanswered. I screamed until my voice was hoarse, sand dribbling it’s way down my throat, drying it out.

Rolling on to my back, I stared up into the darkness. My voice croaking into it. The world had gone silent. Eerily silent.

I felt him more than I saw him. He wore a long coat with his dark hair slicked back as he just seemed to appear out of the darkness from across the street. Walking across the road, under the yellow glow from the street light.

I blinked and he was standing over me. I cried then, tears leaking over the sides of my face. I finally realized what he was.

“Please,” I didn’t want to beg and I didn’t know what I was asking for. I still don’t. All I knew was that I wasn’t done.

He knelt down and wiped my tears away. He said nothing when he traced his thumb along my cheek, just gave me what looked like a sad half smile.

He was gone, I could see the moon, the small silver of it reminded me of that smile. The sky was clear, I could count the stars. The Little Dipper, Orion, The Gemini Twins.

Red and Blue lights stretch across the grass, the upside down car, the road. I laughed, I smiled, I cried again. It was the last time I did any of that for a long time.

That night four became one.

Death turned around, looking up at me through the hospital window, raising a hand in greeting. I waved back. I watched him cross the street, not even bothering with the crosswalk before he got close enough to where I could no longer watch him. Even when I sat up, trying to spy where he went.

He will be here soon. Breathing onto the glass, I waited for it to fog up but it didn’t. I still started tracing into it.

Death sat next to me, I didn't even hear him walk in. He lost hat somewhere.

Watching the horizon, I sighed resting my head on my hand, absently tracing a butterfly into the window, "It's been awhile."

"For you but not for me," he answered. Maybe he had no concept of time. Maybe it was eternity and his long existence. A blink for him is a century for me.

“Did you waste any of it?”

“No.” I never did after that night. I never stopped moving after that night. “Do you ever get tired?”

“Of what?” He looked at me then, eyebrows furrowed.

“Of this, the dead?” I answered, adding swirls to a butterfly’s wing.

He didn’t answer, so I looked at him. He stared at me smiling. Waving his hand over my imaginary butterfly, I watched as it frosted over, and a little ice butterfly flapped off the glass onto his hand. Perching on it’s finger, opening and closing its wings.

Fluttering off his finger it flew around the room before flying back onto the window. Crashing it released in a swirl of patterns over the glass. At the center was my butterfly. I hope it was permanent, my little mark on the world.

"Are you ready?" He asked, offering me his hand.

I didn't answer, he knew my answer from the moment he stood on the curb. Smiling, I took his hand and he helped me stand up.

Turning around I stared at myself lying on the hospital bed. I was so boney and pale, the only color I had was the blue veins that you could see just beneath my skin.

I hadn't eaten much for days, mostly because I couldn't. Anything heavy didn't want to stay down. Eventually it just became nauseous to even smell and I'd start to dread when mom and dad would bring me anything to eat.

I had lost my hair months ago, mom and I had cried together at the salon when they had cut the rest of my hair off.

It had gone all the way down past my waist and had taken years to grow. I took great pride in my hair, it was healthy, thick, smooth and glossy but that day it was more thin and scarecrow-like. It felt like straw, dry and scraggly.

Part of me was happy to see that version of my hair gone, but I still mourned what it used to be.

I had a breathing tube just under my nose, wrapping around my ears. I hadn't been able to breathe for days. I slowly became more aware of it over the months and eventually it became a chore. A laborious chore I had to do. I had to.

The room is silent except for the constant beeping from every machine hooked up to keep me alive. I never wanted to die hooked up to the tubes but my mom wanted me to fight and my dad wanted me to stay even though he said he would stand by whatever I decided to do.

Holding on to his hand, he led me out of the room where I had spent my last couple months in. I was tired of it, sick to the point I didn’t know what I was here for. I couldn’t stand being idle.

We stepped out into the hall, distantly I could hear an alarm going off, but it didn’t matter anymore.