Living Death

“I wake up in my office. There’s nothing so horrible in the world as having wakefulness pounce on you in a tiny room, with your eyelids crusted together and cheek pressed against the sharp corner of your desk. My muscles are sore from an uncomfortable night, and severely protest my feeble attempt at movement. I crack my eyes open and pain shoots up my skull as bright light assaults them. I groan at the familiar ache brewing behind my temples. Another drinking night, then.

I brace myself before opening my eyes again. Blurry shapes flicker vaguely, tiptoeing beyond my recognition. I blink, and the cloudy figures morph into passably comprehensible objects. Another blink tosses a modicum of detail into the mix. Bottles litter the slovenly mess I call my office, most completely empty. One lies askew on my desk, soaking the books and papers that clash for space with a host of pencils and a curved scythe. The air is thick with the smell of alcohol, sharp and heavy in my sensitive lungs.

I curl my lip in disgust. This is what the system had made of a girl, a brilliant girl with life and happiness and a future. I catch sight of myself in one of the polished mirrors that adorn the office as I make to stand. I have always been jealous of the mirrors, dreamed of possessing their cold elegance or flawless shine. Instead, my reflection stares back at me, a grotesque spectacle, a thing to be pitied. I’m hideous. My dirty blonde hair, cut short as a mockery of the Rules, drops to my shoulders like a wet rag. Dark circles ring my red eyes. My face is filthy, smudged with the residues of make-up and alcohol and tears. The outline of my desk is printed on my cheek, a memento of last night’s slumber. I’m clad in nothing but a ridiculously short dress, baby pink and stained with beer.

I tear my eyes away. The last thing I need right now is to fall into the customary spiral. My disheveled office still needs cleaning, and I probably have a backlog of cases that need attention. The important factor is to do things one at a time. Bottles first. I bend to pick up the closest bottle, and balk as my back instantly opposes the movement. Shit. I straighten and rub the offending muscle reflectively, readying myself to try again.

Knock.

The knock isn’t particularly loud, just a prim little tap. Yet the sudden noise grips me, incites my racing mind. The door is closed; locked, even. A closed door holds a hundred possibilities, a hundred stories that may never be written. On the other side could be a ferocious dragon, nostrils puffing. Or a rat, squeaking in mild amusement at the presumption of the puny door that dared to stand in its way. Or a person, real and breathing and alive. When a door is closed, a hundred mental ones open. Your imagination is the limit.

Knock.

I sigh and reluctantly call out a permissive word. The door opens, and, of course, it’s just my new secretary, Amanda. She’s a pretty little thing, slender and delicate, like a china doll that would crack at the slightest touch. Her large, expressive eyes look out of place on her small face, ringed with a shock of long brown hair. She’s neatly dressed, clothes free of wrinkles, contrasting sharply with my rumpled dress. Her full lips drop open as she catches sight of me. A small gasp escapes them, quickly followed by “Are you alright?”. Her voice is shrill and scared, the words stuttering and stumbling into each other, notes trembling.

I roll my eyes and attempt to hold back a scoff. “Of course I’m not. Why would I be? I’m stuck, Amanda. This whole system? It’s a mess. Its chaos, just a bouquet of a thousand rules. Its designed to suppress.”

“Um-“

“Work, sleep, work, sleep, again and again and again. Fifteen years of it. Just waiting, I don’t even know what for!”

“Uh-“

“He promised me things.  Told me that if I could just find the last piece, I’d have endless power. The last piece of what?!”

I let out a bitter laugh when I catch sight of Amanda’s face. Her doe eyes are wide open, fear and uncertainty swirling in them. Her lips quiver and her eyes dart around-she is clearly uncomfortable. I take pity on her and lean back, waving my hand in a vague gesture. “Just…give me those files. I’ll get on the cases.”

Amanda scampers out of the room, and I push my head into my hands. Fifteen years ago, a man had approached his  innocent daughter, a little girl with a thousand little stars in her eyes, and promised her the world. He had cupped her chin in his hands and spoken of endless power if she could just find the last piece. Told her that to become Death was the only way to get the key to controlling life. And I, the little girl, with endless trust in my star-studded eyes, had nodded.

And then the stars had begun to disappear. I saw every death, felt every last breath hissing on my shoulders, heard every cry echoing in my ears. And with every death, every cry, every soul I crept in to take as a vulture would take dead flesh, a star disappeared. I wrapped myself in a shroud of ice, shuttered my eyes and they turned steadily darker as the light in them died out.

I began to drink when I was twenty. I still remember it, that night I succumbed to despair and turned to intoxication. The night is a cloudy memory, a potpourri of senses- a cold bottle against my lips, the cry of rain battering my freezing body, the distant warmth of alcohol slipping down my throat. There was hardly a night after that when I hadn’t enslaved myself to drink with the frivolous abandon of a dog returning to its master.

My life is a mess. Years and weeks are one and the same. The hours mingle and dance by together, drenched in death, with nothing to set them apart. Days are a patchwork of events blurred together by a steady ache, and nights are lost in a haze fueled by cheap beer.

I shake my head and look up. The mistakes of the past belong to her and her alone, and I have no wish to steal them away. My future isn’t in my hands either, a gift I lost to fate when I agreed to become Death. I simply live, a robot trapped between the crimes of my past and the whims of my future.

Amanda brings in the case files, and I glance at them. The stab of pain at the mounds of deaths printed in coldly impersonal parchment is dulled by years of practice, and I read the names with emotionless eyes. Arthi. Dart. Beth. A hundred others.

My vulnerable moments of momentary awareness are gone- I slip into the routine with practiced ease. My cloak swishes effortlessly over my shoulders, and I push away my longing for the days I tripped and stumbled into it. I dress in the robes as black as grief that have been laid out for me, and tighten my belt. The scythe slips into it. Within minutes, I am gone.

                                                                                       *********

 My last case is Arthi. She’s a young girl, perhaps younger than I was when the whole mess started. I turn my eyes from her sobbing parents and bend near her cold, pale corpse. Her eyes are wide, staring up at the stars. A girl that young shouldn’t have had to die, I think, but the crippling sadness that should follow that thought never comes. I have lost all empathy, immunized by a thousand tales of grief. Perhaps that is why my hands do not tremble when they grip the scythe, as they used to. Perhaps that is why I rip her soul, the last of her life, clutching her body with a fragile connection,  away without an ounce of hesitation. Perhaps that is why I do not shake when I shove it in with the hundred other souls, making another life just a number. Perhaps that is why I just don’t react.

I do react, though, when I feel a touch on my arm.

The contact feels foreign,  sending  thrills up my spine. I haven’t been touched in years, I realize. Most people cant even see me, let alone touch me. Those who can couldn’t fathom touching the unwashed, drunk mess I have become. I glance down, disbelief warring with my automatic instinct to pull away when I see what caused the contact.

It’s a cat. A stray by the looks of it, slim and lithe, bones clear against pale orange fur. His eyes are too big for his face, brown standing out against the light orange. It was his nose that had grazed me, a tiny, coldly pink nub. Instinctually, I reach out to run my finger through his soft hair, reluctantly relishing the feeling. I swallow when I touched the cat’s bones. They were too sharp, too accentuated, and just like that, I know this cat would be another of my victims if I don’t accept it.

The cat has chosen me, hasn’t it? For some unfathomable reason, this bundle of life has chosen me over every person standing in this compound. Me, Death herself. I bend and lift it to my chest. The cat presses closer and meows. His voice hardly floats, water soaked paper dipping beneath the surface of the river.  

I press the cat closer. He smells warm, like a ray of sunshine on a cold winter day. I should put him down, turn my back, walk out. But if I do, he’ll die. There’s only so long he can get by on the scraps of those who struggle to feed themselves. Already, he is skin and bones, and more bones than skin at that.

It is time for Death to save a life.

I twirl around and bow, my cloak flying out behind me. Straightening, I add dramatically, “And that’s the story of how I figured out the formula for reality!”

Some scattered clapping echoed amidst my makeshift audience, but most faces were still clouded over with uncertainty. I tap my foot, masking my confusion with an easy smile. What was the problem here?

Amanda hurries up on the stage beside me and whispers the answer in my ear. Her breath is cold against my skin. “They need more. Tell them what happened next.”

I huff. “That’s boring, Amanda. It was just a lot of thinking.”

Amanda purses her lips and turns away from me, effortlessly painting on a smile for our audience. “Bringing the cat here had an effect no one expected. You see, reality is just opposites.”

“Not really”, I butt in. “It’s actually a range of everything, and to have a range, you need two extremes.” I stretch both my arms to the side to reiterate my point.

“So”, Amanda continues, glaring at me. “Death was missing two opposites that would have solved the reality equation. That was where her father went wrong- he thought he was only missing one. The first was happiness- he had sadness, but never happiness. The second was life- and he couldn’t find that, wherever he went.”

I intrude at this point, because if anyone was going to talk about my exploits today, it would be me. “When I brought the cat here”, I say, putting my hands in my pockets to create a mask of casualness, “Life was added to my equation, and it was complete! I had finished the formula for reality! ”

The claps are thunderous now, and I relax. This is what I am used to, outright admiration from a crowd when I’m done. The noise keeps increasing, till it becomes near deafening. I sink to my knees, clutching my ears, but no one stops. The claps hit my ears like hammers, and my vision blinks and swims until…

I snap awake, my eyes shooting open. My heart is beating frantically, like a bird desperate to leave its cage. It takes a minute for my surroundings to register, for me to realize I’m home in my own bed. I slump and sigh. The end had been harsh, but the ecstasy of success had been frighteningly real. I glance around at my messy place, disappointment freezing in my veins. The bottles are still there, empty and cold, proof of a hundred nights of greedy drinking. Just like my dream.

But were those the only relics of my slumber? I freeze, working it out in my head. Factor in life and happiness, and the equation might just work out. A broad smile creeps over my face. I grab my phone and call Amanda, not caring that it was nearly three in the morning. She picked up, too, her characteristically perfect adherence to the call of duty shining through.

“Hey Amanda.”, I tell her, and I can  hear the smile in my own voice. “Make arrangements. I’m going to adopt a cat.”

“Uh-“

“Also, why don’t you book the closest stage for tomorrow evening? “, I grin, trying to stop myself from doing a little victory dance. “I think I just may have something to talk about.”

And that’s the story of my success, and your adoption.”, the girl finished, playing with the edge of her frock as she leant down to the orange kitten with wide, hopeful eyes. “What do you think?”

The kitten yawned and began to lick its own thick, soft fur. The girl  leaned back, disappointed. She was a thin little thing, with wide brown eyes too big for her face and a skinny figure that teetered on the edge of tallness. She wore a pretty white frock that she was nearly drowned in. Her face twisted slightly.

“It’s just…it’s not fair! It’s so, so unfair that Amanda gets to be Death. She’s such a prude! She doesn’t want to listen to any of my ideas…” the girl trailed off, grumbling slightly. She scratched the top of the cats head, a loving greed pasted on her thin face. “You know, you could be the ticket to eternal power, Tabs.”

A woman appeared in the doorway. She was tall and thin. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the kitten. 

“Emily! Get that cat out of the house, now!”

A sigh. “Yes, Mom.”