Day 29: Death Story

Woo, unfinished story! Seriously, the endings I tried were so melodramatic they'd embarrass a ninth-grader named "Raven."

The Death of old was last seen in the lobby, looking worried. Her lack of facial features made this quite an accomplishment but when what passes for your face hides perpetually beneath a dark cloak you learn to make do with body language. When she was last spotted near the fountain at the Palms that body language consisted of pacing back and forth between the front desk and the valet, hood on a swivel, trying desperately to spot something. Or, more likely, someone.

Death could track anyone on her list to any point in existence with simple thought. No physical barricade could slow her, no religious ritual stop her, no emotional plea sway her. She was a force, elemental, and even the gods showed her respect. Her normal path followed her ever-updating list exclusively and, as such, she was at something of a loss when forced now to track someone who had no need of her kiss. So she paced the lobby and tried to ignore the stares and restless feeling welling up inside.

John’s friend Kat succumbed to a lengthy battle with a rare parasite two weeks earlier on an extended vacation in Chile. Death met her in an ICU bed in Santiago and she went quietly on to the next place. John had been visiting her when she turned for the worse and stayed over an extra couple days to be with her at the hospital. Death had met many such men and women in her travels, sitting vigil in their sterile little rooms, but John had been different. When Death took Kat he did not sob or freeze, just paused, smiled, brushed back a tear, and seemed to look right at Death as if to say go on, it’s okay. I know you’re just doing your job. Please don’t mind me. Death was touched, and she’d followed John back to Kat’s home and watched him pack up her things to send back to her parents. She loved him just then.

Over the next two weeks she’d followed John when she could, stopping in at Kat’s now empty residence and following him from there into the city. His visa had time on it and he was in no hurry to return and face his friends and their questions about Kat. Still, he was beatific, and beautiful, and Death found herself wanting to know more about him each day. John, for his part, could feel her presence but seemed not to mind. This too was unique and Death began to imagine that maybe John really was different. Different enough to reveal herself to him. Different enough to see her. To love her.

That was it. Death had witnessed a million grieving widows, ten million parents lost in a flood of sorrow over a child taken “too soon,” (though Death knew there was no such thing), and while no single instance changed her the slow accumulation was beginning to show its effects. She wanted to feel like that herself, and to find someone who might feel back. She had no delusions of romantic sentiments being exchanged but, maybe, just maybe, she could find a friend. A friend like John.

When John left for the airport on his way back to Baltimore Death followed. She had no address for him, no way to find him back again if he wasn‘t on her list, and she was terrified of losing the connection she felt. When John’s flight redirected to Charleston, and did not take off again due to a bad engine, he was forced to spend the night in a hotel and wait for the next morning’s game of stand-by. Death was ready for him, but not for his sudden decision to rent a car and drive home through the night. She was away on business when he made the decision. Now he was nowhere to be found and so she paced, back and forth across the lobby, hoping he was still about, that he had stopped off for dinner in the hotel bar first, or forgotten his phone charger, or, or, anything, just not this. Not this.