Skin of Glass

There was a hospital in town. It was a mundane hospital, yet an effective one. Whenever people of the town fell ill, the hospital was there to help. Doctors of all different kinds worked in the hospital and made sure that the patients were safe in their hands. It was in such a hospital that I ended up in. I was recovering from a horrible cough. The doctors put me on several medicines and recommended I stay with them for a few days to rest up and heal.

The walls of the hospital were covered in a lovely wallpaper. It was mostly white with depictions of little animals and plants weaving in and out around me. It was like I was in a forest of healing. The nurse came in to give me my medicine and food.

"Hello, sir! I hope you're doing well, just a day more and you'll be out of here."

"Thank you." I replied.

I ate my food in silence. It was very bland, yet nutritious. The par for hospital food.

On the morning of the day I was set to be released from the hospital I heard a scream from the woman in the room before me.

"It's terrible! Terrible it is! Please make it stop!" She yelled and something crashed to the ground.

It was at this moment I lost my courage. I lost everything that compelled me to engage in danger or risk. I lost everything at that moment. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable for a moment. An aftershock effect from the feelings that I had just felt. I squirmed in my hospital bed. I looked over, out the window and screamed.

"No please! It's too scary, too far! The drop would surely kill me, I would fall into the abyss!"

Once, the view from a window of the street below was nice. I could once feel the wind on my arms and face. I could feel the wind rustle through my hair and brush my scalp. But now the window had transformed into something else. From the window came an eerie and off putting aura. Peering over the ledge was one of the worst things I've ever done in my entire life. The great fall from the window was only about two stories, but such would definitely hurt me and this was suddenly very terrifying. The pavement below stank of death and decay. Any rational person would conclude that such smells could not have wafted up from down by the road, but it was clear that death itself was coming from the pavement. Death came from the fall. And death was terrifying. Death's face in the pavement morphed into being as soon as I had this revelation. It stared up at me with eyes that yanked me toward it. Its mouth spun horrible tales.

"What would be life without risk? Without danger? Without folly? What shall all us humans do all day without such things but sit around in paralyzing fear? For I, death, am what brings meaning to life. My presence is everywhere, even when one may be perfectly alive. Consider the act of walking. I shadow each turn and motion and lurk behind every corner, a forgotten thought in the back of the mind. Each step one takes is dictated by me, I decide the manner of which one walks. I do not intervene in the action, yet I am there. I watch. Even life stems from me. An immortal race would never know what it is like to live, to exist without my aid nor power, for they do not know what it is like to die. They do not know my finality, my extravagant crescendo and finale. My blessing. In this I am omnipresent. I am omniscient. I am greater than any God or deity alike for even they must one day feel my breath on their nape. Nothing is eternal save for I. I am not the opposite of life, nay I be its cause; its purpose. Et in Arcadia ego."

More screams could be heard from the hospital rooms around us. A woman burst into my room, and it was in fact not my nurse. She was panicked and crying. She looked around frantically for something in my room. From my place at the window I rushed over to her to ask,

"What are you looking for? Why are you here?"

"My blood!" She screamed, "It's too much for me! There are faces in the blood. They are the faces of death and hell incarnate. They are the faces of those who may not be named!"