She was dead. The words were in his mind, but the man couldn't accept them.
His whole body trembled and his eyes stung. There was a lump in his throat.
"You're kidding, right. It's like some joke, where you tell me that, and then you're like'jsut kidding" It would have been a cruel joke, but less cruel than the truth.
He didn't believe that. as he was a fool trying to hang on to one pathetic last hope.
The doctor looked at the floor with sadness, and a tinge of remorse, "I'm sorry. We did all we could, but she's gone."
A glass castle in his soul shattered. He began crying, no sobbing, the tears flooding. He could imagine his mother sitting there smiling, telling him one of her famous stories, and the thought that she would never again smile or laugh or talk to him in her gentle yet reprimanding voice him hit him. She was gone. His mother was gone.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said once again, leaving him all alone. Not just physically, but in this world. His father had died in a warehouse fire when he was ten, and exactly 12 years later to the day he had received a phone call that Grace Phillips had been in a car accident . Now two years later, he was an orphan. Why was life so unfair?
He sat in the chair, a part of himself missing. When his tears fell dry, when there was nothing left to say. He sat there until the day turned into night, and when a nurse offered him a cookie, he decided it was time to leave.
He went to the front of the hospitable and saw a man standing there. He wore slick business suit. He sat there smoking a cigar and his hair, declining hairline and all, was slicked back with gel.
The two men sat in comfortable silence. The boy was not yet eager to leave and the man had no intention of leaving either.
"She lived a good life," the man commented in his odd snake like voice.
"Yeah-" he said,wistfully knowing it had been true . Then a thought struck him. "What how did you know her?"
The man signed and then chuckle in an odd sadistic way. "Children, so naive."
He was irritated at being laughed at by a man he barely knew, so his retort was sharp.
"Who are you?"
The man smiled, a truly creepy grin that sent shivers down his spine. "I am death,"
"What are you talking about," the boy said,
Then he saw the man again, and he was wearing a cloak and a scythe.
"You let her die," he said stubbornly. He felt the sting of tears.
The man pulled out a cigar, and looked at the boy with a hint of smile.
Then for the second time, he laughed. He never expected death to be so cheerful.
"You say it like I have a choice? Like it's me who kill them,Do you think I want to take them out of this world. But they're in pain! So much pain. I don't kill them, I relieve, I bring them to the other side.To the palce where they are made for."
"He was barely 29, and she 36, How is that fair?"
"They lived, didn't they. They were never hungry, never beaten, and they were loved, more than you , and more importantly they loved, you more than anyone else. You don't realize how lucky you are do you you. Last week, I collected the soul of a half starving toddler in Indonesia who contracted pneumonia. Before that a man who drowned simply because of what he believed. Before that, they electrocuted him, dunked him again. It always scares me how much evil you- all of you- are capable of. But when I see people like your mother, I become a little hopeful.'
"I meant what I said, they were good people, and don't mourn their deaths, celebrate their lives. They would like that."
"Thank You," the boy said.
And then death disappeared into a cloud of ash, but his voice echoed.
"It is not death that is unfair,but life."
Okay, our grammar teacher made us write a story about death incarnate and that was mine.
Hope you enjoyed it.
