Several Short Fantasies of Werewolves and Other Things

Death

 I chased after Death for several years. I don't mean suicide; I mean I'd seen him, watching time pass under a rainy lamp, and wanted to reach out and touch him. It was almost a sensual thing. He had a certain overbearing charm, the kind of power of personality someone wields when you know they are untouchable but you want to ignore the vast difference between you. I suppose he'd noticed me catching on to his presence at various times, because he'd nod his head my way now and then, or tip a hesitant smile; and as time went on he'd even let me stand beside him for a few moments before effervescing into the atmosphere. He was never really there—like an absent parent, or the ghost of what you wished they were—but I'd find him anyway.

He spoke to me lately. It was the first time I'd ever heard his voice. It was deep and had a drawl to it, and an accent I'd almost describe as Southern if not for the lightness in the vowels. It was the voice of a dream.

"Lovely evening," was all he said. It was; a soft rain pattered over the harbor, slick surfaces throwing long yellow reflections like eerie pillars high and low. The air was dead still, moist and sad like the rim of a widow's eye.

He didn't have an eye for me. That was a good thing, I knew; but it had the feeling of running to the last place on earth where someone might give you warmth, and finding that it just isn't to be had. I sat next to him for awhile. I thought of leaning over, falling asleep against the fine dark shoulder of his coat.

"Ya shouldn't," he said. He must have seen what was in my mind. "Not time for you."

"No," I answered. "But I don't know what else to do."

He looked over at me. I didn't return the gaze; in my mind I saw his eyes gaping black and empty, pupils widening like a cat's and then spinning out to consume everything. It wasn't time. But he did look.

"You're young and kinda stupid," he said. Then he looked away again, out over the water. "Ya never really suffered before so you take it hard. I'm going now. Listen, I don't want to see you around anymore, not for awhile, understand?"

With that, he left. I sat alone on a tired pier, looking out over inky water and gray air. The truth stings; it feels like being whipped across the face with a cold towel. I suppose the truth is that sometimes you get a piece of yourself torn away, and you can't make friends with it or the thing that did it or the part of you that's left behind. I want someone to love me, but nobody's stacked that way right now outside family. That's just the breaks. My mother calls it God. I wish I had a God I felt her way about, but the last one I tried didn't give me much slack. Maybe that's just reality talking, but I guess it seems kind of rigged if that's the model we're using to explain all this, this life business. I bet on things making sense and I lost. So here I am.