Poisonous Flaws | a short story

The Beginning, The Middle, and The End

Yarrow sits cross-legged in a worn out, yellow-cushioned seat. The warm summer sun peeps in through the coffee shop window, making the dust shine like glitter. She squints as she reads Antony and Cleopatra for the second time this month. It is quickly becoming her favorite pastime to analyze every word of it. Her freckled, bronze skin almost glows with radiance, and every passerby takes a moment to notice the young woman hunched over a book in the shop window. They don't notice the faded look in her eyes, but they can pick out the messy bun on her head and the floral pattern on her dress. They might even see her iced-coffee on the brushed metal table in front of her; and, how it sweats down the plastic cup and onto the knitted coaster. She hasn't touched it since sitting down. Her thick fingers still grip a blue felt tip pen as she writes notes on napkins. The barista gave her a look when she stuffed twenty of the rough napkins into her bag, but Yarrow didn't care. Everything seems perfect, and will be for a long time. Yarrow just knows it.
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Two years ago, her grandmother was saved. Not by the paramedics that rushed to her house with loud sirens blaring. Not by the doctors in the surgery room. But by Yarrow. Two years ago, she sold her soul to Death. It was simple, really. She called him using a small incantation and he showed up with a dark cloud hanging over him. The sun even seemed to shrink away from the towering figure in black skinny jeans and a leather jacket studded with spikes. His shirt, equally black as his thin, straight locks, read: Poison. The grim look she remembers on his face was of nightmares; thin lips pulled tight together, and eyes so sunken the Mariana Trench looked shallow. But his eyes, his eyes, she drew her attention from his dark aura. They weren't anything dark. They were full of such life that she felt pulled in. Every color swam in them, and glowed like centuries of beautiful sunrises.
Thinking of it now gives her chills.
"Hello," Yarrow garbled past the built up saliva and phlegm. The only thought in her mind was her grandmother. The woman that was a house in a tornado, so certain in her doom, yet holding on. Pieces of her had been flying off ever since her husband's death, but the winds never really could carry her off. Not until the cold breath of Death crept along her neck and told her it was her time. The night tried to take her, but she fought.
"Hello," Death replied ominously. A chill breeze lifts Yarrow's hair, and carries the scent of nearby dumpsters to her nose. She decided behind the hospital was the best place to conduct business like this. "I recall your face, have I met you before?"
Yarrow shook her head, knowing she resembles her grandmother. Her tangled hair fell into her eyes. "People tell me I look —I look a lot like my grandma, and...." Yarrow sucked in a breath, trembling. "And, I know you are trying to take her right now."
Death nodded. He stepped closer, trying to calm the frightened animal in front of him. He takes in her full figure, pondering the life she has lived, and what has brought her here, behind a dingy desert hospital in Arizona. "You want me to save someone so far past the end? I have already written her name on the Scroll of Death. She walks in the Middle as we speak. You want to take that from her?"
Yarrow swallowed the lump in her throat. "I love her. I need her back." Death rolled his eyes, he knew her type: bleeding heart.
With a long sigh, Death drew up a contract. People these days, he thought to himself, always trying to have everything and yet so oblivious to what they are giving up. "Your soul for hers. I will let you live here on Earth with her, but when your time comes, there will be nothing waiting for you but vast emptiness." Yarrow nodded slowly. With the flick of Death's hand, a quill appeared with a puff of smoke. Yarrow coughed. He gave her the feather pen and the second it touched her delicate skin, her blood started to pour from her wrist. She winced. Her blood was drawn out and into the hollow part of the quill. There was no turning back, and she knew it, but to let go of someone she loved was unbearable, so she signed it. The pen pulled more and more of her blood from her veins as she wrote out her full name in scarlet.
"Thank you," Yarrow murmured to Death, sniffling. For a second, he pondered not taking her soul. But, if he did that to everyone, no one would die. The thought faded quickly. He offered a small smile and took her head in his long bony fingers, and concentrated on her beautifully dark eyes, they were puffy and red and wet with tears. Yarrow shivered at the cold, but held her stance. He felt the peace inside of her as he drew out her soul with the light brush of his lips against hers. She was filled with only the purest things, and Death wanted to burn the contract. Even in the corners of the soul, the darkness was small and minor. Light faded from her eyes though, and into his, adding to the ever-shifting pool of souls he held. Like a horrible sunburn it burned him, but he held it in. This mortal couldn't see weakness in him, even as his eyes stung and watered.
But, he wanted her to see it. Something in him wanted her to feel for him. It spread like he'd just gulped down poison, painfully slow, yet warm.
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Yarrow takes a break from her book as a chilling breeze floods the coffee shop, and sets her nerves on edge. She can't quite place the feeling, but she knows it. The air seems to caress her cheek like an old lover and brushes her lips in the same way. She looks over to the door. There stands a thin, willowy gentlemen in a black suit, his long hair slicked back to reveal ghostly skin and sunken eyes. He holds a briefcase in one hand, and an umbrella in the other. Yarrow holds her breath. Death.
He takes a seat next to her. A cloud covers the sun's rays, but only where the man sits, light still filters in onto Yarrow. "How have you been?" He asks coldly, though he doesn't try to.
"May I ask why you are here? Is it my time?" Yarrow disregards his question, too curious to care. She has dreamt of meeting him too many times to count; him in punk-rocker boots and her in ballet flats, dancing away to whatever end she sold her soul for.
Death leans back in his matching yellow chair, and reaches forward for Yarrow's drink. He takes it, the drink instantly refreezing into a slushy of sorts. "I am here to make a deal." I want to save you, you precious mortal, is what he means.
Yarrow almost chokes. Quickly, she takes the drink back and sucks it down, trying to sooth the cough that threatens to break her. Many people take notice of her. The sunshine girl chugging iced coffee with literal Death, and some of them brace themselves for her demise. For Death to parade her out of here after choking on a barely caffeinated drink.
"Calm down, I don't need you dying," he jokes, but mostly to himself. Mortals never like his jokes very much. "I need you to do a favor in exchange for your soul." I just want to make sure you're safe.
Yarrow almost starts up again, but she holds herself together. Taking a breath, she blurts out, "What do you need from me? Why me?" Her heart starts to pound, and the sound of it in her ears makes her nauseous.
With some people still watching, Death takes her dark hand gently. Yarrow sets the coffee down, freezing in her tracks. There is an audible gasp in the room. He knows what this looks like: Yarrow's funeral all wrapped up with a nice bow on the coffin. He knows the fear in the room, in Yarrow. He means the end, and the very cloud that shrouds him sends children running. But, he also knows he needs to help the sunshine girl. The girl so in love with everything around her, she would rather break herself apart than let them go. He knows her flaw, she is selfish; but, she is the good kind of selfish.
"I need you to help me save someone," Death says, conjuring up as much self pity as he can. Yarrow's whole body stiffens, like some sort of spell was cast on her, and for a split second, Death worries that he accidentally killed her. He checks her pulse by pressing two fingers to her wrist, below her thumb. The soft thud of her heart reminds him that that isn't possible. He lets her go in case he's hurting her. She flinches away. He needs this girl more than anything. "But you'll have to come with me, and you might be gone for a while," Death adds in the bit that worried him the most. To get this girl to follow him willingly would have been simple if her soul still hung in her chest, but her souls sits in a jar atop his kitchen cabinets. Haunting his crude abode with it's poisonous glow. He is like a moth to her light, always ready to kill himself for one more touch.
Too many nights have past in agony as he tries to hold her soul in him. It bites at the edges of his immortality and burns his flesh. But the Sun can't be touched, he reminds himself, only admired in peripheral.
Yarrow straightens her back and tries to breathe. Death is back. "What do I need to do?"
It is Death's turn to suck in a breath. He hates how she said it. Like I need you, he almost spit out, but a mix of her general innocence and the fact that something in him did need her to live, makes him hold his tongue. "Can I explain somewhere more... um, private." Death keeps his voice low, like a rumble of thunder, but he knows that people are listening. Their ears are tuned to the man in black with clouds hanging over him. They are tuned to the end, and they will make a spectacle of it. "Thirty is a crowd," he says, gesturing to the people swarming the coffee shop.
With a calculated smile, Yarrow stands up and shakes out the nerves from her hands. She gathers her things in her bag. Death smiles equally as wide, though his blindingly white teeth are sharp, and send a chill down her spine. The cloud outside moves as well, shifting so Death's entire form is shrouded by it. The sun refuses to shine on him. "Shall we?" He offers his arm to Yarrow, and she takes it nervously. Every instinct in her is telling her to run, but she can't help but need to know what he wants.
"Are you going to—" Yarrow asks as a woosh of air pulls her from the tiling of the coffee shop. For a second, everything is blissfully numb. Yarrow has only heard stories of this feeling, and half-baked ones at that. Teleportation is a foreign thing to her, but Death finds comfort in the ease of travel. He also likes the awe inspiring entrances he can make with it. When their feet touch ground again, it is in an orchard.
    The soft grass tickles Yarrow's calves. That cold breeze that usually follows Death doesn't appear and lift her dress, and that cloud is gone as well. Around them, trees bloom with strange flowers and fruit of all kinds. A creek not too far from the pair gurgles on, its blue waters so clear that every stone at the bottom could be seen by a bird high above. Though, there doesn't seem to be any birds, or any animals for that matter, here.
    When Yarrow finally finds the sense enough to face Death, her heart almost jumps. The color has returned to his face as well as a genuine smile with normal teeth. His clothes and hair are still black, but they feel lively, as if an aura of happiness surrounds the once ill-looking man. He is not the man that took her soul away years ago.
    "What is this place? Why do you look like this? Where are we?" Yarrow rapid fires questions. Death knows these questions, they are the ones he gets every hour of the day. Every minute.
    "This is the Middle. Where I take people before they find their true end," Death explains like he has many times before. By now he feels like a tour guide. "I was like you once, a mortal destined to die and come here. But, someone came to me one day, dressed in a robe of thick black cloth and on a red horse. She offered me the chance to save someone. And, I'm offering you that now."
    "Okay," Yarrow says, her mind tumbling through his words and trying to analyze them. "You want me to be some sort of hero?" The question is more a thought, but it fell out anyway.
    Death laughs lightly, it makes him glow with a new light, shocking Yarrow. He places a soft, warm hand on her shoulder, the weight of it gives her strength. But, he soon calms himself, and the light dims, though it doesn't go away entirely. "I want you to become Death."
    The words hit Yarrow like a brick wall. She can't get air into her lungs, and after a few gasps, she has to sit down on the pillow of grass. Death sits beside her, his hand ever so close to her, yet lingering away. The thought of killing her flashes in his mind, and makes the Middle blink out of existence for a second. Yarrow doesn't notice. He watches her faded eyes as they search for something, anything. He feels her fear in his core, and he hates it.
    Yarrow takes shallow breaths, trying to concentrate on the trees. They stand tall and firm, no wind can stir them. She wills herself to be like them. "I don't understand," Yarrow coughs out. Death nods. He knows the feeling of being offered this kind of a job. "Why me?"
    Without hesitation, Death looks Yarrow in the eye and says, "There is power in love, and the love your soul possesses is strong enough to last forever. It will give you strength and immortality if you let me give it back to you." He knows Yarrow is the one. He always doubted humans as he watched them fight, centuries flew by, and souls only got darker, but Yarrow's... it outshone every soul Death had collected combined. She changed him without even speaking to him. And, Death fears that he may like her more than other humans.
    "I don't want this power."
    The glow in Death's skin fades, the horrid features he wears as a mask recollect and disfigure him. "What?" A breeze carries his words across the Middle. The trees glitch in the distance, turning black as soot, their fruit rotten.
    Yarrow stammers for something to say, but her mouth clams up like her hands. She doesn't want power or immortality or strength. She wants to live and die like people do, with every cut and scrape along the way. She wants to experience the love and laughter, the trial and error, the pride and joy that comes from life. "Please take me back."
    "You don't want to save your soul? To help people?" Death asks, trying to play to her selfish need to help people, her bleeding heart, any of her flaws. He needs her to survive, even if that means blackmailing her into it. "You can give your loved ones a better afterlife." It's not exactly true. Everyone gets what they deserve, but Yarrow doesn't need to know that now.
    Yarrow sighs, thinking deeply. Her niece just learned to walk, and she has a life ahead of her. But, what about when she gets to the End? What about when she is led to this Middle? Will she be taken to the Pearly Gates, or be sent to the Endless Abyss? Yarrow thinks about her grandma, her mother and father, her friends. Each and every one of them deserves a good life after death; but, at what cost. She thinks on the fact that they won't want to see her, they won't want Death leering around in the dark corners, always watching.
    Death senses her thoughts, the tipping balance. He knows he could lose her, but he has one more trick. "You can live to see centuries of your family grow and prosper, each and every generation as they spread out, and you will get to introduce yourself to them. You will get to love them. Every single one." He leans in, eyebrows raised. Yarrow tenses for a moment, hesitating.