I am Death

The Knife Edge

Death was back again, and to be truthful, he wasn't completely surprised to see Clara again, though he did feel upset. This girl wasn't the first the call him back more than once, there had been plenty like her and unlike her, but Death felt no sympathy for her. He'd didn't know what it was like to want to be himself, it wasn't an experience he wished to have.

"Am I ready to go now?" she asked him. She was laying down on a bed, and there was a half empty bottle of pills of some sort near her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth didn't move, but she knew Death could hear her.

"I don't make that choice, Clara."

"I wish you would," and tears leaked from her closed eyes. "This hurts too much."

Her darkish skin tone had a sickly tinge to it, and bags hung under her eyes as though she hadn't slept for a few days. She hadn't. Her hair was a mess, and splayed out all around her, fuzzy and loose.

"I can't take away your pain, I just take you away,"

"Can't you tell me what comes next?"

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

"How can you not know?" Clara was shocked, her body didn't move in the slightest, but Death could feel her shock. "You're literally Death, how can you not know who you are?"

"How can you be sure that you'll find peace in me?"

"Anything is better than this,"

"Better than what, Clara?"

But Death knew what her answer would be: that she was at war in her mind, it was so hard and never went away; she can't do life anymore, no matter who told her what she had to live for - and she would not live in pain for the sake of someone who had no experience of what she's going through.

There were so many ways of saying it, and Death knew the reasons he was with her. She had no voices in her head, she did not change persons suddenly and she was not physically held back. Death knew, and he needn't say anything.

"'It's like knives in my head, all the time. Can you understand?' do you know that line?" She asked him.

"John Coffey, The Green Mile," Death told her. "A magnificent character, he was."

"Yeah," her mind was becoming quieter, and Death knew what that meant.

But it seemed that whoever life was, had other plans than Clara. A man thundered into the room, not older than thirty, with a piece of paper crumpled in his hand and shouting her name. Then Death was gone, because he was no longer needed; Clara would live for the time being.

Good, bad, not sure?