In Dreams And Death

I wrote a letter to death, to thank him/her/it for his/her/its services to the world. I felt death was perhaps underappreciated. I wrote it on lined paper and put a return address on the envelope and only DEATH in the centre.

I worried someone would think it was a joke and it would reappear in my mailbox stamped Return To Sender, but it did not return.

I waited a day, a week, several months, as the leaves died and my conviction died with them.

When the letter arrived, in a black envelope with my name in silver ink, I had to sit down. The world seemed to pinwheel around me as I clutched for the arm of the porch chair.

The handwriting was neat, and smudged. Later, I would ask if he was left-handed.

He said little but that he appreciated my letter and hoped to meet me soon, though not on professional terms.

I kept the letter in my pocket until he came to the house.

He was a young man, my age and also ageless. Pale, with dark, watchful eyes. He moved like a cat, from shadow to shadow, lithe an nimble. He asked to stay the night.

I learned that his hair did not stay one colour. As he slept, it was the glossy black of a raven's feather. And when I yawned myself awake in the morning, it was the rosy gold of dawn, made rosier by the sun through my window.

He stayed a second night. Not a third. He came and went. He was a busy man. But he came back, propping his scythe up against the wall (he said it came with the job; it was an aesthetic requirement, it was expected) and sinking to the bed as if pulled by an anchor.

"It must be the loneliest job," I said, once.

He paused before answer, running a slender finger along my wrist. "It isn't. I am hardly ever alone. And I recall most people I come for. Everyone comes to me, in the end. And most meet me in the beginning. It is more like being constantly lost, and constantly found."

"Are you lost right now?" I asked.

He stared at the space on the inside of my elbow where my veins converged, like the perspectives of a room or the lines on a map. "Not at all," he said.

"Then it must be a thankless job," I said. He laughed, and it was a sound like the first crack of thunder, and the first bird song of the morning.

He did not have a way with words. But he had a way with silence. When I was diagnosed, his silence filled the hospital room as he sat on the bed beside me. Quiet and soothing. I fell asleep to it, like a lullaby.

I woke up, and the heart monitor was no longer beeping like a metronome.

"I'm sorry," he said, as he took my hand.

The world began to fade as he raised the scythe, like a reflection rippling into nothingness.

"Don't be. Thank you," I said.

The scythe flashed like a sliver of silver moon as he brought it down. I closed my eyes and in the darkness, I was found.

Text by Lucie MacAulay