Death
Title: Death Prompt
Author: malicevampire90
Rating: G
Notes/warnings: This was written as a quick prompt driven story...it's not terribly good or long but it gets the point across.
Humans have always fascinated me...even though I have known them their entire existence, seen the evil things that have come of them...it's always been utterly fascinating. Of course there are good things...things that no one ever acknowledges because evil and selfish things always outshine such good things, regardless it isn't my place to judge them. My only purpose in their world is to take people when their time is up. I am death. I existed before they did and i've watched them turn into what they are now. For every act of kindness and a good heart I have to take...I see ten more black and jaded hearts go into this world they've made, the whole thing is ugly and honestly if it were up to me I would take every good person from this filth and let the remainder live forever in the hell they've made. They fight over everything...who they love, what they believe in, what morals they have, what color their skin is, what language they speak, where they're from...whether they have enough money or whether they don't...they fight over food and resources and are no different than the animals they believe they're better than. And yet I find myself torn between loving them and hating them. Loving the goodness I know they are capable of but hating what they have made of themselves. Death is blind to all of that though...it doesn't matter your age, your gender, your money, your ethnicity or your religion...everyone will meet me at least once in their lives. For some of them it's a bittersweet meeting others it's a total surprise. Some fight and some welcome you with open arms and a desperate plea to end the suffering they're going though...I always oblige them if the time is theirs.
I used to think that I was immune to any feelings, after all the only time I ever felt an inkling of sadness was when it came to children and it was simply because they were unable to even get a start in their lives...but some of them suffered so badly that it was more out of mercy that they died. I am an entity...I have no feelings, no emotions...and the only way people see me is how they will be most comfortable, a loved one is usually the result. For children it is their mother or father...older people usually prefer lost loves, younger versions of their children and I've even been someone's younger self, asking me it was time yet. The second hardest thing has always been close calls...or brushes I believe is what humans call it...they see you...hear you and sometimes they even beg you to make it end, but after all of that you have to give them a small smile and deny them that blessing, watching them be brought back to life sometimes rather violently. But that is how things are. I used to believe that nothing could make me feel anything...not actually existing in their matter of understanding makes it difficult to understand of course...I think of things as being logical and of course I have some semblance of sympathy and empathy, there have been a few times that people have tried to play on those feelings but what they fail to realize is that their time is out. It's non-negotiable and impossible to talk or charm your way out of. I've watched suicides, murders, accidents, sleeping deaths and medical emergencies...i've also taken the hand of many young children who were never born or only lived minutes or hours...even seeing it your whole life doesn't erase the scars on your soul though.
There are a handful of others like me...and this is how I fell into the situation I find myself now. Sometimes we stick close to people who are close to their time, especially if they've been suffering at death's door step for a long period of time. It was her grandmother that day. A girl of no more than six at the time, her only living family left laying near death in a hospital bed, the room so far back down the hallway that no one ever paid it any mind except a nurse that was lucky to come in once every few hours let alone the once an hour that was normal. They acted like she was plague and moved her as far away from any other patients as they could to die. Every single day this girl would be there...sitting quietly like someone of her age shouldn't have been capable of doing, and watching with painful optimism that her grandmother might just get better one day, she never did though. As a matter of fact she'd taken a turn for the worst and then there I was, my mere presence causing all the machines she was attached to to start signaling something was wrong. Like a wave there were nurses running past me like I didn't even exist-which to them I didn't, they couldn't see me-and the closer I got the more I had realized with a small bit of confusion that the girl very clearly could see me. The only people that should be able to see me are others like me...and people close to death and she was neither, she didn't look scared or even phased before I turned my attention back to her grandmother, moving between nurses to place my kiss of death on the old woman's forehead. And like that, it was over...but something inside still felt painful. The girl's face haunted me for years until it became difficult to keep away from her...but she seemed to invite me when she could. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time...but oh so conveniently where I would be, each time she watched me and each time there was never a look of fright on her face or even curiosity, I'd always had a feeling she knew who I was but just never knew how she saw me because it was never her time.
The only time I had ever had to communicate with her was in her sleep...it was strongly against the rules on many levels because not only was I speaking with someone nowhere near death...I was enjoying it. Joy was something that wasn't part of my job but I found myself in abundance of it when I risked invading this girl's dreams and talking to her...she was beautiful and smart, she was funny but she was also so deeply scarred that not even she realized it. Her beauty wasn't by way of her looks either...ther were plenty that were prettier than she was in human life, but the soul I spoke to for nights on end was the most beautiful I'd seen in years. I watched her grow up...I watched her struggle, succeed and have setbacks...and after years of this there was no denying a bond that was there...something I'd honestly never felt before and something that I couldn't have named at the time even with all the knowledge I knew. Feelings were not something I knew well enough to name, but I did know that I found myself looking forward to my time with her in her dreams...the only place she was safe from me and what I did. Things went well for years...we talked about everything...even things that we shouldn't have talked about because she was human and shouldn't have been privy to that information, and while I learned more about the feelings and way she and her kind thought...the things she learned weighed much heavier on her than I could have imagined at the time. It got worse of course. In a way I knew that I'd brought this on to her and I tried hard to rectify it, telling her that I could make her forget...but of course she would always refuse. There had always been an underlying sadness in her and I knew that I'd made it worse...but it drew me more to her than anything else...I wanted to stay with her and make sure she was ok even when I wasn't supposed to care or be near her. There was a time even that I would have given up my abilities and my 'life' just to be able to touch her or even kiss her...a feeling she both reciprocated and had to explain to me like I was a child. When she was in her mid-thirties, she met a human man and married him despite the fact she didn't love him and even had a couple of kids with him. She loved them so much and they were her world, the life in her eyes when I would stand in the shadows and watch as if they were my own family. It was one of those days that the reality of it hit me hard...I would get to kiss her one day...but It would be the first and last time-which was a realization she'd come too far before me.
The next eighteen years were good for her, we still had our talks and the mutual friendship was still strong as ever...but her kids were her focus and that was fine, I watched them grow up with a reminder that one day I would likely be the same one to take them out of this world...and it was a heavy feeling I'd not felt before but managed to push away long enough to do my work. Things got complicated though when the kids were gone...she became inconsolable with her life and there were many times that she attempted to lure me into supposedly releasing her from the life she said she hated...and each time I fought with the idea that I could do it...but it wasn't her time. So each time I denied her death I had to watch her struggle another day to find the will to keep going. I wanted her to be like me...it meant that-selfishly-I could have her with me the way I wanted, So many times it was tempting to break the rules and do it...but I couldn't do it and so she had to suffer.
And now here we are. Thirty years of watching her struggle...to be happy, to keep her marriage together, to keep her kids close...after all of that she was in the same room at the end of the hall in the hospital. She'd lost consciousness hours ago and instead of speaking to her in her dreams, I sit in the same chair she sat in when her grandmother was in this bed. Her ex-husband had died years ago, not by my hand though thankfully...and her kids had done their best to stay in touch...but life had a funny way of pulling the ones you loved far away from you and so now...I was just biding time hoping to give them a last chance to say goodbye...I felt like I owed them that. I knew they'd come...I knew what time and what day...and if I'd have followed the rules like I was supposed to they would have come a half hour too late to say goodbye to their mother...I wouldn't have hesitated 80 years ago, but it was like part of me was going to be dying with her. This human that was so deeply hurting in her life had made me feel things I'd never been able to even grasp...she made me feel like I was like her. I loved this human and now I was going to have to do the last thing I wanted to do in the world...but the responsibility was on my shoulders since she was born. Her kids come and while they try to talk to her, she doesn't hear much of anything they say...nurses come in and out of the room every once in a while but each time their faces look less and less hopeful...eventually her children leave in tears, they can't handle seeing her like she is and neither of them will hold it together enough if they watch her die...I can't blame them though. It's around midnight when she finally does manage to come out of her haze and it's almost painful how alert she is this close...she doesn't even have to look over at me to know I'm here so she doesn't say anything. I've always known that simply touching her wouldn't kill her...but I'd always refrained from it because I didn't want to even risk it...now though it seems like the most natural thing so for the first time since I'd seen her I reach out and put my hand on hers.
"We've been doing this for so long...each time it's not been your time though..." She doesn't have the energy to even attempt to move her fingers and I feel a dark heaviness start to spread through me...something I haven't felt since the day I realized the only time I would get to kiss her would be her death.
"it is now though..."
"Yes."
"I've been ready for this for years....what took you so long."
I knew that...ever since her kids had left home she'd been ready to go...but maybe it wasn't just that it wasn't her time, maybe it was because I wasn't ready for it to be over yet. I give her hand a small squeeze before I start this oh so familiar scene...the minute I stand up every monitor starts to show distress but no nurses come running in...as a matter of fact no one comes in, no one is concerned with keeping her alive-like I already knew would happen. I stand there for what seems like forever and it's like I slowly watch her regress into the teenager I started talking too...she's so tired and I can feel it so I smile at her and just when I hear someone come into her room, I kiss her.
It only takes a few moments, but in those moments her nurses come into the room in panic followed by her daughter...I don't pay it much mind though because for the first time in her life and in mine I can hold onto her and kiss her the way i'd wanted to for years...normally the trip out of her world is instant but thankfully it doesn't seem to be the case with her...so I keep holding onto her like if I let go she'll disappear and she does the same. It's only when I look past her and see her daughter that I know something has happened...and it makes sense why she is still here in this room with me...her daughter is looking right at us with the same look she had all those years ago.
Author: malicevampire90
Rating: G
Notes/warnings: This was written as a quick prompt driven story...it's not terribly good or long but it gets the point across.
Humans have always fascinated me...even though I have known them their entire existence, seen the evil things that have come of them...it's always been utterly fascinating. Of course there are good things...things that no one ever acknowledges because evil and selfish things always outshine such good things, regardless it isn't my place to judge them. My only purpose in their world is to take people when their time is up. I am death. I existed before they did and i've watched them turn into what they are now. For every act of kindness and a good heart I have to take...I see ten more black and jaded hearts go into this world they've made, the whole thing is ugly and honestly if it were up to me I would take every good person from this filth and let the remainder live forever in the hell they've made. They fight over everything...who they love, what they believe in, what morals they have, what color their skin is, what language they speak, where they're from...whether they have enough money or whether they don't...they fight over food and resources and are no different than the animals they believe they're better than. And yet I find myself torn between loving them and hating them. Loving the goodness I know they are capable of but hating what they have made of themselves. Death is blind to all of that though...it doesn't matter your age, your gender, your money, your ethnicity or your religion...everyone will meet me at least once in their lives. For some of them it's a bittersweet meeting others it's a total surprise. Some fight and some welcome you with open arms and a desperate plea to end the suffering they're going though...I always oblige them if the time is theirs.
I used to think that I was immune to any feelings, after all the only time I ever felt an inkling of sadness was when it came to children and it was simply because they were unable to even get a start in their lives...but some of them suffered so badly that it was more out of mercy that they died. I am an entity...I have no feelings, no emotions...and the only way people see me is how they will be most comfortable, a loved one is usually the result. For children it is their mother or father...older people usually prefer lost loves, younger versions of their children and I've even been someone's younger self, asking me it was time yet. The second hardest thing has always been close calls...or brushes I believe is what humans call it...they see you...hear you and sometimes they even beg you to make it end, but after all of that you have to give them a small smile and deny them that blessing, watching them be brought back to life sometimes rather violently. But that is how things are. I used to believe that nothing could make me feel anything...not actually existing in their matter of understanding makes it difficult to understand of course...I think of things as being logical and of course I have some semblance of sympathy and empathy, there have been a few times that people have tried to play on those feelings but what they fail to realize is that their time is out. It's non-negotiable and impossible to talk or charm your way out of. I've watched suicides, murders, accidents, sleeping deaths and medical emergencies...i've also taken the hand of many young children who were never born or only lived minutes or hours...even seeing it your whole life doesn't erase the scars on your soul though.
There are a handful of others like me...and this is how I fell into the situation I find myself now. Sometimes we stick close to people who are close to their time, especially if they've been suffering at death's door step for a long period of time. It was her grandmother that day. A girl of no more than six at the time, her only living family left laying near death in a hospital bed, the room so far back down the hallway that no one ever paid it any mind except a nurse that was lucky to come in once every few hours let alone the once an hour that was normal. They acted like she was plague and moved her as far away from any other patients as they could to die. Every single day this girl would be there...sitting quietly like someone of her age shouldn't have been capable of doing, and watching with painful optimism that her grandmother might just get better one day, she never did though. As a matter of fact she'd taken a turn for the worst and then there I was, my mere presence causing all the machines she was attached to to start signaling something was wrong. Like a wave there were nurses running past me like I didn't even exist-which to them I didn't, they couldn't see me-and the closer I got the more I had realized with a small bit of confusion that the girl very clearly could see me. The only people that should be able to see me are others like me...and people close to death and she was neither, she didn't look scared or even phased before I turned my attention back to her grandmother, moving between nurses to place my kiss of death on the old woman's forehead. And like that, it was over...but something inside still felt painful. The girl's face haunted me for years until it became difficult to keep away from her...but she seemed to invite me when she could. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time...but oh so conveniently where I would be, each time she watched me and each time there was never a look of fright on her face or even curiosity, I'd always had a feeling she knew who I was but just never knew how she saw me because it was never her time.
The only time I had ever had to communicate with her was in her sleep...it was strongly against the rules on many levels because not only was I speaking with someone nowhere near death...I was enjoying it. Joy was something that wasn't part of my job but I found myself in abundance of it when I risked invading this girl's dreams and talking to her...she was beautiful and smart, she was funny but she was also so deeply scarred that not even she realized it. Her beauty wasn't by way of her looks either...ther were plenty that were prettier than she was in human life, but the soul I spoke to for nights on end was the most beautiful I'd seen in years. I watched her grow up...I watched her struggle, succeed and have setbacks...and after years of this there was no denying a bond that was there...something I'd honestly never felt before and something that I couldn't have named at the time even with all the knowledge I knew. Feelings were not something I knew well enough to name, but I did know that I found myself looking forward to my time with her in her dreams...the only place she was safe from me and what I did. Things went well for years...we talked about everything...even things that we shouldn't have talked about because she was human and shouldn't have been privy to that information, and while I learned more about the feelings and way she and her kind thought...the things she learned weighed much heavier on her than I could have imagined at the time. It got worse of course. In a way I knew that I'd brought this on to her and I tried hard to rectify it, telling her that I could make her forget...but of course she would always refuse. There had always been an underlying sadness in her and I knew that I'd made it worse...but it drew me more to her than anything else...I wanted to stay with her and make sure she was ok even when I wasn't supposed to care or be near her. There was a time even that I would have given up my abilities and my 'life' just to be able to touch her or even kiss her...a feeling she both reciprocated and had to explain to me like I was a child. When she was in her mid-thirties, she met a human man and married him despite the fact she didn't love him and even had a couple of kids with him. She loved them so much and they were her world, the life in her eyes when I would stand in the shadows and watch as if they were my own family. It was one of those days that the reality of it hit me hard...I would get to kiss her one day...but It would be the first and last time-which was a realization she'd come too far before me.
The next eighteen years were good for her, we still had our talks and the mutual friendship was still strong as ever...but her kids were her focus and that was fine, I watched them grow up with a reminder that one day I would likely be the same one to take them out of this world...and it was a heavy feeling I'd not felt before but managed to push away long enough to do my work. Things got complicated though when the kids were gone...she became inconsolable with her life and there were many times that she attempted to lure me into supposedly releasing her from the life she said she hated...and each time I fought with the idea that I could do it...but it wasn't her time. So each time I denied her death I had to watch her struggle another day to find the will to keep going. I wanted her to be like me...it meant that-selfishly-I could have her with me the way I wanted, So many times it was tempting to break the rules and do it...but I couldn't do it and so she had to suffer.
And now here we are. Thirty years of watching her struggle...to be happy, to keep her marriage together, to keep her kids close...after all of that she was in the same room at the end of the hall in the hospital. She'd lost consciousness hours ago and instead of speaking to her in her dreams, I sit in the same chair she sat in when her grandmother was in this bed. Her ex-husband had died years ago, not by my hand though thankfully...and her kids had done their best to stay in touch...but life had a funny way of pulling the ones you loved far away from you and so now...I was just biding time hoping to give them a last chance to say goodbye...I felt like I owed them that. I knew they'd come...I knew what time and what day...and if I'd have followed the rules like I was supposed to they would have come a half hour too late to say goodbye to their mother...I wouldn't have hesitated 80 years ago, but it was like part of me was going to be dying with her. This human that was so deeply hurting in her life had made me feel things I'd never been able to even grasp...she made me feel like I was like her. I loved this human and now I was going to have to do the last thing I wanted to do in the world...but the responsibility was on my shoulders since she was born. Her kids come and while they try to talk to her, she doesn't hear much of anything they say...nurses come in and out of the room every once in a while but each time their faces look less and less hopeful...eventually her children leave in tears, they can't handle seeing her like she is and neither of them will hold it together enough if they watch her die...I can't blame them though. It's around midnight when she finally does manage to come out of her haze and it's almost painful how alert she is this close...she doesn't even have to look over at me to know I'm here so she doesn't say anything. I've always known that simply touching her wouldn't kill her...but I'd always refrained from it because I didn't want to even risk it...now though it seems like the most natural thing so for the first time since I'd seen her I reach out and put my hand on hers.
"We've been doing this for so long...each time it's not been your time though..." She doesn't have the energy to even attempt to move her fingers and I feel a dark heaviness start to spread through me...something I haven't felt since the day I realized the only time I would get to kiss her would be her death.
"it is now though..."
"Yes."
"I've been ready for this for years....what took you so long."
I knew that...ever since her kids had left home she'd been ready to go...but maybe it wasn't just that it wasn't her time, maybe it was because I wasn't ready for it to be over yet. I give her hand a small squeeze before I start this oh so familiar scene...the minute I stand up every monitor starts to show distress but no nurses come running in...as a matter of fact no one comes in, no one is concerned with keeping her alive-like I already knew would happen. I stand there for what seems like forever and it's like I slowly watch her regress into the teenager I started talking too...she's so tired and I can feel it so I smile at her and just when I hear someone come into her room, I kiss her.
It only takes a few moments, but in those moments her nurses come into the room in panic followed by her daughter...I don't pay it much mind though because for the first time in her life and in mine I can hold onto her and kiss her the way i'd wanted to for years...normally the trip out of her world is instant but thankfully it doesn't seem to be the case with her...so I keep holding onto her like if I let go she'll disappear and she does the same. It's only when I look past her and see her daughter that I know something has happened...and it makes sense why she is still here in this room with me...her daughter is looking right at us with the same look she had all those years ago.