When Death is Your Friend

Draft

TO THE READER: This story is not finished. It is just an idea for now. But I think it's a good one.

I first saw Death when he stole my father. It was violent. One moment we played in the pile of leaves, bundles of laughter and joy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone walking up the drive. We lived in the suburbs, large lawn, long driveway, happy kids playing games in the street on summer nights.

And then my father started convulsing.

In my childish glee, it seemed like he was playing. I laughed. He screamed. I cried out for help. I looked to the stranger in the driveway, watching us and begged for his help.

The only help he offered was to end my father's cries. I don't know how I knew it. He never said anything. He never spoke into my mind. His intentions were known to me. He reached out a hand, bony, not bone, flesh; he pointed the first finger of that phthisical appendage at my father and the convulsions ended and the birds twittered and the wind blew.

And from that day on, Death followed me everywhere I went.

The years of therapy following my father's death had me riding the knife edge of a fence between insanity and normalcy.

At first, I tried to tell people about this strange man, face obscured by an anachronism of a hood, body only visible in the folds of a night-black robe as he moved. All the adults in my life insisted I was "troubled" or "in denial" or "attention seeking". After all, I had just witnessed my father's heart attack in person. What 10 year old is okay after that?

My mother sent me to therapy. My teachers sent me to councilors. My friends found other friends.

Eventually, I learned that no one else could see him, and I should stop talking about him. Some people understood him as a metaphor, which helped me understand the reality of him. It did not help me understand why he wouldn't leave me alone.

Everywhere I went, there he was. Every door I locked, only stopped him as long as it took to turn a handle. Every building I went into, he had access. At school, he was there. At church, he was there. He sat three booths down when we went out for a meal with friends after Sunday service. He watched my baseball games. He stood outside the window, my mother staring straight into his face out the kitchen window while she made dinner and gushed about the variety of birds who came to her bird feeder.

He was with me for three years before he took another life. Which I know doesn't make sense, people die every day, millions, but Death followed me around for three years, until one day, in the park, I was up to bat, my team was winning, and out of the corner of my eye Death turned and walked away.

It terrified me.

When you spend almost a quarter of your life with the creepy, hooded man always looking at you, always following you, always in your presence, you don't know what to do when that changes.

I stood there, at the plate, bat held on my shoulder, as I watched him walk through the crowd that stared at me, restless at my inactivity. No one in the crowd noticed him, no one ever did, even when he pushed them aside. Some started yelling at me. The umpire asked me if I was okay. The pitcher threw a strike. I watched Death walk to the next field over, raise his arm, long sleeve hanging below like a banner waving in the wind, point his finger, and then the crowd ignored me because a woman in the crowd at the next field over was screaming "Help! Someone call a doctor!" as an old woman collapsed in the stands.

It was five more years before I realized I could direct him.