The Shadow we call Death

Death was following CindySleigh. Cindy was not afraid for herself. Her instinct told her that the scythe was not intended for her right now, today. No body can see any further than that. Death was in its traditional hooded black garb carrying the mightily sharpened scythe that showed no favor to wealth, age, pleading, love, though it seems to like chess(according to Bergman). His blade can cut quickly through your current breath or step. Sometimes he will slowly reshape your body until you no longer are who you are. Pain can be constant or intermittent if he chooses a longer timetable for you. Death can come within a second’s moment of the shiny, silver blade slicing your throat and stop...dropping his deadly weapon and calmly walking away leaving you seeing the world in which all the flowers were in constant bloom.

Cindy could watch him behind her by turning her head slightly using peripheral vision. Left back, then right back she would slowly move her head seeing a shadow that expanded to the horizon on both sides behind her. It was not an ordinary shadow. It was not attached to any object or person or even to death itself. It was a shadow as deep a void as the ocean on a moonless night. Its darkness included the hollow sound of waves that you could hear but not see. Its darkness had sparks of phosphorescence like bright green veins of electricity. Its darkness is the empty you sometimes feel just under your solar plexus that has no explanation. Its darkness is something worth running from though you can never out pace it.

So Cindy walked slowly as running was to no avail. Death continued to slowly move forward, though slightly behind her, keeping time to her gait. She was conscious of soft crashing of waves of water, the ground falling away behind her turning into black, endless black, with no up or down or left or right. Occasionally acid green crooked streaks flashed quickly and then disappeared like all of the earth that disappeared when the shadow approached. Sometimes Cindy would get a glimpse of the silver, curved line of the scythe and she would sense the gliding movement of this phenomenon that was the knowledge we ignore most of life, Death.

Cindy stepped back with her left foot, stood in a horse stance, shifted her weight and turned one hundred and eighty degrees. She had her right hand out to block defending herself against the undefendable. She stared straight into the void and flashing green veins lit scenes, like a stilted film. A beautiful six foot four man waiting and smiling as Cindy ran full force into his arms and he lifted her like a feather and hugged her laughing at her silliness. He was falling from a very tall window, the wind rushing timelessly by him, then nothing. A lovely round woman in an above ground swimming pool filled with iridescent bubbles laughing with glitter around her eyes and all the colors and smells too bright and clear for ordinary life. In a bed, speaking so softly as she changed. Surrounded by many so touched with love for her, then nothing. A story telling, giggling Irishman with always a glass and always the time for one in need that would come to Cindy’s aid when the sounds were too much for her, with the theater in him wherever he went, then nothing. A woman, a mother from Indiana, coming to the States marrying an Englishman from the Second World War, leaving sons and their children and eventually their children’s children, then nothing. Flash after flash of all the people Cindy knew and people she did not know but felt the love from the people they had touched. They flashed up like film and flames would appear as in a movie that could not move forward or backward and left a thin trail of smoke of what was.

Cindy turned yet again and began again to walk slowly forward, if there is such a thing. Wondering if we all were but remembrances in some one else’s brain. As she walked Cindy began pinching her arms, face, body and legs. Am I really here? Where is balance for this? She saw the bruises on her arms and still felt as if she did not understand. CindySleigh decided there is no such thing as truly understanding. Corporeal finitus. So she did what humans do she walked and decided not to look behind her. There was no need.