Death and Love

This is from my 'archives'. I wrote this short story maybe about 10 years ago, and stumbled across it when browsing through some old files. I hope you enjoy. - JD

I, Death, fell in love on a Tuesday.

It was a rainy day, and she was supposed to be hit by a car. The collision was to be fatal, and she was to die instantly. But when I saw her, lying on the pavement, her body broken and her soul suspended before me, I couldn’t bring myself to perform my duties. Her soul was so beautiful…too beautiful to harvest. I forsake my duties and allowed her to live. Her body healed, and she went back to a normal existence, while my existence changed completely.

Due to my decision to spare the beautiful soul, I was relieved of my duties as Death.

I was sentenced to life.

I lost all abilities that I had as Death, with the exception that I could still see when and how everyone would come to an end.

I found out on a Friday that an unforeseen side effect of my sparing the beautiful soul was that she, too, had the sight.

I had begun the habit of spending time in a coffee shop, witnessing the future deaths of the customers and baristas. As I witnessed the death of the barista, at the age of 89, peacefully in her sleep, and the death of her customer, through suicide due to a failed business venture, she walked in.

She stopped in her tracks, and I felt my heart skip a beat. I wasn’t used to the presence of a heart to begin with, so its skipping a beat was quite alarming. She ordered a coffee and sat with me at my lonely table. We sat together in a shared silence for a moment, and then she broke it.

“I know who you are,” she said, quietly.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Should I acknowledge I was Death? Should I get medical attention for my pounding heart and my shortness of breath?

She leaned towards me, causing sweating in addition to my other alarming medical symptoms, and whispered, “You’re Death.”

“Yes.”

“It’s because of you that I see things I shouldn’t see and know things I shouldn’t know about…”

“About their deaths.” I assented.

She nodded and sank back into her chair.

We shared another moment of silence, and then I broke it.

“I did not mean to make you like me when I spared you.”

She said nothing, just got up and left me alone with a strange aching in my chest.

I learned that my aching heart was not a sign of medical distress, but rather emotional distress. I am in love, or at least infatuated, with the beautiful soul, according to the helpful ER nurse who would die in Australia in about 40 years from a heart attack. 

It was strangely wonderful.

As Death, I had felt nothing; now I was feeling everything in my relatively short existence as a living being.