“Don’t be afraid” He told me.

I was alone in my room, bare beneath the blankets. I looked around the stillness, heart faltering as it flung itself against my ribs.

“Don’t be afraid. You’re in no danger.” The voice was near, clear, warm and deep. Ageless. I clutched the thick blankets to my chest and tried hard to make sense of what was happening, and what to do.

“I’m going to ask you to breathe. When you’re calmer, and you’re ready, I’ll show myself if you like.”

“Where are you?” I finally asked.

“No-where near you. I can’t and won’t touch you. I’m also always everywhere, and everything at once.”

Speechless

“Breathe.” He told me again. His voice was calm, somehow comfortable.  We sat in silence for a long time until the peace and familiarity of my space let me at least pretend to adapt.

“Who are you?”

“I will tell you, but first I need to remind you again that you’re safe. You’re in no danger tonight, or in the near future, tomorrow you’ll go on living your life much as you always have. If now, or at any time you want me to leave, just ask, I’ll never bother you again.”

There was a tense silence.

“You can’t touch me? You aren’t here?”

“I can’t touch you. I’m not technically there. But I can be if you’re ready to meet me.”

“Meet? Are you outside?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Death.”

Speechless again, I could ask him to leave.

“I’m dead?”

“No.”

“Dying?”

“No, you and everyone you love are safe tonight. I’m not here on business.”

“Why are you here?”

Silence now, from him this time.

“I’m visiting.”

“Visiting…” I repeated. “Visiting me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I do as I please.”

“What if I asked you to leave?”

“It would not please me to displease you.”

We sat on that thought quietly for a moment while I considered. There was only one way to find out if this was a crazy person.

“Show me.”

“First, you need to describe me. Tell me how Death should look to you so I may manifest.”

A haggard, terrifying grim reaper leapt to mind but did not suit the voice. I could be more creative than that, and make it much harder to fake.

“I could say anything? Anything at all?”

“Try to remain respectful.” He told me, his voice smiling and amused, surprising me with its wry humanity.

Anything.

Why not

“Seven feet tall with long black hair, shaved on both sides so it’s a long thick loose Mohawk… Dark skin, eyes that are bright blue all the way across and… burning somehow? Sharp teeth with extra canine…” I stopped to think but tried not to pause too long so he didn’t pre-empt me. “Wide set, manly face and a short beard, carry a typical Death scythe but use it like a magic staff and wear a black tank and some ragged black pants and bare feet.”

“Really?” His voice was openly amused now and I blushed in the darkness at my transparency.

“Sure.”

In the far corner of my room in the open doorway he appeared in the darkness, a monstrous black shadow with burning teal eyes, seven feet tall but so massive, so imposing, that I felt him enter the apartment as an intense presence that glued me to the spot, filling the air so strongly with the sheer force of his being that there was no room between my front door and the back corner of the house for me other than the space I currently occupied. I turned my eyes immediately down in abject terror at his sudden presence, menacing in the shadows, blocking my only exit. No fight or flight I was trapped, completely vulnerable. The physical form across the room from me held still, but I could not bring myself to look up again, or draw breath, or move at all.

Suddenly the room began to lighten. Not a light from my room, the bulbs stayed cold and dark, but my room brightened enough that the wraith I’d seen became a man.

“Don’t be afraid. You will not be harmed in any way.”

The light came to a mid-strength and I could see him exactly as I’d described him. At once mesmerising and hard to look at. This could not be faked. Death had taken form in my room to speak to me.

He approached slowly. I sat like a frightened rabbit, perfectly still. He perched at the foot of my bed and looked into my eyes gently, sinking into the mattress the way an actual seven foot man would.

“Would you like to add or change anything?” He asked me, his lips didn’t move, his voice and his form and his eyes on me made me breathless, brainless. I fought for composure.

“Tattoos?” He laughed and it startled me, which made me laugh nervously. “Any at all, you pick.”

“You want me to pick my tattoos?” Every time I spoke his reply sounded delighted, I found I’d deescalated to unease, my hands anxiously wringing the blankets clutched at my collar bones but my breathing almost even.

“Anything at all, if you could get anything tattooed on you what would it be?”

He looked pleased with our interaction so far, and pleased by the question. Every time his opaque sky eyes seemed to be focussed on mine my brain stopped working and I forgot how to breathe. I’d made him too handsome and I was struggling. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and when he opened them again symbols had appeared on his skin. They ran in interconnected lines across his whole body, graceful shapes and lines of varying size, mostly placed at connection points like his joints. I stared at him and he watched me.

“What are they?”

“If you strip back all of my endless complex layers this is what you find at the very, very end. This is the piece of universe I was made from. These symbols represent the barest, truest essense of myself.”

“Because you’re Death.”

“Correct.”

“Which God of Death?”

He smiled again. “There is only me, and the many forms I take.”

“Are you meant to be elsewhere?”

“I am elsewhere. I’m everywhere always. I can always see everything everywhere, past present and future.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Are you breaking the rules by being here?”

“I do as I please.” He replied again.

“Do you visit with people often?”

“Not often.”

“Why me?”

“I’m not sure.” He was looking directly at me again and I forced myself to blink and breathe and move as though those things came naturally.

“How did you become Death?” I asked next, because he wasn’t being particularly forthcoming.

“I don’t think it’s something a human brain can really comprehend. But I will speak it to you as best I can.” He began. I did not take offense. “In the beginning, the wild, unformed cosmic entities collided in a way that accidentally spawned consciousness, which was an aberration in the nothing-chaos, and formed Chaos itself, loose concepts being given complicated reality by the problem of awareness. Completely unprecedented and such a complex mistake that it began to force form into the Chaos, because all consciousness naturally seeks to make sense of its surroundings. The various planes and dimensions and phenomena and cosmic entities were shaped into the early Universe, one consciousness that worked tirelessly to manage unexplainable things on such a large scale that I simply cannot recount it to you in any way.” He took a moment to meet my eyes, I waited in silence. “Eventually life began spawning spontaneously again, but this time on a much smaller scale. At first it wasn’t worth noting. The little lives and deaths went on and on, inconsequential. But the lives and consciousness’s became more complex and each one would mess with the fabric of the universe, still only half built as it was. Every new consciousness that appeared would unconsciously alter the patterns we’d barely begun to build, and every choice they made tweaked at something else. And the deaths were just floating around, irritating. Eventually we/I realized that the universe and the lives could work together if we knew how, and it was the only way to knit everything into place harmoniously. The system that included and, indeed, thrived on life was complicated but it made much faster progress altering and harmonising the complicated facets of The Universe. But, it meant that the deaths needed to be shepherded between the stages. The Universe separated a piece of itself and gave it sentience and a certain individuality and tasked it with the role of guiding the life essences along their paths, between the stations, until it’s ready to ascend to the collective consciousness.” He took a long breath, although it had to only be to give me a moment.

“The Universe is, itself, a game, that The Universe, itself, is playing with itself.” He laughed, I didn’t. “But the rules are complicated. Basically there is no recognised Good or Bad at the core of things, we don’t intervene or step in, we allow every person and every civilisation and every planet to make their own choices with complete freedom. On the other hand, and at the same time, every single birth, death, choice, action and thought across all of the universe forever has been entirely micromanaged by one consciousness that has full control.

“That makes no sense.”

“It does if you’re The Universe. I am, at once, my own being, and also a sliver of The Universe, and also still The Universe. I’m not expecting you to understand, but it’s true nonetheless. Life is given as a gift, they may do as they wish. They make their choices, good and bad, people and civilisations and planets die needlessly all the time. There is suffering and pain and terror and we allow it.”

“Why?”

“Because through suffering, and through love, comes learning. Each life out there is an experience machine. The fact of consciousness, and life, is such an aberration, it took us a while to learn. There are two major forces, there’s Me, and there’s Chaos, our friend and problem from the beginning, our mother. We, the consciousness of The Universe, is always working to structure The Chaos. The Chaos isn’t a rival, evil force, it’s just What Was before there was Understanding. It doesn’t fight the structure, but it is hard to shape. There is more Chaos than Conciousness still, even after all this time, but every little life that lives and dies and is reborn is farming experiences in a way that we could never, learning things that we could never. We are eternal and all, we do not die, the problems we face are so complex I cannot use your language to speak of them. Your problems are so fast and small and important. All life’s problems are so fast and small and important. Each one weaves patterns into the lace of the universe, tells stories within stories within stories within stories that teach me/us beautiful things and help us create Harmony.”  He looked at me and his expression made me look away, he was too much. His eyes were so intense, his presence was a weight on the air, the things he said were too huge to quickly understand while my head was reeling. He turned away again and paused. Then spoke to the floor.

“Each little life experiences so much love and pain, and at each station in between they’re whole, they hold all of their collective memories and loved ones from all their previous lives and reflect on the hard lessons they needed to learn this time. Then they go back in, they start again, they forget, and they live through a life that countless others have also lived, crossing and meeting their past and future selves all the while, and they pass from lifetime to lifetime until their souls have accrued so much collective knowledge, and become so adept at weaving the soul lines that they vibrate on a high enough frequency that they can become one with our collective consciousness and help us structure the chaos.”

“To what end?”

“Eventually every soul will harmonise with the fully structured Universe and there will be no more Chaos, and therefore no more suffering. You could see it as there is only Fear and Love. Only Chaos and Structure. With Love we progress, the universe finds itself. From The Chaos comes fear. If we can best the Fear with Love at every station we can shape the universe to be one harmonious note.