I feel nothing. A dark, looming feeling hangs over my body, one that makes it feel like I'll disappear. I stand up. I don't know what's happening. There is blood and logs scattered on the asphalt. I take a few steps back, but I trip over something and land on the ground. The star-filled sky above me is shining brighter than ever. If I wasn't so confused, I would have found it beautiful, now it leaves a worry deep inside of my stomach. It's wrong that it looks like that, now when the colors are clearer and more tangible than what I'm used to.

I sit up and my thoughts are racing. I want to throw up, but I don't feel ill.

A face is looking at me with empty eyes. The mouth is slightly open and the brown hair is stuck in the blood. Half of the face is pushed towards the asphalt and I can see a large gash in the throat. I crawl forward, I can touch the body but it's incomprehensible heavy. I try to turn the face, it has to look at something else but me. I can't handle seeing these empty eyes stare at me while it doesn't see anything at all.

I can't even move the head. I know who it is, who belongs to this body and who carries this face. I scream and try to move myself again. I lay still, eyes blank and mouth open. I wipe the blood from my face, it stains my hands but there is still just as much blood. It never ends.

I'm dead.

I turn my head to the side to throw up but nothing comes out. I move my hands desperately to my throat and push. I want to get something out - anything. This feeling of darkness and hopelessness grows when I realize what this means.

I push my hands against my throat, I feel no nausea. Not even the feeling of my hands against my throat. All feelings have disappeared from my skin.

I look at my body again, it's just lying there. Completely still and stares with empty eyes into nothing. I grab the shoulders and I try to shake some life into me again. I won't move even a millimeter.

"Wake up!" I scream. "Please, wake up!"

My voice doesn't sound the same, it echoes over the whole world, yet it feels like no one can hear me.

I'm crying - I can cry. I sit down next to my body and pushes my head towards my knees.

"I'm dead."

I kick it with one of my feet, it doesn't move. I look out over the road and notices it, the one thing I should have noticed from the start.

Emma's car has driven into a steep cliff on the side of the road, she must have just driven to the side. The biggest impact was on the right side - where I sat.

I step over my body. I can't feel anything but every step I take feels heavy. I pray in my mind, that's she's okay. I don't believe in god, can't even imagine it as a possibility, yet I pray. To what god I don't know. I can pray to all of them, as long as Emma survives.

I half run when I'm a few meters from the car, and when I get there I notice that she's still in the front seat. Her cheek is pushed against the airbag and her eyes are closed. She's alive, I can feel and see it. Her skin is shining of a blue glow, my body had been empty and blank. It felt dead. For Emma it's like I can see the very soul radiating through her skin.

I hit my fists against the window, it goes right through the glass and Emma. It feels like I'm pulling my hand through a warm wind. I let my hands be there within her. I open and close them, a hope that she will feel it and know that I'm here. She's doesn't move, only the torso is slightly moving up and down. She's not opening her eyes.

I pull back my hand and take a step back. It doesn't burn my eyes even though I'm trying to not cry.

"Emma," I whisper.

It echoes and feels like my voice is touching every corner of the earth, at the same time I've never felt lonelier. I know I exist with the others, but I can't be seen or heard.

Footsteps on the asphalt echoes through the forest and the country road, and I know it's not of this world. I slowly turn around, scared of what I'll see.

It looks human, like a normal man. He looks a few years older than me and is dressed in miner's clothing from the early 1900's, they - as well as his face - is covered in coal. The calmness he carries makes me want to flee.

I don't move. I have to stand by the car and protect my sister. He can take me, I can allow that, but I won't let him take Emma. I keep my eyes focused on him when he takes his last steps. He's tall and lanky. The face is expressionless, with an unspoken power in the brown eyes. The hair that sticks out from the black flat cap is brown and shaggy.

Maybe he's not here for me this time. Has he already taken my soul when I died, and now when I'm dead I can see him? I take few steps back towards the car.

He looks over my shoulder, at Emma. "I'm not here for her."'

I had expected Death to have a dark, unnatural voice that shook the world when he spoke, but it sounds normal. The only unnatural thing with it is that it's echoing the same way mine is. It's not unnatural dark, not coated in some supernatural power.

I take a step closer to the car, so close that if I hadn't been dead - if I had a body - I would have felt it against my back.

"When?" I ask faintly.

"Not now," he answers. "She's not dead."

I throw a glance at my body that lays a few meters away from the car. I removed the seat belt when I reached for the purse and forgot to fasten it again. If I didn't forget it, would I have been alive now? I doubt it, it was mostly my side that took the worst of it. That I wasn't crushed between the cliff's wall and the car was a miracle, if even it still led to my death. It was Emma who drove and I knew she would blame herself. Mom too, she was the one who had asked me to go with Emma, even if it was an unspoken request. We both knew I would rather stay if I had the choice.

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There's a chill around us, one that creeps deep inside you. Sometimes I don't notice it, but every now and then it feels like a cold wind is caressing my cheeks, and I realize I'm really dead.

I won't be able to say to neither Emma or mom to not blame themselves, and I won't be able to make sure they're okay. I want to throw up again, but I don't feel ill, at least not in the same way I felt when I was alive.

Death opens his mouth and I prepare myself on what he'll say, but his dark eyes wander behind me and a few seconds later the car door opens. She steps right through me and limps forward on the dark asphalt. One of her legs must have been crushed in the crash, since it looks bruised. First I look at Death with his blank expression, then at Emma again. She's running towards my body and throws herself on the bloody asphalt. It pains me when she pulls my dead body into her lap, the scream that comes afterwards makes me want to throw up again. I want to tell her that everything will be alright, that she doesn't need to see this.

I slowly get closer, I try not to look at the blood that is covering the asphalt, Emma's pale hands and the blue dress. Death walks behind me and keeps his distance.

She's wailing and moves my bloody hair out my face with shaky hands. She says something, it's hard to understand between all the sobbing, but I don't think I would understand even if she didn't cry. The words are incomprehensible, I try to listen. It sounds like Swedish, but I can't understand it, like I've lost all understanding of my own language.

Emma holds my body close and rocks back and forth, she screams and cries until she's hoarse. I sit down next to her and touch her carefully and I hope that my fingers will stay against her skin like they did my body, but they continue through her like she is - or I am - hollow.

"You can't touch her," says Death.

The voice is calm. He must have taken billions of souls, seen it so many times I can't even fathom. This is nothing compared to mass casualties and war, yet I cannot understand how he can be unaffected when he sees my sister rocking my dead body.

I pull my hands back and push both of them against the asphalt, the blood touches my hands and stains my skin. Emma keeps crying and screaming, some of her blonde hair strands has turned red.

"Why?"

The word is frail and hard to get out.

"You're not on the same plane anymore."

"Can I reach her some way? Can she hear me?"

"No. She can't hear you, just like you can't hear her."

I want to tell him that I can hear her. But I understand what he means. No matter how much I focus on the words she's whispering to my cheek, I can't understand them. It's foreign to me. Can she hear whispers when I speak but can't understand them or does her nothing at all?

"Come," says Death and grabs my arm.

I can't feel it, I feel that someone is holding me, but the feeling itself isn't there. The same way I feel everything else. The best way to describe it would be to compare it to the feeling when you're holding a stick and poke it at something soft or hard. Even though you're not physical touching it with your body you can feel what it is.

He helps me up. I let him lead me away from Emma. I'm not looking at her, I try to force out the sound of the crying and the incomprehensible, desperate words.

The logs from the truck is covering the road. It could have been worse, I tell myself. If Emma had driven straight into the truck we would have both been dead, there wouldn't have been a lot of us left. Death would reap two souls instead of one.

When the sounds of her crying and the masculine voice yelling in the distance - just as incomprehensible as Emma - is barely heard anymore, Death lets go of my arm.

"I'm sorry," says Death with the same calm voice. I don't know if he apologizes because he has to take my soul or if it's about what I just witnessed.

I can't look him in the eyes or the road that leads back to Emma and my empty dead body. I focus on his clothes. He's wearing a thick blue shirt with black stains, it hangs loosely over his malnourished body. The pants are equally worn hidden by coal, and the dirty jacket is full of small holes and tears. The only that is missing is a miner's helmet, instead he wears a flat cap. When my eyes meet his I shudder.

I haven't thought of what Death would look like. There was no point in thinking about something as unlikely as a reaper, but whatever I saw Death as, it wasn't him. The classic picture of a reaper, a skeleton dressed in black rags with a scythe in his hand, seems more fitting than this. I don't get it. Why a miner? Can he change form and if that's the case, why would he choose to present himself as a coal miner? I have no connection with anything that has something to do with miners, there was no logic in it. Yet he stood there, dressed in these worn-out clothes stained with coal and dirt.

"You can't stay here," he says like I haven't figured that out yet.

"I know."

A part of me wants to cling to this world, to struggle and fight until I can't take it anymore. Another part is tired and welcomes death with open arms. It has fought and tried for a long time, it has no strength to continue any longer. I should be more afraid of that side and what lies ahead if I let it take over, but I'm not.

Death studies me like he's waiting for something, when he's done he puts his coal-stained hand in his pocket and takes out a flat stone that is shining in blue. He doesn't have to explain what it is. It's fitting that it's a stone, more so than a scythe now when he's presenting himself as a miner.

It feels like an eternity, it shines blue but nothing happens. The light won't become weaker or stronger.

"Is that... All?"

I feel a lump in my throat.

"Of course not," he snaps back and taps his fingers lightly against the stone and when nothing happens he glances at me with low eyebrows.

I take a step back when the calmness runs off his face like rainwater. It's like I see a whole different person, like he just removed a mask. I know how it is to carry a one all too well.

"Of course," he mutters with annoyance and puts the shining stone back in his pocket. "Change of plans."

For a while I wonder if he'll leave me here. Is this how ghosts are created, that even Death won't take their soul? Would I have to be here for the rest of my death and haunt this country road? Before I can ask, Death takes out another stone, this one is shining in orange instead of blue. I take a step back. It's shining in a way that makes me think of fire. A wild, inextinguishable fire.

"It's not what you think."

He turns his back to me and reaches his hand out against nothing, he lets go of it and the stone stops in the middle of the air. It folds itself out like it is paper and creates a large, black door. There are no walls around it and it's shining of the same powerful and wild orange light that stone had. Something that looks like crystalized veins reaches around the gate like branches, even they shine of orange and in the middle a flower is created - a clover.

Even if the strong orange light portrays something evil - no matter what Death says - there is something beautiful with the gate. It feels ancient and I've never felt as small as I feel now.

Death takes a few steps forward and I stand still, like I'm bewitched. He knocks on the door and opens it. What lies behind makes me think that he lied. There are no high flames with the same orange glow like the door and the stone. But what is waiting for us isn't much better.

Darkness. Not the same as a dark room with no sunlight, this darkness seems alive. I can see it swirl around itself, thick enough that I can't see what lies behind. I force myself to take a step back.

"Follow me," he says.

He doesn't take the last step that he needs to walk through the whirling darkness. He awaits my answer.

"And if I refuse?" I ask but my voice breaks at the last word.

"You can stay. You do whatever you please. But what awaits you here is worse than what's behind the gate. Don't judge things on how they look."

He steps into the darkness and it moves around his shoulders and back like a cat stroking its body against your legs. When he disappears behind the gate the darkness settles back into place.

I'm trying to convince myself to not follow Death, but when the gate is slowly shutting, I plunge into darkness.