On Death
So. Let’s talk about death.
Hah, that’s a hell of a way to start a conversation, I know. Don’t pretend like you didn’t just shift in your seat. I caught that. I also caught your eyes darting around. You’re looking for an exit, right? Deny it all you want, but that’s exactly what you were doing. You know that, I know that.
S’okay, seriously. I get it. It’s an uncomfortable subject for anyone, much less living through it. Or with it. But I’m getting ahead.
Death is that shadow in the room a tad too long. It’s that noise you hear when you’re in bed, knowing damn well you’re safe. It’s the baying of dogs at the door as they scavenge the trash. Subtle and invisible, but you know it’s there. It’s always there too, isn’t it.
But can you tell me what it looks like?
Can you tell me the shape of it’s face? The color of it’s skin? How it comes for you?
No. Of course you can’t. Nobody fucking can until it comes for them, right? I mean, sure. You might have an idealized version of how you’re going out. With your boots on and swinging. Famous as hell with a supermodel suffocating you. That’s how Rockerfeller went out. Did you know that? But really, most of us see death in the most banal, mundane ways. It’s why we’ve got religion, really. We gotta dress it up to make it less depressing.
So you’ve your views, your vision of death.
And I’m sure you’ve been told your entire life that’s totally okay. It’s perfect and wholesome and you’re die on your terms.
Yeah, well here’s the truth.
You’ve been fucking had.
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This buddy of mine, I’d like to blame him. I really would, because it’d be neat and convenient. It’d be so god damned easy to say he’s what started it. But it wasn’t him. No matter how badly I wish it was, it was me.
Well, specifically it was my dick. Still me though, right?
So. This buddy of mine-let’s call him J-he’s into all kinds of spooky shit. It’s like this aesthetic that hangs over him like a mantel. He dresses in all black, has all these books about demons and shit. Real piece of work, but he’s a nice guy. Scouts honor. So J, he invites me over to his house, right? It’s this shitty clap-board two-story at the end of a dead-end road. Fucker looks like the Baker mansion from RE7, but without the charm. J swears up and down he’s not squatting, but he’s always got a generator chugging out back for the lights. Whatever. Guess it doesn’t make a damn.
Anyways, so J invites me out. I go because I figure he’s god weed and booze, and I got no other plans. I can put up with being in a living “Ghost Adventures” if he’s got that. So I pull up, and he’s sitting on the porch burning already. We light up, get real high and watch the sun set. It’s pretty out there, I gotta give him that. Even with that fucking eyesore of a house, the place around it is nice. So we sit there, damn near silent, just watching the trees. J, he gets up real quick like, his eyes bloodshot as he walks inside. He staggers to the door, and jerks a thumb towards the house.
Says he’s got something to show me.
Now, I don’t know how fucking high he is. I’m baked, but J could burn down a Colorado crop if he wanted and stand straight. I’d seen him do it. But right now, he seems out of sorts. He’s staggering and slurring his words as he makes the stairs. I say “J, the hell is going on here? You wanna sit down?”
But the fucker just laughs, trying his damndest to take the stairs two at a time. I follow him and just pray he doesn’t trip. We make it to the top of the stairs, and duck into this room off the side. See, J has this massive fucking library. I say “library”, but it’s just a bunch of yardsale books stacked all over the place. Pages ripped out, some strewn in the walk way. But there’s a lot of ’em, dig? And most of them are all about that spook shit he’s into. So when J says he’s got something to show me and we go there?
Well, I get a chill. Just for a moment. But it’s long enough to make me pause at the doorway. J turns on his heel, and snorts at me.
“C’mon fucker, you don’t have to be invited in. Right? I mean I don’t have to yet, right?”
“The hell do you mean ‘yet’, J?” I say. But he just smiles and laughs as he turns back to the room.
It looks like a disorganized shit pile. But J, he knows exactly where he’s going. Always does. So J, he reaches down into this pile. Shoves some books aside, pulls out this one water-damaged one. About that time I finally step in the room, doing my damndest to watch where I step. It ain’t easy-J’s got books piled up damn near to the ceiling. But he holds it up, and smiles real wide as he comes close. “Hey,” he says, “You feeling lonely lately?”
Now, when I started this yarn, I asked you a hard question. A real hard one. This whole thing, the whole tale? It started right then, in that same moment. With a hard damned question I kinda danced around. Just like you. I muttered a reply, and J snorted. Shook his head, told me to have a seat in the corner. He had this one beat to hell recliner stuck in the back. I sat down, and J turned his back to me. I watched his hand go down over the page, his lips moving. When he turned, I caught his eyes again. Bloodshot still, but those pupils of his were big as half dollars. He snapped the book shut. The pages crinkled, and he held it behind his back. He raised his hand, poised his fingers just so.
He asked me if I trusted him.
Before I could answer, he snapped his damned fingers. He was always doing that-acting like it was something important. Not that it ever was, but J? He’d get some damned convinced he was doing something special. It was just easier to play along. So I did.
The springs of the recliner were starting to dig into my back. I leaned forward, eyebrow raised as I said “That’s uh-that’s real cool, J. So what exactly happened?”
J, his pupils were still fuck-huge. He grinned all wild like, and tilted his head towards the door. “Oh, you’ll see,” he said as he turned. “Startin’ to get dark. You good to drive?”
Now usually, he only kicked me out if he had company. You know what kind, right? But I didn’t like the pupils in his eyes. So I followed him out, and we made our way back to the porch. I’d just started digging around for my keys when J clapped me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “You ain’t always gonna be lonely,”
I jangled my keys in my hand, and gave a nod. “Uh, yeah boss. You’re right. You get some rest now, okay?”
J grinned real wide, and shook his head. He turned, and started walking up the porch. He’d made it to the door, then turned to me.
“Remember-you gotta invite them in,” he said.
I laughed, and nodded. J faded into the house, the shadows wrapping around him in seconds.
@@@
The thing about J was, he’s a compulsive liar. He tells people he’s a writer, an actor, all this shit. But it’s all just a sham. He’s a liar, he’s always been a fucking liar, but he’s a damned good one. So when I got home that night I kept thinking back to him. How crazed he look when he snapped his fingers. High and harrowed and out of his damned mind, but like he was in control. Focused.
That’s the worst part, really. That I know what he did was an act, but he was damned good at it. So much that I actually wanted to believe him. Stepping through the door to my house, I thought back to what he’d said.
You gotta invite them in.
I didn’t know what the hell that meant. I mean, there was a damned good chance it was all a joke. Just J trying to be spooky. But he didn’t have any of his tells. You know-the nervous twitching, the shifting eyes. All the little things that show someone’s uncomfortable, scrambling to find the right words.
Kind of like when you talk about death.
That was the thing that kept my eyes open when I laid in bed. The thing that-despite a chug of Nyquil-kept my mind buzzing. That single phrase he’d dropped, right there at the end. Even with the medicine and alcohol and weed congealing my brain, that remained.
I didn’t have to think on it long.
I figure it was about one, two in the morning when I heard the tap. You know how sometimes you hear something, and you tell yourself it’s just your house settling? It’s easy to do, right? I mean, all those groans and aches. It’s just your place living right alongside you. Suffering with you. After a point, you ignore it. Kinda like all the aches and groans you yourself have. But then there’s those odd sounds. The ones that-like an unexpected pang-catch you with your pants down.
So you try to do the normal thing. Tell yourself it’s just the house.
But you know better.
Maybe you’re a coward, and you roll over. You pull the blanket up and tell yourself it’s nothing, nothing at all. It’s okay. It’s okay to be afraid, to be a coward. It’s what keeps us alive, right?
But.
But.
Sometimes you have to know.
Don’t you?
Staying in bed, it wasn’t going to make that tap go away. It kept right on rapping from somewhere. Not my room, though. The noise, it was carried from a duct. It had a faint echo that-try as I might-I couldn’t just ignore. It was faint enough that I might try-but loud enough to prove doing so was a farce. So.
I got up. My feet met the carpet, my back popping as I rose.
I think back to that moment a lot. Those long seconds between deciding to get up, or to stay. I wonder sometimes if I’d just stayed in bed, if I’d be happy. Blissfully wrapped in ignorance, going about my day like nothing could happen. It would be such a simpler way to be.
But I made my choice. Just as we all do.
I think, in deciding to get up, maybe that was me accepting it. Death, I mean. Opening the door to it-that was just going through the motions. It was coming, even if I fought it. Even if I didn’t want it.
I found the source of that noise. That tap, it came from my front door.
I’m not in the habit of welcoming strangers. Honestly, I get right perturbed if one shows. I live in the middle of nowhere, trees on all sides. About the only visitors I get are the Jehova’s Witnesses, and even that’s rare. Finding that tapping at last, from my front door of all places?
It was the first time I’d ever wished I owned a gun. Or at the least a peephole.
Because I opened that door. Like a damned fool, I opened it right up. With nothing but the flickering bulb of a porch light to help me. I felt a chill roll over me as I did, the evening air damp and freezing as it wrapt about me. It pressed against my skin, and I clutched myself as I stared at what lay beyond the doorway.
Well, who laid beyond the doorway.
Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was the fact that, despite everything, I still thought I was asleep. But who stood there, out in the cold on my porch, had only the vaguest of humanity. Small and slim, her skin was the color of cream. Her hair hung matted and stringy around her shoulders, the color like something out of a photo negative. Her clothes, though immaculate, were serious and dark. If it wasn’t for the shadows of it’s contours, I would have thought her head was just floating.
My heart beat a manic rhythm as I gripped the door knob tighter. My lips parted, but not a single word came as she stood there. Her cold, dark eyes meeting my own. Her face was stone, watching mine for any sort of reaction. When the words finally came, they left my throat in a jarbled, stuttering mess.
“C-can I uh, can I help you?”
“You can, if you let me in,” she said. Her voice sounded like wind chimes. Faint but distinct, here and gone in the background of your mind.
I thought back to what J said. Just for a second. I wanted to slam the door in her face, lock it. Call the cops, anything.
But that door stayed open. My lips moved, but not from my will.
I don’t know what I said to her in that moment. I’ve tried to recall the words a dozen times, but whatever it was, it was enough. She stepped forward, her thin lips curling into a voracious smile as she lifted her hand.
Her fingertips were like licking a flagpole in winter. She cupped my chin-and it was only a moment later I realized something about them. A moment later, after she’d shoved me to the floor and mounted me. Her ice-cold grip pulling at the waist of my boxers, cupping my shriveling genitals.
They were webbed.
Webbed and perfect for cutting off air.
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So. Let me ask you again.
Your vision of death. What you’re so convinced it looks like.
Is it pleasant? Do you die peacefully, surrounded by family? Telling all the people that care about you that you love them, one last time?
Is it quick and merciful? Do you die in glory, with your boots on as so many do?
Because the truth is-and I’ve already told you once-you’ve been had.
Death isn’t something quick or beautiful. It’s slow, like water in an ice floe. It comes unexpected, but then it takes it’s dear sweet time. It’s not like you’re going anywhere, or it. It saps you, day by day. Moment by moment.
Then you’re just a husk in your bed, the phone at your ear. Desperately hoping the one friend that might understand picks up. But they never do.
J was a lot of things. A liar, a cheat, a hack. But when he was serious, that’s when he was scary. That last thing he said to me, it keeps playing through my head. Every time she mounts me, willing me one last time to rise. To give up the last few moments I have deeply within her.
But not the part about letting them in. No, not that.
The thing I remember him saying, even as each breath grows labored, was this:
You ain’t always gonna be lonely.
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