Best Australian Yarn: What Death Remembers by Mya Stone

The day that death came to greet her, she was waiting. She had known for months that she wouldn’t live. She watched as he trekked through the field of flowers. His black coat is so at odds with the hues of bright lilacs and fiery reds. She had left her hair unbound and free, free to dance in the wind one last time. She let her own cloak swirl in the breeze. She sat on the branch of the willow tree, its green fronds tickling her face. It would be a tragedy for everyone else. Someone so young, to die before twenty five. But she didn’t really care. Not in anyway that mattered. She traced her fingertip down the bark of the tree, humming quietly. Trying to memerise it’s feel. Death reached the bottom of the truck, and he glowered up at her.

“You are a hard woman to get a hold of.”

She tried to grin at him, but grimaced.

“Let’s go. Many more will die today.”

She stared at the sky. As he turned, expecting her to follow him.

“Wait.” She let out a whisper barely audible, to anyone else, but he was death.

He sighed through his nose.

“What.” He continued to walk away as he spoke.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Again he sighed, but stopped, and turned back to her.

“If it makes you get down and come with me then yes.”

She finally met his gaze.

“What do you remember?”

Death started at her. As if seeing a whole new person.

“I have never been asked that before. I remember every death, I.” He looked down, reaching for a daisy. The white stark against the black fabric.

She watched him carefully, as he stumbled over his words.

He looked up at her again. “It is not a happy time, death.”

Her face softened and she patted the branch next to her.

“I do not mind, tell me, please.”

He studied the branch next to her. Then appeared. Daisy still clutched in his hand.

“I don’t remember when it started, dying that is. But I remember all the deaths. All the lives I take. Some of them know that I’m coming, I find them waiting.” A pointed glance at her at that.

“Sometimes they smile up at me. I remember a woman whose name was Doress. It was my first time that someone looked up at me and didn’t show an ounce of fear. She was ninety, she had a hand in raising three generations and we all know that grandmothers are the toughest.” He smiled sadly at that, picking at the daisy.

“She smiled at me and took my hand, patting it. When we reached the border of heaven she hugged me, Hugged me! Death! I remember her looking at me and saying ‘If you ever get lonely dear, I am always here for a good chat! I have all the time I need now!’ But I can’t, I’m not allowed into heaven, she won’t know that I- I.”

His voice broke and the girl took his hand staring at him.

“When I get to heaven I will find Doress and let her know. I promise you that.” She said softly.

Death peered at her, gratitude shining in his black eyes.

“Thank you.” His voice was hoarse.

She cocked her head to the side.

“What else?”

“I remember the babies, some not even taken form yet, and some still smelling new and full of life, but too weak to experience it. I watched the mothers and fathers after I take them. I curl myself around them, holding them together. As if it would help, as if maybe they could forgive me. But also because sometimes I need someone to cry with too. It’s not easy to take them away. I feel horrible, and I can never escape it. I remember the deaths where I take them still screaming and crying, wounds too deep and lungs to squashed under crushed cars. I remember the tragedies, I hate those. I had to take a little boy’s life, his name was Bernand Brown, he was eleven he died when his hijacked plane hit the pentagon. Eight children died that day. I had so many lives to take that day, young souls, old souls those people were terrified, and all I could do was take them gently to their death, I couldn’t give them back the life that they had yet to live. I couldn’t save them, I can’t save anyone!”

Death’s voice was rising, he choked on tears. The daisy was squished between his boney fingers. He stared down at it.

“I remember the ones who didn’t want to live anymore, they had one foot in the door of life and the other on my side, I tried to stop many of them, some people just needed someone to talk to. They think they dreamed it up in a drugged up state if they survive. If not then, they see me and smile, and thank me. A girl named Lauren smiled at me and threw her arms around me. I remember her saying ‘I don’t feel it anymore, the pain.’ I didn’t feel like a hero that day. I never do. I remember the shrieking kids, bullets still embedded in them when I arrive, I remember the people working two dead end jobs just to make ends meet, I remember people gurgling and gasping, dying from some sort of natural death. Wether it fire or flood. I take them all by the hand, some I talk to, others I just let cry, I let them weep into my cloak as they mourn their old lives. Sometimes I have to hold them back as they scream trying to get back to life, trying to get back to their family, the wind that they will never feel on their faces again. But they can never go back. I have people cry to me, try and bribe me, knowing what they have done, screaming in terror as they don’t want to go to hell. I remember the wars, I welcome armies, some still missing limbs, some missing eyes. Shrieking and shaking, still thinking that they were fighting. Not knowing peace long since I rescue them.”

“Do they grow back?”

Death kept his eyes on the ground, his voice a whisper. “I don’t know, I hope so.”

“I remember a couple, they grew old together, they could never have kids you see, it broke their hearts, but they still grew old together anyway, loving other kids like their own. I have not taken them yet, I dread the day that I will but I took his sister. I- .” He apused and sighed heavily.

“She was a light of joy and sun. In a world full of despair and darkness, she lit it up. But the cancer came like a storm, sweeping away her health, it did not get her smile though. No that stayed till the moment her eyes closed and did not open again. She held my hand and told me her story as I took her to heaven, she told me to look after her dogs and her brother. I cried with her brother that night, he sat outside letting the cold bite into his skin. He watched the trees and let his loss fill the air around him. He sobbed and cried to the sky that they should have had longer. The despair and anger of the loved ones is the worst, I think. I go back to them, trying to offer anything I can give them, which is nothing. I just watch them from the shadows they hide their grief in.. You humans are brilliant at it. I never really understood why you would hide the emotion you feel, doesn’t it show how much, how deeply you loved? People fall to their knees and scream at the sky in secret, they cry behind closed doors, they love endlessly. I never got it. Why would anyone want to hide that?”

He looked at her expectantly, as if wanting to see if she knew the answer.

The girl just watched him, she did not know either.

Her heart tugged in her chest.

“I remember a man holding his son’s hand as it went still on the operating table, he screamed. Just endless screaming as I gently took the boy’s hand. As he whispered to me asking if his dada would be alright. Asked why his dada was screaming. He stopped and watched his dad sob, screaming endlessly, wordlessly. He wouldn’t let the nurses touch the boy, he threw himself over hi, and begged the gods, begged anyone who would listen to save his boy. His son. The dad died soon after, his wife had left year earlier, and his son was all he had left. He looked at me with happeniness in his eyes. He walked with me, hands in his pockets. He asked me if his son felt any pain as he went, I told him to ask him himself. He stared at me at that, then took of running in the direction that he heard his sons laugh. That was a few years ago and one of the rare times that I smiled. The thing about death is that it comes too soon, people are living their lives in a haze, some people find themselve, some do what they want to. But most just live their lives trying to pay the bills, if I lived, If I had the gift of a life. Then I would live it. I would do what I wanted, I would fall in love, and dance and laugh, and cry in the open. I would show my pain to the world, and I would help people, and I would eat all the foods I wanted. I would draw and paint and sing. I would swim and write and read, and climb and soar. I would explore, but most of all I would live. Life is short, life is a gift. So take it.

The girl released that her life had suddenly just started, she needed to live.

Death noticed.

“I know.”

She looked at him grief clouding her eyes, but she asked one last time. “Anything else?”

Death smiled at her. “No, not right now, I am death, I am immortal , and I remember.”

The girl returned his smile “you mentioned a woman wishing? Do I get a last wish?”

Death gave her a joking frown.

“That depends.”

He waited.

“I wish to see you again.”

Death smiled as a tear slide down his cheek.

“You are have said two thing today that no one has ever said. You are a surprising human ans so yes, I would like that. Yes.”

The girl smiled and took his hand.

The walked to heaven in silence, simply enjoying being.

When she was to cross the border she looked back. No one ever had Death had said. She did.

She crossed over to heaven.

She was not afraid.