The pain swelled inside the old man's chest like a slithering snake as he climbed the hill with sluggish steps, but he pushed it aside when he saw the gleaming city below. He still hadn't decided where he wanted to go to die. That's why he climbed up here, on top of this enormous hill. Now he sat on the edge of what seemed to be a small cliff above Salt Lake City, Utah, so he could catch the view one last time. His feet dangled like the jingle bells on those red Christmas-time Santa nightcaps, and an owl hooted.
It's the perfect spot, he thought. Whether I decide I want to be alone when I die, or whether I decide I want to be surrounded by the people closest to me, I can get what I'm after just by the state of mind I'm in.
Up here on the hill, the cool night breeze blew through his wispy white hair and across his saggy skin, creating a tingling sensation. It was the same sensation he used to get many winter nights ago when he had lived in that old, musty-smelling New Hampshire cabin, deep within the woods. After taking a cool dip in the black, crisp waters of a nearby river, he would scurry, barefoot up the jagged hill to where the dimly-illuminating lantern lantern hung, waiting by the wooden door. Then, he would rush inside, eager to shake off the cold, make his bed, and immediately tuck himself in, as cozy as a caterpillar in its cocoon.
Now, up on this hill in Utah, he was comforted by the solitude the midnight breeze provided and simultaneously because he felt closer than ever to the collective, pulsating mass below him. He did not know many of them, but they still held a place of high regard in his heart. He meditated on this for a long while, uninterrupted save the hoot of an owl every now and then, which of course, he didn't mind. The old man just thought of the people down below.
He used to watch those people every day as he took his strolls in the city. There were the hunch-backed grannies in the parks, feeding the pigeons. There were the businessmen in their fancy suits, sitting conveniently next to the window at Starbucks, typing away while trying to find time for a sip of piping-hot coffee. There were the soccer-moms, popping out of the malls with their teenage daughters talking on cell-phones and eight year old sons tugging on their arms. The middle-aged sweathearts, too, would make him smile as they held hands and smiled happily. There were even the leather-clad punks whom he would find lurking in alleyways or leaning up against brick buildings. The punks would eye everyone suspiciously that dare glance for more than three seconds at their gunmetal-blue mohawks or tiny silver studs, but the old man took every group in the same way, with a breath of fresh air and a smile that showed his appreciation for the world he lived in. Finally, there were the children by his block that always eyed him suspiciously when he walked by and called him "Geezer" behind his back. He would always smile at the name, knowing that they thought his hearing was so impared that he couldn't hear them, or that he was too naive to know.
Each and everyone one of these people lived in Salt Lake City, and each and everyone one of them, no matter what they had done in their life, were still human beings, and deserved to be treated as you would want others to treat you. That was the Golden Rule that the old man called Geezer had followed most of his life, and it had got him a lot of kind smiles and teary, thankful looks. A lot of those faces came rushing back to him now, memories of waitresses in slow-paced restaurants that had boyfriend troubles, or small children at his doctor's office that smiled with toothy grins before turning their heads to cough. All these memories swelled like a water balloon, and filled his heart with the joy and knowledge that he had gotten a chance to converse with all of them. To think, every single one of these men women and children that he had talked with over the years lived in the same city as him at one point in their lives.
Geezer watched as most of the lights burned out in the city like bugs being attracted to special blue bug-lamps. There goes one light. Zap.
He remembered, too, all those late nights, sitting out on his front porch back in New Hampshire when the blue blip of an insect flying into one of those lamps would ignite the night, if even for a moment. He also remembered the distinct, yet odorless smell of an insignificant little organism exiting this world as he wondered to himself: Where do bugs go when they die?
The smell of a fresh death was not like sulfur in any way, unlike what all the horror stories depicted. Instead, it was peaceful to him, calming. I'll go like that, someday, he had thought back then. I'll see the light, and it'll wash over me like a warm tidal wave, and I won't feel a thing. I'll just vanish from this world, not making even that slight zapping noise that the bugs make, while people continue their everyday routine: Black coffee in the mornings, then off to work for a couple of hours, then back home again for roast-lamb dinners. Then bed-time would come (but not before kissing their loved one good night, like The Waltons always used to do on T.V.) and the process would start all over again in the morning. Somehow, the old man just knew he would go like that. . . peacefully.
Now here he was, atop this hill, all by himself, and he knew that he was right when he had thought that. He could feel Death approaching, His hand nearing closer, about to rest on his shoulder any minute now. Yet, Geezer didn't care about that. The hand of Death wasn't coming to dig its bony fingernails into his shoulder with an iron grip and drag him away, kicking and screaming. Instead, Death's hand would give him more of a pat of congrutulations. Congratuluations, old man, you made it. You've finally broke the finish-line ribbon, and you've done it proudly with that cooky old victory smile.
Death's hand was not icy at all. Cold, yes, but it wasn't the type of cold you'd expect. It wasn't the type of cold you felt after walking into a butcher's freezer and seeing all the dead carcasses just hanging there on steel spikes as shivers race over your body.
It was more like. . . more like the breeze that could be heard rustling through the leaves at this very moment. Anyone who has been in a similar enviroment knows that the breeze eventually makes its way to bristling across the tiny hairs strewn across your body, but yet, it feels rejuvinating. Maybe Death WAS the breeze, whispering to him, cooing to him as if in a lullable: "Don't worry, old fella. I'm coming.... I'm coming." The old man released a longing sigh in unison with a gust of wind that blew his snowy comb-over a little bit to the left.
Zap. Another light shut off in the city below. Maybe, the old man though, it was an aspiring author just finishing typing a late-night novel? Or maybe someone just got done making love to their spouse? Maybe someone was just getting ready to? Was it that abandoned-feeling waitress he knew, just finishing up one of those trashy romance books? Was that the end of someone's boredom-filler television program? The old man couldn't help but wonder these things to himself. It didn't matter what the situation was, one thing was clear: they were off to bed, and in the morning when they awoke, they would think nothing had changed, and really it wouldn't have, except there was one more lamp snuffed out forever from Salt Lake City, one more life gone without anyone noticing.
Simultaneously, though, mothers in hospitals all around the world were screaming in pain as infants were pushed out, screeching with life just as loudly as their mothers had been a moment before. So the loss of his life would be balanced out by the laws of nature almost immediately. The minor impact of his death was like a droplet of water evaporated from the ocean. The gap was superficial, and wouldn't even need to be filled.
Every twenty seconds someone dies, and every ten seconds someone is born. Something like that. So that meant there were just about two babies born for every person that died in this world. That was the equation, the rule, the laws of nature. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. That was just they way things were, and he had accepted it a long time ago.
Geezer thought about the mothers all around the world, white, black, Chinese, Japenese, all of them giving birth, and he frowned. It wasn't a big frown, but it was large enough so that, if anyone was sitting next to him, they would have noticed it immediately when the lines of his lips seemed to crack, digging into the ancient valleys of his crinkled old chin that the tears had been plowing away for years. I guess, he thought to himself, the most ironic situation when thinking of life and death is when a mother dies in childbirth. Then, you have immediate cancellation. It was as if there were a Great Score-keeper tallying the deaths and births made every day, marking them with chalk on a giant, celestial blackboard, and when the child is born, that's a tally for birth. Then, there's this deadening silence as the Scorekeeper awaits the doctor's morbid yet monotonous announcement: "I'm calling it: Dead at--"... Then the vocalization is cut off by the cosmic scratching sound of chalk. Snik, tawk, tawk. One for death.
All around the world, this was going on, and there's not much us humans can do about it at all, the old man pondered, becuase even if we vaccinated every disease, killed off every threat to our existance, nature is still stronger. Eventually, there just won't be enough resources for the exponentially growing population.
Does this mean he shouldn't have given a dollar a day to that organization over in Ethiopia that helps starving children? There's nothing he could have done about it anway... Someone else would have died in that little boy's place... did he just help a child survive to kill another off? Suddenly, he felt extremely guilty for living to be so old, and, as the guilt grew, so did the pain in his chest.
He gasped aloud: "Epp!"
That noise filled the lonely night sky with nothing that it didn't already contain. He fingers clawed at the pain, trying to strangle the aura of the disease so the agony would also cease.
"Ohhhh...." he groaned, wincing, digging at his breast some more.
"God above, let it stop, let it stop!" he cried out, while some unnatural creature slithered its way excrutiatingly around his heart, crushing it down. Yet his heart felt inflamed, like it was ready to burst open in white hot fire at any moment. Then all the lights in the city below would suddenly flicker on all at once and see the flame illumanating the city. The putrid smell of ancient fat burning would fall upon their ears, and the piercing screams that penetrated the sound barricades the midnight peep-shows and taxi-cab horns had built, would be broken, if only for a moment. Alas, he thought, donning his old man jargon, he knew no such thing would occur; he was only exaggarating, another tendency of his youth that he'd renewed with age.
The feeling that he would burst into flames stayed for a few moments as he fell backwards, his shirtless back scraping in the dark gravel. The snake within him slid its fangs out of his heart and slithered away, for the time being. The old man let out a sigh of relief. I can't take much more of this, he thought to himself, and it's a good thing I don't have to. . . Not much longer, anyway. . . The wait will be over soon. . .
He tried to think of happy memories to take his mind off his current condition, and a multitude of old thoughts rushed back like young blood. Unfortunately, however, a voice inside the old man thought, when you try to open up an old can that's been sitting on the shelf for years, you get worms in it. The cliche rang true. All the bad memories, all the horrible arguments with his deceased wife, and all the times he had cried and drank himself to sleep all came back to him. He, and especially his wife had been so young, so beautiful, in manner as well as physique. . .
He let out a sob then, as he re-discovered these memories that had been stowed on the musty shelves in the cellar of his mind for so long. He remembered when his wife had slapped him in the face once after getting into one their routine, terrible arguments, (over what he couldn't think of,) and he remembered calling her a bitch as she stormed off, got in her car, and went for a drive. She came home around midnight.
Man, he thought, I really screwed up then, didn't I? Am I going to die thinking these horrible thoughts? Why won't the good ones come? Why can't I think of a single happy memory for more than a fleeting second? He sat up again, trying to think.
Smiling faces and white teeth rushed by his eyelids, wanting to stay, but scurrying nonetheless. Laughter fled as though being chased by a rabid animal. Happiness was beaten down and shoved aside by uneasiness which grew into misery. It was as if the blackness, the blankness of his thoughts, was a throne. The blankness was throne to a land called Hysteria for which Joy and Sorrow were two warring princes. Joy was the pallid, skinny, younger prince, and Sorrow was the brutish, bullying older heir. Yes, it would make sense that sorrow be the older of the twin feelings. After all, babies were not born laughing.
So I shall die with an infant's emotions? Was it true what they said about old people and children being so alike? And what happened to all the good times? Oh dear, he said to himself. What HAPPENED to all the good times?
He lifted his leather hands to his wrinkled face and wept. Why he felt he needed to sheild his sadness from the world, he did not know. He knew no one was there to watch him except the birds of the night. Still, though, he felt ashamed. He hated himself for all the horrible things he had done in his life. Every day down there in Salt Lake City he had felt complete, happy. He'd felt as if he could die at any moment because he had done everything that he had ever wanted to do, and more.
But now, with death nearing like the whistle of far-off train, he felt inadequete. He KNEW there was a single, solitary sin still lurking there, buried deep within his conciense that needed to be atoned for. A splinter poisoned his mind, infected him, and was spreading. He could feel it.
Yet, the splinter had somehow manifested itself into an unseen entity, separated itself from him, and was watching him closely from the woods behind him. Its eyes, its ominous eyes, watched him, waiting to be discovered. The Sin played games with him, stalking him, all the while knowing that the old man knew of its existence, of its purpose.
I'm right here, it seemed to taunt. I'm right behind you. Won't you find me? Won't you dig me out?
Then, with its hideous taunt, the Sin stretched out his hand, guiding it through the sickly shaped of the woods that seemed themselves to be like skeletal hands rising up from the ground. Through the murky shadows, the Sin's hand wavered, and, finally, the hand found its way to Geezer's bare, vulnerable back. The fingertip, etheral and stripped of flesh, came closer to the arch between his shoulderblades, millimeters from his saggy skin, brushing the fine hairs along his spine, causing a chain of chills to be unleashed across the old man's cool skin like the breeze that blows in meadows.
Swiftly, the old man turned around, screaming: "Where are you?! WHAT are you?! Answer me! I know you're there! I can feel you! Come out!" The old man screamed, and kept on screaming, knowing with every aged muscle within him that there had been SOMETHING there. Thought the old man: Granted, that was not the same as Death's hand. I should know; I've felt his comforting brush along my cheek many times. But there was a hand there, I could feel it. Oh, God, I could feel it!
Not knowing what to do, and with panic overwheliming him, he realesed a tormented scream, wet tears of fright dripping along the ravines in his cheeks. The woods did not answer his call when he cried out to them, nor did they make any motion to comfort him, now.
"Please. . ." he muttered, "Come out. Reveal yourself. . . to me. . ." he voice faded off as he pounded his fist into the dirt at his side. The frail, paper-like skin shred in two places, and scarlet drops trickled between his fingers.
Even with this last futile attempt, nothing answered him. The only movement that stirred was his weakening arm, wobbling, and the tear that fell on the dusty rock.
Slowly, the old man leaned back for the second time, as if he were doing old-man sit-ups. He let his spine come to rest against the ground; one tiny bone at a time connected with the earth like two sides of a zipper coming together.
Where is the one, missing, wretched memory? He thought, and he pondered this for a long while. Car horns honked below, in that familiar city, so close, yet so far away. And the city seemed as alive as it had ever been. He meditated on those sounds, not letting his thoughts drift from where that one Sin could possibly be hiding, and he let himself be massaged by the wind rippling across his chest, making his torso taut. . .
Suddenly, the scream of a young girl erupted through the night, and the old man's eyes shot open, widening to the size of billiards.
"Who's there?!" he screamed, terrified. "Show yourself!" The slight chill that had massaged his flesh earlier was now growing, ever so slightly, in intensity, whistling now at a sharp pitch.
He was ever so cautious in getting up, like a slinky falling slow motion, only in reverse. His back was to the city now, and his sandalled feet were just inches from the edge of the cliff they had just been dangling over. If he were to lsip, it would mean disaster.
As he rose, his face contorted into a worrisome appearance. The irises of his eyes looked like small, cornflower blue marbles, while the eyebrows overshadowing them were long, thinning wisps, like those and elf would have. Now, those elven brows tilted in a worried expression as another scream rose to his ears and crawled down his spine.
"Help me! Help me! . . . Help--!"
The pleas sounded so far away, echoing throughout his ear canal so very faintly, but they were light footsteps in the corridors of his mind compared to the wind that was picking up, rushing through the trees in the same way that sand slips through the fingers of a young child. The noise, the rush increased at an exponential rate, going from cool breeze to sharp whistle to howling banshee in span of half a minute. It was as if the wind, the howling banshee, and the screams of the young girl were one. Yes, if the screams were light footsteps in his mind's spires, then the wind was now a stalking giant. Whoosh! There the giant went, thundering down the halls of his ears. Whoosh! A headahce, along with his earlier pang of discomfort were trying to resurface under his skin as the giant thundered along.
"Hhhhhhelllllp" the cries came, carried by the wind, and they mingled with their carrier. "Hhhhhellllllppp." Slightly distorted now, yet, that distortion seemed to fuse them with the wind even more.
The old man, the geezer, took several steps forward curiously, cheeks still stained with moisture and glistening in the moonlight, and the cries continued, still faint. The swaying, ominous trees of the forest seemed to beckon him forward, so he slowly approached, tilting his weak neck to the side in an enstranged manner. There, just ten steps before him were the edge of the woods. He stopped. Did he REALLY want to go in there? Did he REALLY want to know what was causing that horrid noise? Yes. He MUST know. Some part of him, some primal urge that clinged on to his mind like a cancerous tumor was magnetized towards it, and it would not relent with the pain until he knew.
It wasn't exactly the pain in his upper ribs that he felt now, although that pain, too, had successfully returned. There was another pain growing, alongside the pain in his breast, and perhaps contributing to it as well. It was the magnetic pain that the living instinct within him was causing. It was the agony of not knowing, the tinge of the curiousity that had killed the cat, even with nine lives. Yet he knew that if he did not proceed the pain would accumulate, reverberating more soundly throughout his being, and he would die sooner than expected, and even more horribly, without having figured out what it was that his inner self desired to know so desperately.
So, before he knew it, he was already past the fringing borders of the dark forest and was carefully placing one foot in front of the other, trying not to snap any twigs and disturb the beast causing all the tumult. What a horrible paradox, he thought, that he should not want to disturb the beast that caused the girl to scream, merely so that his curiousity could be appeased, so that he could find the source. What a horrible, horrible paradox. Yet he did nothing to stop the paradox from occurring. He just lightly kept placing his feet down, one after the other, and holding his hands up defensively so that none of the tiny braches, invisible in such little light, would take away his already dimmed vision without warning.
A small, rough branch hit his palm like the leg of a monstrous insect reaching out to attack him. The difference being that the twig was still, and he was the one that was moving. He pushed it aside, sniffling as he did so. Ahhh, the smell of pine. It was as if the sap was his flem, his snot, dripping under his very nose; the beatiful aroma was so prevalant and unmistakable.
Snap. A dried up twig broke beneath his sandals, piercing the parched skins of fallen leaves as it crunched. The old man was looking down now, one hand above his head, holding a branch ready to thwak invisible stalkers behind him. He then realized he was looking down at the broken twig instead of ahead of him, so he glanced back up.
SNAP! A stinging sensation burned in both his eyes like he hadn't slept in four days and someone had suddenly squirted liter fluid in them.
"Ow! Ahhhh! Ow!" he seethed, hands clutching at his inflamed eyeballs.
It took them a minute to finally cease their stinging, but just as they did, he heard another cry. This one seemed closer and more piercing, all the while echoing hauntingly from tree-branch to tree-branch.
Some giggling little girls' voices drifted to his ears too, but the girls seemed to be rushing past him at the speed of light, unseen. The sounds of the girls seemed so close, like they were right next to him, yet so far, so distant as they whooshed by, unseen. They sounded like--
No. It couldn't be. His sisters were long dead. The last one to die passed on only six years ago. But these were not the sounds made by frail old ladies. . . These giggles were the same as the ones he had heard in his youth, playing in the streets with them, teasing them, hunting them down, tackling them, and tickling them to death. These couldn't be the same sounds that he was hearing now.
"Who are you?!" He shouted. Then, the cliched words of old horror films fell out of his mouth, uncontrolled: "What do you want?"
The only answer was the faint hoot of an owl, and he realized that the hoot was the first time he had heard an owl in several minutes. None of this made sense, he thought as he plowed, more determined now, through the thickening brush. The dagger-sharp screams increased, rising in the night like the ghost of a choir boy's tantalizing falsetto.
Suddenly, something slithered by his bare ankles. Whatever it was had smooth, slimy scales that left cold embers seering into his wrinkled flesh. A chill scurried up his spine, and he saw an image in his brain of that very chill: a giant millipede climbed up an apple tree, shaking the branches as the fruit thudded eerily to the ground. The chill and the accompanying image caused a tiny yet uncontrollable convulsion of his limbs, making his arms flail slighty left to right. Something wasn't right here. Yet, he didn't want to look down again, because the last time he did that, his inflamed eyes made him regret what he saw.
Slither. There it went again. He couldn't stay in this place for much longer, but he couldn't go back either. Going back meant not finding out the origin of those increasingly sharp cries, and going back held nothing for him. As insane as it seemed, there was a carnal yearning to push onward, something that would not die before his physical self did.
Slither. God! What WAS that? His feet started walking faster so he might avoid the slimy creatures writhing below. The sound of a silk veil being pulled off greeted his ears, and did the intensity of the creepy, constricting feeling around his ankles grew. He couldn't stand it any longer. He had to look down. So he did. What he saw made his eyelids pry open, seemingly glued to his ancient, sweaty brow, and his toothless jaw drop almost down to his chest.
Several snakes only inches long wiggled this way and that, coming up to his toes and wrapping their tiny black bodies around them. They looked more like giant earthworms then miniature snakes, for he could barely tell the difference between their head and their tails, save what direction they were crawling in.There must've been somewhere between twelve and twenty of them, more than one for each toe, and the numbers were rapidly growing. The geezer was paralyzed with old age and fear. He desperately wanted to move, but he just couldn't; he was frozen in place. A bigger, darker snake crawled up tp him then, wrapping its filth-ridden body around his feet and sliding upwards. Up his calfs, and up his thighs, clearly hellbent reaching his groin.
"No!" He shouted raspingly, grabbing the thing by its slimy tail and flinging it to the ground a few feet away. It was relentless, however, and was soon joined by a few more of its fellow abominations, each of which seemed to grow in size as the serpents' onsluaght continued. Three or four more of the large reptilian demons approached now, boring out holes in the earth like drills through plywood.
A snake in front of him suddenly bared its fangs and lunged at his exposed toes, clamping down on one with enormous strength, sending a relay message to his brain in merely a nano-seconds. The pain sparked a tiny flame in his brain, and he fell to the ground, seething in agony. Several snakes squished under the weight of his body, but were only slightly maimed and slipped out from under his ribs and lower back as if he had just fell upon a pile of several slippery bars of soap. He tried tearing, ripping at the slimy creature latched onto his toes, but the grip of its unnatural teeth was so strong that he just couldn't pry the thing off of him.
"Help!" he cried out, to no one in particular."Help!" he shouted again, using every muscle in his neck to produce such a sound, but it was of no use to him. Something had lured him into the forest to kill him, and now, as these monstrosities fed upon his flesh, he would die an agonizing death. . . completely unlike what he had dreamed.
Moments of excrutiating pain passed, while the flesh was stripped off of him like an orange, and then, everything ceased. The pain was gone, as if it never existed. The old man opened his eyes, which had been wincing in tortured hysteria.
He got up, brushing himself off, brushing the leaves from his white, curly-haired chest, and brushing, too, the dirt from his jeans. There was nothing there. Had he been imagining everything, the slimy snake-like creatures, the sting of the twig in his eye, all along? He looked down to his exposed toes, and wiggled them. No harm there. He then brought his hand to his eye and softly touch it.
A needle-sharp pain raced through his eye. So he had been hit by the twig, but the snakes were not real? Was he losing his mind? Was he finally insane? Then, the old man called Geezer remembered why he had wondered into the forest in the first place. The screams of a little girl. Had he also imagined them?
Geezer decided he wouldn't get anywhere by just standing there, so he moved forward, extending his foot, cautiously, towards the leaves once more, and then brought it down. A crunching noise once more slithered from beneath his foot. No, not slithered. The noise just came, and it comforeted him, somehow. He took another step, and another crunch occurred. Another step. Then another. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! went the sound of his feet as he broke into a run. His run was gleeful. He was glad that he was alive, that his flesh was not being devoured by snakes.
Then, as he started to run faster, outrunning the pace his beating heart had set, he heard it again. A blood-curdling scream, sounding so close it could have came from any one of the trees directly at his side. He froze in his tracks, not only frozen by the scream, but now frozen, too, by the cool breeze. He was just now realizing that it had started again, or rather, it had always been there; the same breeze that once soothed his warm heart, and cooled his wrinkled skin. He was half-expecting the wind to howl again, when out of the pitch black night, a second scream, a scream that seemed inches from his ear, pierced the black pitch of the night once more.
Cautiously, he started again, peering around the corner of a massive tree trunk. It was there that he saw it. The forest opened up, and the moon suddenly seemed to shine directly in that spot before, seemed to be shining just for him, so that he could see the little girl splayed out before him. It was as if the moon was saying to him: There! You wanted to know what caused these and now you shall know! Behold!
The old man's jaw hung low, in shock, in horror, and he suddenly realized that he could not breathe. He would rather have his flesh torn by a thousand, a million times as many serpents than to see the sight splayed out before him.
A burnt-orange couch lay there, in the middle of the woods. The pillows which were supposed to adorn it lay on the ground, all of them, violently cast aside. In the midde of the couch, there knelt a naked girl, probably around sixteen or seventeen, her knees digging into the earth. Her pale flesh shimmered in a dim, yellow light, yet the moon didn't seem to touch her. Her small breasts were pressed hard against the middle cushion of the couch, causing the cushion to envelope her, even her head, which sometimes rose to scream, which it did now.
"Help me! Please God, somebody help me!"
She did not seem to recognize the old man's presence.
Slowly, the old man lowered himself to his knees, and buried his face deep within his hands. "Oh, God," he sobbed. "Oh my God."
The girl looked around, too, eyes shut tightly, lips sealed with tears, yet twisted and contorted in anguish. Her head seemed to be the only appendage whipping about, making her long, dirty-blonde braid flail with it. Her hands, he could see, were bound behind her back by an invisible source, as if someone were holding them there.
"HELP!" she seemed to tear the flesh out of her mouth, screaming, but the old man continued to sob, in unison with her.
Slowly, a figure behind her emerged, a boy wearing a white T-shirt taut around his youthful body, and a black belt that was now loosed at his knees, strung through the loops on faded blue denim jeans. Through his saoked hands, now more wrinkled from his tears, the old man peered, seeing the youth's dark brown hair peppered with silver strands. The old man recognized something on the youth, and once again resumed sobbing for the girl.
The young man grunted behind the girl, plunging deep within in her, then back out again, and then back in again in only a matter of seconds. He pulsed at his own rhythym, a quickened pace, for he was in control now. He was the one that had HER on her knees, he was the conqueror, he was the master of her! She screeched in terror again, but that was her last. The strong young man behind her lifted his arm, his fist above his head.
The girl saw this, and her eyes grew from narrow, dripping slits to bulging, fearful balls of emotion.
"No! Please! No! Please, God, no!" she shrieked, but the youth did not listen. The fist came plunging down, as he had been plunging, and a smacking sound echoed throughout the old man's ears.
"I told you! I told you to shut the fuck up! Didn't I tell you to shut up, you little whore?! STOP YOUR FUCKING SCREAMING OR I'LL SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT!!" But the screaming had already ceased. The girl lay more loose now on the couch, hands slipping from the grip of the strong, pepper-haired man. Her legs, too, relaxed more. There were no longer veins bulging from her neck and calves like steel chords. There was only a thwap, thwap, thwapping sound as the pepper-haired youth finished his business, grunting heavily, until finally the grunts faded into the other sounds of the night. He gave one final thwap! and backed away from the unconcious girl, gathering his jeans around his waist once more, and tightening his belt.
The youth turned around, then, and stared. He stared in the direct path of the old man called Geezer, and did not seem to notice. For a few moments, he remained, catching his breath, and while there, scratching his skull, it was painfully unmistakable that his was the face the old man had possessed in his youth. The eyes were the same, sunk in the back of his head; the cheek bones were just as high, and the chin was just as broad. The only differences between the old man and the youth were the wrinkles that the old man had gained over the years, and the hateful gleam that he had managed to lose. Then, without any further hesitation, the man called Geezer's former self walked into the woods, and vanished, leaving the old man to weep by himself. It was not long after that that the girl, who now lay, pink breasts exposed to the cool night air vanished, as did her couch, a tool of sodomy.
"Why God?!," the man called Geezer cried into the night. "Why!?!" and he sobbed harder than he had ever done in his life. "I had forgotten these things, repented! I had been your loyal servant for so long, and now you show me this! Why must I be tormented by the sins of my youth?!"
A tall shadow fell over him, then, and the old man looked up, eyes sore and swollen.
"Because you ran away, old man, that is why," came a chilling voice that sounded as if the speaker had smoked endless packs of cigarettes. Yet there was something different about it. . . Something. . . supernatural. "You did not face your ghosts, as it were, you merely fled from them. Who gains from your flight? Who gains in your repentance? Do your right the wrong you have made by repenting? No."
The old man stared at this shape before him, able to make out only a towering, blurry shadow through his tears.
"Who--Who are you?" he said, confused, but the figure seemed not to hear.
"If you are to right that wrong, Geezer, if you are to make up for what you've done, you must face your past. You must face those who you've wronged, the family of that girl, and offer yourself up to them. No one found out after you raped sixteen-year-old Liza Foolwood, but that does not make it right."
The old man sniffed.
"Now, come, the man the children call Geezer, you have lead your life." It was then that an obtrusive tear rolled from his eyes and he could clearly see the shadow of a scythe in the tall monster's left hand. His gaze drifted to the hood that shrouded this beast's head, but only a black shadow was cast across where the face should have been. The old man wondered how mortals knew this was what He was like.
"You're--You're Death?" Geezer stammered.
"I am."
"But. . . What about righting the wrong, as you said? What about confronting the family? What about. . . everything? What about the snakes in the forest? What about. . . my wife!? Will she be there, on the other side."
"You ask many questions for someone who has tricked himself into thinking that he will die in peace," replied Death.
"I must know!"
"Calm yourself, and you will," said Death, coolly. "The snakes, ah, many good men ask about them. They are the alternative, old man, to what you could have had. You, the world knows, are afraid of snakes."
The old man still looked befuddled, so at this, Death pointed his bony finger towards the Earth and whispered: "Hell."
"And my other questions? Will you answer them?"
"Some will be answered in a matter of moments, and some I will answer for you now," said Death. Then, without a moment's a pause: "You cannot right the wrongs you have induced upon the world. It is too late for that. If you could, I, Death, would not be here, now would I? You can only truly repent, old man, in case you have not."
"But I have!" cried Geezer, but then he caught himself. He felt as if Death were raising an eyebrow at him, even if he could not see Death's face. After a moment or two of careful inspection, it seemed Death had reached a conclusion.
"I feel that you have, old man, and that will do. For now, however, it is your time. You will soon receive answers to your other questions."
The old man bowed his head.
"Despite your flaws, the one they call Geezer, you have lead a good and full life. I welcome you, and, at the sime time, I tell you Goodbye." Death layed his hand on the one the children called Geezer, and an icy chill filled his blood, yet comforted him. The old man's head fell to the ground with a thud, and with that, he was dead. Death grabbed the bottom of his cloak and strode away, chuckling to himself as he walked.
Author notes
Needs a revision or two. . . or three. . .
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