Death Abides

“Death has no ears; Death has no eyes.”

        

Prologue:

No one ever wants to admit it, but those we love will one day die.

I sure didn’t.

But when it happens, and it will happen, it changes everything.

It changed me. It will change you.

Their memories follow you like a shadow, daring you to look back. And when you succumb, those memories become nightmares, nightmares without end.

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You awaken to a nightmare and discover your body lying like a fetus in the feted womb of a wet alleyway. You struggle, but you cannot move.

You feel the goosebumps bloom on your arm as your breath bubbles in the dank puddle that covers half of your head. 

Your unsubmerged eye strains to focus on a clattering sound from behind the grease-encrusted dumpster.  

Out from this shadow, a shade emerges as the visage of a crippled black cat. It crawls toward you. 

As it approaches, you look upon its countenance and see a face askew, more akin to roadkill than feline. Its legs have been replaced with roughhewn wooden stakes that “click, clack” as it slowly approaches your face. 

The tiny beast’s one functioning eye dilates to capture the darkness of the alleyway, the other eye dangles at the end of its ocular cord and sways like a rubbery mace as it clatters closer. 

As this eye swings, it emits a sickening yellow shadow that curdles reality’s sharp edges into rotting meat.

Every fiber of your body screams.

“Move. Move God damn it, Move!” 

Your body is bound by an invisible bond as this dripping beast pierces the veil that separates dreams from night terrors.

This creature rips reality with the whimper of a stifled cry that grows louder and louder until it reaches a crescendo akin to the shrill of a sudden knife strike.

It exudes the feted aroma of death rotting under a tropical sun. You inhale this stench with each bubbling breath.

Then the tiny beast scrapes your hand with its coagulated black fur.

It walks down the length of your arm. Each step, taken by its sharp legs, leaves a pumping wound. You reel with pain but cannot scream. 

You strain your eyes to look up at the beast. There you see the scattered moonlight reflecting off its needle teeth. As it opens its maw, a retching smell overcomes you like in a narcotic wave.

You vomit into the alleyway puddle. The beast is now atop your head. Its piercing legs find balance in your neck and forehead.

It crouches down and licks your face. It feasts on your derma. And then you hear it purr with satisfaction.

Its raspy tongue laps and feeds, feeds, and laps.

Your prayers are not for escape; they are prayers for release.

You pray for a merciful coup-de-gras. You have given up on living and enjoin death to take you. To make it all go away. 

But Death has no ears;

Death has no eyes;

Death cannot speak;

Death only reaps. 

A startle jolts you awake. There you sit alone at your dad’s bedside vigil. Before you lie his withered body curled in a fetal position underneath his sheets. Each of his breaths gurgles since they removed him from the machines and pulled the tubes from his arms. 

And together we wait — he within his dreams and you within this nightmare.

And neither of you can move your bodies as,

Death abides.

Listen to this story.

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