Death Bringer
Into the night he came, pushing and prodding, a great toothy mess, gnashing through me and the air I breathed.
He was a suffocater.
Chosen from birth by the great lungs he held. By the lack of consciousness his family had always possessed.
A death bringer, coming to you in your last breaths, when air had ceased to fill with life, but cut with sharp struggle, the gulp for survival.
He wore his title well. Loosely drawn in the clothes he wore, old tatters, of grey and black, like a shroud in dim light. His hair too was of old fiberglass stuff, long blackened in old attics. His walk was the most telling. A lumbering gait, a slow steady shuffle, as if he walked always as a pall bearer.
He came for me that night. Night of no moon, darkest of winter’s breath.
Ice cold, bone chilling fear came first. Like a slow stealing death, come on crutches, slowly moving, steady, a rhythmic limp. I had little left of life.
The curtains hung heavy in the old dwelling. Stone cold, wet wandered everywhere, cracked any exposed skin raw, red, running out life.
No light was in the room.
Just my frantic struggle after a long night of little breath. Fear was my only bedside comfort.
I smelt him first. A stale lingering decay of his foul breath on my check. A pulling, sucking draw on the last of my breath. The panic to suck one more breath, one more hour, second, from his deeply filled lungs. The age old struggle.
I lost. Lay limp, my eyes staring skyward, empty.
It smelt like old leaves composting.
The death bringer had come, letting me leave this world with mercy.
His was of the oldest family.
