Just before midnight on the third day, Janet got up from her chair and approached the bed. Her hand rested lightly on her sleeping husband’s shoulder for a brief moment before she turned and left the room. Driving through the sleeping town, she parked in front of the dark and empty playground. As she got out, she hesitated before going forward. The abandoned car seemed to glow in the moonlight, giving it an ominous presence it lacked during the day. She stood for a few moments before moving closer, stepping from manicured lawn into tangled weeds.
As she approached, a boy stepped out from behind a tree, blocking her from the car. He couldn’t have been more than five years old, but the calm defiance in his eyes made him look much older.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
She felt her fear grow but anger and desperation overcame it. “I need to talk to the white man.” He shook his head but she cut him short as he began to speak. “I know he’s coming tonight. I will talk to him.”
“No one talks to him.”
Janet stepped forward, towering over the boy, trying to intimidate him, before suddenly changing tactics. She bent down on one knee, reaching out to touch his arm.
“Haley said you liked me. She said you watched me. Why? Do I remind you of your mother?”
“You remind me of every mother.” He hesitated before turning, waving for her to follow. The door groaned and squealed as he pulled it open and sat in the driver seat. After closing the door, he looked out the jagged hole in the side window and nodded to her. “Coming?” She crossed to the passenger side and opened the front door. A chill ran up her spine making her shudder as he reached across and gripped the handle, stopping her from climbing in. “No. This is his seat.”
She got into the back of the car, waiting and watching. The little boy gripped the bent steering wheel and began to sway back and forth. Sweat broke out on his forehead as his lips moved silently. The weeds whispered as a breeze kicked up, pushing a wall of fog across the playground. Janet shivered as the cold mist filled the car. Suddenly, she was thrown back into the broken vinyl seat. The rusty hood tilted up as the cracked rubber wheels pulled free of the mud and weeds. A final groan escaped the boy’s lips as the car leapt into the air. Wind whistled through windows as the car climbed faster and higher into the starlit sky, chilling her to the bone. Janet called out to the boy but either he ignored her or her trembling voice could not be heard over the wind that filled the car with noise. The car dove into a cloud, filling up with swirling vapors that blinded her, forcing a stream of icy cold tears to flow down her cheeks.
When the mist cleared, a man dressed in white robes was sitting in the passenger seat, his wings folded behind him. His hair, slicked back into a shiny helmet, was bleached white, as were his eyebrows. The man swiveled in his seat, inspecting Janet with a cold black eye. She shivered again, unsure whether this time it was due to the damp night air or to the new occupant.
The man chuckled, a humorless sound that came from deep in his chest, like gravel sliding across the car’s rusty floor. “Well, what do we have here? The mother.” He turned to the boy. “I sense your meddling hand in this. You never understood that mothers are just ordinary people with an inflated self-interest.”
The boy’s eyes remained focused straight ahead, his lips moving furiously in a silent chant as the man glowered at him. The woman spoke, suddenly aware of the silence that had filled the car. “I need to talk to the other one.”
His bleached eyebrow arched. “Are you certain that is what you want?”
She nodded grimly. “Death is coming for my daughter and I need to stop him.”
He chuckled again. “Then it is I that you must speak to. I am death.”
“But my daughter said that she liked you, that you were nice.”
He smiled grimly. “Yes. Children have no pretenses. That know that life is cruel and death is a complete end to all suffering. They aren’t afraid of me. They remember me fondly, having so recently left my domain to spend a short time in this world.”
Janet felt her courage withering, her thoughts frozen in fear. “Why do you dress in white?” she blurted out.
“Is that really what you came to ask?” he sneered, but she remained silent. He shrugged and answered her question. “I am not a result of human stereotypes. I am their source. People who come in close contact with me react in fear. They wish to distance themselves. They know that death is white. I am pure and return the soul to its source of light. They dress in black in an attempt to push me away. Life is black, full of pain and struggle, dirtying all who are touched by it. Filth is the unavoidable result of mundane existence.”
“You will not take my daughter.” She was ashamed that her voice shook but it was all she could do to push the words out of her frozen lips.
The Angel of Death shrugged. “She is mine for the taking, if I so choose. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Everything that lives must one day die. It is the nature of creation. You cannot stop me.”
“Take me instead,” Janet cried out.
The car shook with his laughter. “You are mine for the taking also. There will be no trades.”
Tears came to her eyes. “Then what do you want?”
His eyes glowed as he smiled in the dark car. “Death wants nothing.”
A small voice shouted out, “No. That isn’t true.”
The angel leaned towards the boy, his wings unfolding to fill the space in the car. “Silence, boy.”
The boy clutched the wheel, his knuckles turning white. Tears came to his eyes as he continued. “There is something you want. It sometimes works. I’ve seen it.”
She leaned forward. “Tell me. For God’s sake, tell me now.”
“Pray!” the boy shouted, as the angel’s hand shot across and slapped him hard across the face.
The boy slumped unconscious in his seat. She looked at the boy for a moment before turning to the passenger. “Is that all? Prayer? You want prayer?”
The car tipped down and she saw them beginning to dive towards a jagged range of black mountains. The angel’s eyes were locked forward, staring at the mountains with unrestrained terror, fear pulling his features into a grimace. “Is that all? Woman, you have no idea what you are about to do, where you are about to take us. The lad was not accurate. I don’t want prayer, but it can be my master. When God created the world, he gave you this power. You creatures of flesh and blood treat it so lightly yet it can shake the very roots of creation.”
She reached over the seat and clutched at the fabric of his robe, making him flinch at the contact. “If that is what it takes, I will do it.”
“Only man dares to argue against the will of the creator,” the angel said, sweat coating his brow as he stared ahead.”Only man dares to rip the world apart and rearrange it according to his own flesh-and-blood desires. Your daughter’s fate was divinely decreed, yet you humans think that it is your place to dispute the will of your creator.”
“Defy my creator?” she gasped. “Yes, I will do that. He made me a mother and that gives me the power to stand before him and tell him what he does not know: what it is like to give birth, to raise a daughter, to hold her as she lays in a bed dying. If god made me do that, then I have the right to stand before him and tell him what he did wrong. God wants to take my daughter away from me, but I won’t let him do that without first having to listen to what I have to say.”
Janet hesitated. She had never prayed before, but nothing would stop her from trying to save Haley, or at least letting all of creation know how she felt about it. Her lips began to move as she silently spoke to God.
The angel shrieked. “Prepare yourself. The world is about to be destroyed. All of creation is about to turn back upon itself. All for the sake of one child. When you return, everything will appear the same, but know that it is a lie. You have destroyed the world, changed it forever, and denied the creator’s will. How do you people dare?”
He screamed and she glanced up, staring at a wall of black stone hurtling up as the car dove forward, a red gash opening slowly in the cliffs in front of them. Flames leapt up to meet the car. The angel of death screamed again. “Lord help us! The fires of creation.” They dove into the flames as she closed her eyes, not in fear, but to concentrate on the simple words that came pouring out from her heart.
The sun rose over the quiet hospital, filling the room with an orange glow. Haley lay in the bed, not moving, the sheet barely rising as each breath filled her tiny chest. The father was asleep in the chair next to the bed, his body spilled across his daughter as if he could protect her from disease with his body. Janet opened the door, entering as she had left: silently, without a glance towards her daughter. Stepping quietly across the room, she gently stroked her husband’s shoulder, her hand hovering for a moment above her child’s hair. She turned and walked across the room, sitting stiffly in the chair, and waited. Only a few moments went by before the little girl stirred, a soft moan escaping her lips, calling out weakly for her mother. Her father sat up, shaking the sleep from his eyes as his daughter reached out to be picked up. He called for a nurse, careful of the tubes as he hugged her. The mother sat across the room for several minutes, content to watch. Finally, she closed her eyes and shook her head, before getting out of the chair to join her family. As she hugged them she stared out the window at the new day. Her eyes jumped from cloud to cloud, filling with tears, as she drowned in the blueness of the sky.
***
This short story is an excerpt from my yet-to-be-published novel, “Sihara”. It will appear in my soon-to-be-published collection of short stories titles “Dolphins on the Moon”, which can be pre-ordered on my Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. Friend me on Facebook or send me an e-mail at adameliyahu@yahoo.com to get updates and free stories.
