Death's Innocence

Life is only worth living if you have someone you're willing to die for...

Sweet Death, it is such a lowly life that I live…
    While many other have aged and withered in my presence, I have watched without any sign of either end to life. My companions have passed and all of my family has perished until all that is left is me, yet I am not falling prey to the same fate.
    One would think that some would begin to notice the woman who has been twenty-one for nearly forty years, but it is hard to hear such things when you are constantly removed from your home to a new residence due to a natural disaster. Many would see me as unlucky for such misfortunes, but I know better than to think of them as mere accidents.
    From the moment in which I first became acquainted with the spirit that is known as Death, I had the distinct feeling that I would not succumb to his devastation as quickly as those in my company did. Why, he even as far as to console me in my time of grief and allowed me to return home as if it had all been a nightmare to help ease my sorrow with the tragedy!
    However, even now I can’t explain why he has endowed me with such a long and pestilent life. Perhaps that is something that Death alone is to know, he and his shadows that seem to follow me no matter where I venture.
    Unlike the others he has been acquainted with in my presence he only seems to acknowledge my health, almost as if he cares whether or not I would be taken away. Such a silly thought that is though...
    Death actually caring who he was to take from the world, what an odd thing to think possible!
    Yet, all the same, there is something more to his stressing of my health than he allows me to believe. Do not ask me how I am aware of this fact; there are far too many things that I can recall as evidence.
    The strongest of these reasons, if I were to choose one, would be his name or me, the name simply put as innocence. I’ve asked him many times why he has given me such a bizarre alias, all of which he replied with a devious smile behind that wretched mask of torn skin and blood he wears.
    It’s almost as if he finds amusement in my confusion with him, isn’t it?
But what do I care if he enjoys it, he isn’t going to lessen the resolve I’ve built up to end this torturous life that he insists I must live because I am not ready to be taken.
    I would rather end my life now rather than continue living in a world in which I must watch all those I know die, and he fully knows this too.
But he will not allow me to make such attempts, his shadows always there to disrupt whatever scheme I’ve concocted to silence my soul for eternity.
Why must he continue to force this life of immortality upon me if it does nothing but cause me misery..?

~★~✪~★~

    Oh my Innocence, such a beautiful light to have within my shadows…
    It is her gentleness and innocence that saves me from becoming as horrible as I should be, save for the “accidents” I have to create to keep her from those who seek to question her young, never changing appearance. 
    She, of course, does not appreciate such things as she should, but it can’t be helped that I do not wish to take her. In truth, I do not wish to take her away from the world that she brightens with her light for many years to come.
    I know she is always thinking of my presence and why I have done such a thing, however, I can sense it by the way she carries herself. Despite this, I simply cannot answer her, or anyone, for what I have done.
    I should’ve taken her when time had come like the rest, but I could not force myself to allow the last of the sand in her hourglass to trickle out. She was too gentle, too pure for such a cruel and horrid end that had awaited her. No…
    She was too innocent for any atrocity that I could inflict upon her.
Others may call me a fool for taking such actions, but I can’t help that I have become attached to a soul as soft as hers.
    She is the light to my darkness, the innocence to help repent my sins. Without her now I would be lost without a purpose, a shadow without a light to cast it upon the Earth. She is a rose in the overgrown thorns of my life’s existence, a rose which must be protected to preserve its purity and fragility in this harsh world.
    I cannot answer for my actions, and I pretend that I will not answer when she asks of me by putting on a smile to mask the true fear inside me that she will one day realize why I have done what I have.
    In all the years I have worn my mask, those moments when she looks to me for the truth I feel the most vulnerable, almost as if there is no mask at all. Perhaps it is foolish that I have become so indulged in protecting Evie’s soul when she makes me feel as such… And yet, I feel no remorse for what I have done to continue seeing my sweet rose walk the Earth.
    I need her. Just as she needs air to breathe I need her to continue my own life, and on the day in which she will succeed in taking her life, I too will die.
    How silly it is for me to say such things... Death withering away at the loss of his Innocence, what irony would that would be!
    But all the same… It couldn’t be further from the truth.

Author's Note

This was written sophomore year as a continuation piece for a piece of literature we read, mine being The Masque of the Red Death.