Drowning

When Death comes for you just accept his embrace.

          I had always dreamed as a little girl of writing a letter to put in a bottle and send it out to sea. Now that I'm older I'd rather let myself drift amongst the waves until I reach some distant shore. The idea of being in the icy cold salt water sends chills up and down my spine, Death is playing his long skeletal fingers up and down my backbone as if they are the keys to a piano. The sand under my feet is unnaturally warm and yet I am shivering, pulling the towel around my shoulders a little tighter as I look out across the black waves. This is Death's domain and I am intruding upon his solitude.
         The whisperings of the waves lapping against the shore call to me like tiny voices in my head. I convince myself they are the voices of mermaids but a small nagging feeling in the pit of stomach laughs and says demons. I go to the water's edge and stare into the depths of Hell. So much beauty can be deadly. I've learned this the hard way when I've been at the tops of mountains with my head enveloped in clouds or when I've been in the blistering heat of the desert with nothing in sight for miles and miles but sand and a single large rock in the distance that I can never quite seem to reach.
         The towel falls from my shoulders into the water and I watch the waves slowly carry it away, bobbing like a large red jelly fish into the distance and out of my view in the darkness. Death's fingers leave for only a moment and then I feel his breath against my neck, like a chill from a ghost, sending goosebumps crawling across my pale flesh. I know what it is he wants and so I slowly step forward and wade into the water. I do not stop once it has reached my waist, continuing to move until it is up to my shoulders, the small waves making the water slosh up into my nose. The salty water burns but I don't spit it out.
         Around my ankles the sea weed curls like the fingers of a small child begging to be held close. Something is still whispering, but at least now it's louder and slightly easier to hear, and I follow the whisperings as if they are those of a lover who wants me to draw closer to them. I want more than anything to be intimate with this creature of the dark. Perhaps Death has taken them captive too.
         Even as I think this I feel behind me that Death is watching me through the sunken sockets where his eyes used to be. Without the actual eyeballs there he can see me far better in the darkness than any normal human being would be able to. We underestimate Death and also give him far too much power than he deserves. Death is not one who should be feared but embraced. People are always so afraid of the dark as well. I don't think they realize it is not really Death and darkness we fear. Even small children will confess when asked that it is not so much the fact that there is a monster in the closet that scares them. If one knows there is a monster there it is easier to think of a way to fight it. No, what scares the child is that they do not know for sure if there is a monster in their closet. It is the unknown that we fear, not Death nor darkness.
         Around me I can feel the darkness pressing in and shielding me from view by normal range of vision while my only witness is Death who stands on the shore. The whisperings have reached such a pitch and I seem to have swum into the very center of a circle of these speakers. It is an incessant buzzing that never seems to end and I turn in a circle searching for the speakers. My eyes are wide, searching in the dark for their faces, wishing that Death would lend me his sight.
         Close your eyes.
         Once they are closed I can see two mermaids with hair made of tangled fish nets and broken shells for teeth, their eyes shrunken back into their skulls and their hands are black and frail looking. They reach out for me, smiling darkly, tilting their heads to one side.
         Swim with us.
         I reach my hands out to touch them and I feel the two mermaids take hold of me, their grip surprisingly tight for having looked so decayed. They drag me under and I do not have time to take a breath, keeping  my eyes firmly closed so that I can see where we are going, turning my head to make sure we are not being followed.
         Look forward, do not look back.
         I do as I am told, letting them drag me into the cold depths of the ocean. The lower we go the more pressure I feel pressing against my heart and lungs, knowing I cannot take a breath because I can not breathe underwater. I think that they will stay with me to keep me company but they abandon me in the wreckage of what looks like a palace of pearls and opals, the white blinding in this underwater darkness. Their shimmering forms swim away into the darkness and not even the white light from this structure can reach them as they swim off.
         Stay.
         In staying this means I have surrendered to the darkness, does it not? I sense that Death has left the shore and no sooner do I think it than I feel his fleshless hand upon my bare shoulder, his face leaning forward to inspect my expression. I do not feel afraid, even as he forces my mouth open and orders me to breathe in a voice that sounds so beautiful, like church bells. I do as I am ordered, not at all surprised or afraid of the water that feels like ice entering my body and weighing me down.
         Death stays with me, watching me closely, his black robes dancing strangely in this watery grave I now sit in. My vision is blurry now and I open my eyes only to see nothing, not even the blinding white structure I know I am sitting in, and this scares me more than the fact that I am about to die. I close my eyes again and am relieved that I can see Death has not left my side.
         Bringing my hands slowly to my face when I realize I don't feel any different I notice they are very much like the mermaids who brought me here. Black and shriveled, small webs between my fingers, nails that look like they're made from brittle coral.
         You are mine, now. Death informs me, using his long skeletal fingers to brush back my hair that does not feel the same as it did.
         I do not object to this because, after all, what is so wrong with belonging to Death? He had not abandoned me as so many others had in Life. He was by far proving to be a much better friend than anyone I had known in Life. Drowning in sorrows and despair had hurt far worse than the real thing. This had been the greatest gift I'd ever recieved.
         As I swam after Death in the darkness of the water, away from the pearly white structure, I briefly wondered if my red towel would find its way to a shore far away from the one I had left to bring a girl to Death's cold loving embrace.

Author's Note

This is a testament to exactly how tired I am. >:3

Also, though, it should also show my new feeling towards no longer being afraid of Death in the same way that I once was. And that I acknowledge that it is not necessarily Death itself I fear but the lack of knowing what comes after.