Kismet

A girl gets a visit from Death himself in the middle of the night, coming to take her mother away. A short fictitious story about the question: are we guided by fate or do we have free will?

Kismet 

Frost, a suffocating parasite that festered in every crevice and lined all the cracks in 731 Crowley Street. It was the sort of cold that would soak through stone to creep into the body of a man and run jagged icicle nails across his heart. A shadowy figure stood in the midst of it all, unfitting to the scene, like a fracture in the screen of reality. He had already claimed five souls that evening due to the creeping frost, but that’s not why he was at 731 Crowley Street tonight. He opened his thick and leather bound book, each page made of fine parchment, and upon it were names, dates and addresses written in gold and red. Most of the names were gold, which was a good thing in the common opinion, but not in his. He liked the red names the most, and as it happened, Margaret of 731 Crowley Street had her name scrawled ever so neatly upon the page. He closed his book and tucked it underneath his arm as he walked up the stone path to the door where Margaret lived. His black shoes shone moonlight as he walked without sound, leaving no footprint in the snow behind him. The door opened with a touch of his hand and he stole with a ghostly quiet into the darkness.
     Not a light was lit in Margaret’s house, as she was fast asleep in her bed upstairs. Death absorbed his surroundings, the steaming fireplace, its crackling thirst quenched only moments before leaving screaming and sizzling embers in its wake. Wood was everywhere, wooden floors, a wooden staircase, even laminate wood in the kitchen with wooden counter tops. 
     Death stopped in the room for a moment and closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. When he opened them he was in a different time. He was faced with a Margaret sixteen years younger than the one in 731 Crowley Street, with dusty blonde hair. She was on her knees in tears.
      “Are you sure you want this?” Death’s voice was thick, as if blood was trapping its tongue to the roof of its mouth.
      “More than anything,” Despite her blurred eyes and red face, she did not waver under Death’s gaze.
      “More than your own life?” He turned away, dismissing her as if she was a child throwing a temper tantrum for a toy she could not have. 
      She wrapped a trembling hand around his gaunt wrist, “Anything.”
Death closed his eyes and again he was in 731 Crowley Street. Time travel was a thing Death enjoyed greatly. He liked not being trapped by the fabric walls of time like the mundane. 
      He went to walk once more when he was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass. He turned and saw a glass of milk had been clutched in the girl’s had and now laid shattered and soaking into the wooden floor boards. He paid her no further heed and continued making his way towards the stairs to where Margaret slept.
      “Hello?” Her voice was fearful. Death continued to walk, unfazed. 
      “Hey!”  She was beginning to get shrill, panic bubbling up in her throat.
      Death sighed, “Silence. You have no business in this, go to sleep.”
      “What are you doing in my house!?”
      “I said, this does not concern you, be gone.”
      “You’re crazy, I’m calling the police! Mom, wake up!”
      “Oh silence, she cannot hear you. Your phones will not work. Stop fighting, accept her fate,” He hissed with annoyance. The phones would not ring, they only fed static.
      “Mom!” She ran up the stairs. He followed her slowly as if time stiffened his limbs and slowed his heart. The lock to keep out Death. He touched the knob with dead white hands and he swung open languidly.
      “Mom, wake up, please!” Hands the color of moonlight clasped shoulders cased in pink cotton. They shook, she screamed, she cried, but Margaret of 731 Crowley Street remained peaceful and quiet.
      “Oh God, what have you done…?” She fell to her knees and looked up at Death. “How did you get in here…?” She whispered. Baby blue eyes swam in tears.
      “I am Death, Molly.”
      “You really are aren’t you…?”
      He nodded, “I can wake her, so you may speak one last time.”
      You could see it now within him, and he would be unable to describe this feeling, as the poisoned thorns of his job mutilated and tainted his conscience a long time ago, but it would be the feeling of pity and regret. He had been begged before, but he could not help but feel a black itch of responsibility. He didn’t have many responsibilities, despite being whom he is, he only had to follow the book as fate writes it down and add in his own red-inked deals. But this girl, he molded her bones, wound them in skin, laced through her hair and stitched in the imperfection. He had created that child for Margaret of 731 Crowley Street, how could he not feel for something he made?
      Margaret, in her pink cotton shirt and pants gasped and breathed the cotton-dust out of her pink lungs.
      “Mom,” Molly cried softly, as if her breath was precious. 
      “Molly?” She didn’t look concerned, just confused. She looked over at the shadowy figure, “Who is this?”
“He says he’s Death,” Her voice crashed and waved like an unsettled ocean. But Margaret of 731 Crowley Street did not share what her daughter felt, instead, her eyes lit up.
“I remember you,” Margaret smiled to Death, “You were younger then. I didn’t think Death aged.” He nodded to her.
“Molly, this man let me create you,” She looked at her daughter with shining eyes. Her body looked sick, skin sagged of her bones and yellow teeth stuck out like rotted shingles, but her eyes shone more illuminated and warm than a firefly in dead, dark night. Molly looked taken aback.
“When I met your father I couldn’t have children, but this man told me I could,” A ghost of a smile peeled her lips back. 
“What do you mean?”
“She sold me her life. Her soul for sixteen years and your creation,” He sounded harsh in the exchange between mother and daughter.
“I have to go now. I’m sorry to leave you alone, Molly. But you’re strong and you’ll be okay. I love you and I’ll see you again someday.”
Death advanced.
“No, please! Just leave her alone, write her out, burn your book, change your mind!” She screamed as if her voice could stop hands of death and fate that grasped for her mother.
“No!” She reached out to grab him, but her hand fell through. Only cold could be felt where his arm should be. She cried as his fingers touched Margaret of 731 Crowley Street’s temple. Then her eyes closed, and with a sigh and a smile Margaret fell asleep forever.
“What did you do…?” Molly gasped.
“It was her fate, Molly.”
“Why couldn’t you change it? You made me, do you not care about who I love, what I want?”
“She made a deal, her life had to be taken. You cannot go against fate’s design.”
“Of course you can! Our choices aren’t pointless!”
He did not answer, only a deadly silence polluted the air.
“... Are you saying that our choices are pointless and we’ll just end up wherever fate wants in the end?”
He looked up at her finally, with a cautious and weary gaze.
“You have no choices. Fate winds out your path and you walk upon it, pulled by invisible strings like a puppet. The only thing you have control of is who you are when they run out of your thread.”
“You’re lying!” He laughed a dry demeaning laugh that could curl paint off walls. She held her mother’s hand like a lost toddler.
“We have watched you since the moment you were created. We walked where you walked and say where you rested. We lead you, blind and helpless though a life otherwise meaningless.”
“Liar!” She screamed.
“If you do not believe me I will show you,” He reached out and touched her temple. Broken ice shattered through her and rattled her bones, splintered her skin. She fell through darkness like Alice fell through the rabbit hole. Sometimes she would hear whispers of laughter and conversation, whispers of other times. Then she was falling through sky, the trees, and landed softly--as if lowered down by puppet strings--on grass.
All the color was faded and browned, as if the world was rotting. The sky was a muddy blue and clouds were a yellowing white. Pale green grass swum with worms and there was Molly. Funny, pale and awkward looking Molly when she was thirteen, under the apple tree reading about snails. Real Molly, the Molly who was sixteen and fell through Death`s rabbit hole, stood watching, unable to move, barely able to breathe. A string was tied around young Molly`s neck like a glistening pale collar, it looked like spider silk. It was wrapped around the tree three times and the other end lead off into the distance. A completely separate string was tied to Molly`s book. A boy came over; he was round and had legs like small logs and carrot shaped fingers. His string faded as he followed it up to Molly and ripped her book apart. She cried. She cried a lot back then; real Molly could recall as she remembered all the times the boy picked on her. She fell asleep in class once, and he stuck five pieces of gum in her hair. He pinched her in uncomfortable places and left bruises. But young Molly had a problem. No matter how much the boy picked on her, she still liked him a lot. The boy walked off leaving young Molly sobbing, his string fading as we went, yet never leaving his neck. Older Molly wanted to reach out and comfort her, but she was being pulled by Death’s memory.
The sixteen year old Molly was moving after the boy who had left young Molly with her filthy book in tears. He waddled and rocked on his heels as he waited impatiently to cross the street. But Molly’s feet moved up the street and stood beside a parked car. She leaned into the driver`s side window where a man was enjoying his coffee and reading his paper. With a slender and pale hand she reached for his throat and plucked the string like a guitar chord. Fate was calling.
The man started to drive. He drove faster and faster, his eyes glazed and hot coffee spilling on his lap. Molly could see the boy crossing the street, wrapped in a clear cocoon of the spidery-string that connected to the man's throat. Molly tried to look away, tried to scream, tried to do anything, but the man continued onwards, even after the solid thud of the car hitting the boy and the wheels bouncing over his body.
Then Molly was up again in the dark rabbit hole, not falling down but rising up. She was pulled into her father's bedroom. Dim lit lights pulled in around her, dark wood panels collected beneath her. He had passed out, drunk again. Dried blood crusted on his knuckles, probably her mother’s. Molly stretched her finger out over his agape mouth and two drops of dirty black liquid fell from her fingers. The silk slowly began to wrap around his feet, planning to complete a cocoon like the boy’s. Molly blinked and she was in the hospital. Her hand was on her father’s temple. The screens were blank, lymphoma could be read on his doctor notes, and he was completely wrapped in string. Molly wanted to cry. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to say she loved him. But she just walked out the door, fate and Death moving her limbs for her.
She was falling again, she fell for what felt like years this time. But she didn’t care, she felt empty and cold. She felt like Death. She woke up with a shudder beside her mother, whose body was stiff and cold now. Death stood in front of her. She looked up at him, he was harrowing, he was cruel, he was broken.
“Why did you do those things?” She whispered, shaking. Not because she felt sad but because she felt empty.
“I have no choice,” He echoed her feathery whisper.
“But my dad, that guy…”
“Fate has always lead them.”
“What about my mother?”
He nodded, “You as well.”
“But everything they did, every time that boy touched me, or my father hit my mother… it was planned?”
“Fate has always dealt cruel hands.”
“Why don’t you say no? Why not cut off our collars, free us?”
“Because humanity would destroy itself otherwise. Freedom has, and never can, exist.”
“So even now, this conversation…”
“... was meant to be.”
“And what now, what happens to me?”
Molly could see the strings now. Her mother wrapped up like a spider’s prey, Molly’s string tickling her neck.
“You are going to forget everything.”
“I don’t want to forget.”
“You’ll go mad if you don’t, and that is not your fate.”
“Will I remember you?”
“You’ll remember nothing in the morning and find your mother had passed away in her sleep from heart failure.”
“I won’t forget.” 
Death didn’t smile or utter another word, it touched Molly’s head and only silence could be heard. Then Death closed its eyes and Molly was in her bed, sun flew in through the window. 
Molly stretched like a sunbathed cat and slowly opened her eyes to welcome the day. Everything was a peaceful quiet that was so precious and rare she felt special to be experience such a treat. She tossed herself out of bed and chased dust motes with her eyes as she slipped on her slippers. Her bedside alarm clock blinked 12:00 as if the power had failed last night. She shrugged and shuffled out of her room and looked down to the kitchen, not seeing her mother she walked to Margaret`s bedroom. Molly followed her invisible string to where she hugged her mother, and then to the ground where she cried for hours until she could handle talking on the phone, unaware Death stood beside her as her true maker. Unaware she was only fate’s leashed pet, and spider bait for Death. Unaware her freedom is nothing.

Author's Note

I am quite aware I am bad at dialogue, so please tell me how I can improve. I'm sure there are grammatical mistakes in there, just ignore them. This is old, I felt obliged to upload something though, so I did :D I hope you like it x)

Reviews

[SquinklaPsyOps]

Felt as if I was taking slow steps beside you. You first lay the foundation of the who and where and describe so closely how, then you delve into the emotions all this brings.

[Persona]

I like the idea. You lost me early on because there's a lot of description and I'd like to see some action revolving around the actual plot line take place.