“Stretch! Now push on! Push on! More! Come on, darling, I know that it hurts! Such is our female fate, we all passed through it. Here… I can see his head! A little more! He comes out! He comes all out! A little more, push on!”
Young mother – a woman of approximately twenty-five years – could barely constrain a cry of pain, which was continually coming to a dried-up throat and desperately, like a sea wave, rolling on a coast, seeking to break over and get loose. Two women were helping her during a childbirth. One of them was a midwife, who was now anxiously fussing near the woman in labor – and a complete stranger would give her by her look about forty years even though she was hardly thirty years old, having glanced on her face, which has grown thin due to a constant lack of sleep, and her hollow brown eyes. And the second… sun-casting, golden-colored and as if slightly transparent hair of the second woman were as if fluttering on the invisible to ordinary people wind during these moments, obeying the will of all the energies that were streaming through her, her celestial-blue eyes were shining with patience and kindness; white clothing, reminding a fantastic and magnificent wedding dress, only supplemented and emphasized her beauty. Hands of this second woman, so similar during these instants to a young regal bride, were directed to a woman in labor – and brightly flashing sparkles of light were continually flowing from them and smoothly, precisely like winter snowflakes, falling down from the skies, sitting down on her tummy, from where the newborn baby was about to be completely born. Neither the woman in labor nor the midwife saw in these minutes this mysterious stranger – for eyes of men are too blind to notice what is subject only to a spirit. Yet this didn’t confuse invisible guest at all – for the nature of her mission was so noble that a life for the sake of her fulfillment was already the highest possible reward. The light that was now flowing from her hands through invisible thin threads to a mother and her child, was weaving hidden for a common mortal being a purple sphere that was protecting them like a shield. A smile was playing on a face of the blue-eyed blonde and her cheeks have already managed to blush during the time of operation.
Life was entering the law. The baby was about to be born.
***
The woman in a black hood and the dress, reminding itself mourning clothes of a widow, who has recently lost her beloved husband, accurately stepped over a threshold, having almost hooked by a door’s handle with a hanging on her back and attached to a belt scythe. Having hushed to a cat, who has rushed under her legs and was just going to start crying “meow”, thereby breaking the blissful silence, so loved by this woman, she looked around and methodically put away from a pocket of her black as night dress a book of impressive thickness.
This, as it usually turns out in real life, completely unexpected by inhabitants of this institution guest wasn’t afraid to be discovered at all. To tell the truth, only cats and these few living beings, who have not yet lost a connection with what many mortals call as “the other world”, were able to detect her presence here.
Having once again re-read one of the pages of her book, which has been wrapped up in a black-brown skin, this green-eyed brunette slowly nodded, as if having made herself sure of correctness of the choice of both time and place, looked on a bony watch that was attached to her hand, and started slowly walking deep along the corridor.
Those ones living in this nursing home, if only they knew in advance what type of guest have visited their house today, would immediately rush away like mad from this future mourning place, protecting themselves with various signs of the cross in a strange hope that they, these signs, can alter their fates, which they have been forming for many years of own lives. The guest in black perfectly knew it – and this fact cannot give birth to anything other than a sad smile. For uncountable eons of her devoted sovereign service, she managed to get used to such an attitude from mankind, and it ceased to disturb her any longer. After all, for her, it was usual – and the only possible one – job, and this guest has been trying to execute it as precisely and carefully as possible.
Maybe in regards with her similar attitude to own work duties, she now decided to say a final goodbye to each of elderly pensioners, who were peacefully sleeping during this midnight in closed rooms away from prying public eyes. She quietly climbed by a cold stone ladder on a second floor with bedrooms, trying not to produce too much noise with her shod black brilliant boots or to touch yet another piece of local household furniture with her casting opaque light scythe, and started traveling from room to a room. She quietly embraced sleeping people, trying to imprint their faces in her memory and to hear the sound of their still-beating hearts. Two out of several dozens – who have lived their mortal lives very dignifiedly – she embraced so strong and has been holding in her hands for so long that beating hearts of the two stopped their rhythms while their masters were dreaming, thus entraining their souls in wanderings through labyrinths of other worlds. One may say that these two were lucky ones – they have left before those to whom this life will seem like a hell after several dozens of minutes. They were the worthiest ones among all living here and therefore according to the orders given today to a black guest, their parting with this world should have been as painless as possible. Having kissed this couple, our guest dexterously opened her thick book on the last page, which materialized from out of nowhere during that very instant and added itself to a book. Two names of her recent beloved ones were already imprinted on this page in golden letters – unlike a vast set of gray and almost black-colored names, which were filling in a small script several previous pages of this chronicle. Shaking her head with satisfaction, the guest in a black hood, covering her head, has been continuing her night trip until her bony wearable highlighted “five minutes before 1 A.M.” time. Then, as if having bethought, she took her eternally wearable weapon from her back, approached electricity switchboard and forcefully struck it several times with her scythe. Something flashed inside it, began to sparkle, then sparks started running over the wires, flame jumped on wall-papers, then on elements of furniture, greedily consuming oxygen. Several minutes later entire floor started blazing.
Death was entering the law. And no one could avoid her eternal embraces.
***
“By a granted to me right let a life be given to you!” gently whispered the blue-eyed woman in white, bluntly kissing a newborn baby.
“By a granted to me right you are fated to leave this place with me after several minutes,” the green-eyed guest in a black hood, which have come out of nowhere, whispered with a cold and aloof voice, having come near a baby and leaned with both hands on her scythe just like a guard, carefully protecting entrusted treasure.
Sights of two women crossed.
“What a surprise! What type of bad luck brought you here?” said a woman in a white dress, looking at the unexpectedly arrived black guest. “It’s written in my book, that this dear child has to be born in exactly two minutes and thirty-three seconds.”
“And it’s written in mine, that he has to die in four minutes and forty-six seconds. So please apologize me for that, but… I am afraid that you together with his parents have to behold how he slowly dies from a cerebral hemorrhage, which has occurred due to the hard birth procedure and patrimonial trauma of mother.”
“That’s strange…” the white guest sadly looked at the kid. “What’s the sense in it? Can you hold for just a minute, I will try to inquire of it?”
“I cannot delay, for I have instructions, and you know that well. It’s possible to delay only in exceptional cases – which is, unfortunately, not this one.”
The white-winged woman in a wedding dress closed her eyes and raised her head up as though listening attentively to the unknown secret music, which has been filling the entire universe since the beginning of creation and available only to its devoted listeners.
“Indeed, everything is as you said,” she replied after twenty seconds. “With such a swift death the soul of this child has to expiate an essential part of mistakes made during his previous lives, and for his parents this grief according to the plan will become a binding focal point, which will help them to overcome former mutual offenses in order to further become a strong and close-knit family, in which the soul of this kid can be born again, living happily this second time.”
“Well, now you see,” the guest in a dark attire nodded with satisfaction. “There are no current mistakes and no expected ones. His ways are inconceivable as we both know it.”
“Indeed so…” the white-winged woman smiled. “I was entrusted to accompany so many lovely and innocent kids to this world.”
“And I was forced to accompany so many sinners away from it,” hemmed her colleague. “Well, are you ready for the next trial of death? Please come closer to the parents, embrace them so they can at least feel your nearby presence, they will have hard moments coming to them.”
“How compassionate you have become as of lately, my friend, I can’t help but wonder!” either seriously or just for fun noticed Life.
“Blame it on the years…” Death answered philosophically. “What they can do to us, women!”
***
Two women – one in black and one in white attire – were sitting on a bench near a city pond, looking on floating nearby swans.
“And do you remember that young man, physicists, who have been always joking about the third karma law of Newton and the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, – and it turned out to be always equal to forty-two? Why did you take him away at such an early age? He had yet to live and live on.”
“Not why, my friend, but what for. He would leave his motherland several years afterward, be dragged into a military concern, started working for foreign intelligence services – and would have helped to create such a weapon that you, my colleague, would truly shudder. Therefore, I was given an order to take him away ahead of time to help both him and this world as well.”
“Well, let’s suppose so,” Life was going on with her inquiries. “And that little girl, Polina, who was raped by two thugs – why have you allowed them to kill her afterward? You were standing near them, keeping silence. I still can’t forget how hard it was to help her come to life and be born outside of maternity hospital when her drank pregnant mother began to give her a birth.”
“Exactly because she had such a family, in which she could not live for more than ten years. Everything would come to an end in a suicide, you understand? And this is such a sin that if you take one on a balance of your soul – you’ll be washing it off for a century. And she passed through sufferings now, became a martyr, it will be much easier for her now – it’s not Earth, there is an intended place in another civilization for her. And I played a nice joke with these two freaks, by the way, – for the first one I palmed off during a year such a fake vodka that his liver didn’t sustain it, and the second one fell into a manhole which was opened this day totally not casually. I was told in confidence afterward, that no more births are planned for these two guys – so you shouldn’t accept their childbirth any longer, don’t you worry.”
“Well, you know…” Life can’t help but be curious, “and why do you wage wars, then? You desire to harvest, enjoy sufferings of men?”
“It’s not me,” smiled Death. “It’s people. And what do I do? Do you even know, what longest lists they send me in each day like that? I can hardly manage to fully read them when it’s already necessary to put them to action!” she laughed. “I have already seen all kinds of deaths – both clever and silly, brave and unimportant, self-sacrifices even… however, their numbers keep falling as of recent decades. Humans grow thin in spirit, and their lives become common, and their deaths become unimportant,” philosophically noticed Death and raised her scythe as if edifying.
“Yes,” her colleague sadly agreed with her. “Humans are, unfortunately to me, mortal. And how do you think, my friend, whether there is something in this world that you cannot take away with you?”
“Ideas, probably,” answered Death after a minute of thinking.
“And dreams,” added Life. “Ones that are bigger than an individual is.”
“Indeed,” Death agreed with her. “Big ones.”
26.07.2017