Disenchanted with life Byron Diaeh placed an advert in the paper for Death. It read: I sit in a chair of the finest apathy and as I wait quietly for the world to become fiction, I request a tryst with Death. May we discuss Life. Please Respond.
If you are anthropocentric it is your belief that mankind is the centre of existence. Not an unusual belief, most of mankind believes it to be true, that they are not only the dominant species but they are also the superior species. But what exactly have they achieved due to their superiority? To stand on two legs? Big advance. Ask the ape, or the bear, or the dinosaurs that preceded them. Opposable thumbs? I suppose it makes it easier to poke these thumbs further up their collective arses. But then again, monkeys have four opposable thumbs, and bigger arses. And of course not forgetting to fight; to have the self awareness to hate others of the same species for reasons that eclipse on a planetary level the conception of the ridiculous. It gives them the minds to invent endlessly more efficient and entertaining ways of destroying themselves, and the planet that they carve up with misconceived ownership, to disperse in the most self-gratuitous way possible. Rhetorical questions are not my strong point.
Not all mankind, now a term the wrong side of politically correct. Not all personkind (even the women) believed this. Byron Diaeh didn’t believe this. Death herself didn’t believe this. Byron would have liked to have been a poet, but he wasn’t very good with words, his heart had the poetry, his tears bypassed language. Alot of animals have the capacity to love, no other animal but the human has the capacity to hate. There is a civilisation wide delusional feeling of grandeur on this place, a phenomena which might be somewhat ironic, cause mirth even, to those that can sit, watch, and realise. The folk that laugh to themselves in the many establishments designed for the mentally unhinged, I believe they get it. Give them the world and go home for jelly I say, you’ll feel better. And before this fictional story starts, pay human kind the greatest honour, and laugh at yourself. With respect, you’re funny.
Mr Diaeh stared with a mix of pretend apathy and real disappointment at the scrap of paper upon which the advert had been written. It had been three weeks since it had been placed, and it had run for the full three weeks since. He had received the usual abusive response, it had amused him at first when he collected the mail from the post office box. Now it was merely vexing; threats on his life, from people who did not know him, the recipient of a dozen leaflets from a dozen different religious groups, offering their help. Now you may ask, what of these believers and their gods a plenty, do they not give credence to the previous statement of anthropocentrism? I will merely speculate; however high the power, humankind does not do humble.
Someone had even sent Byron a packet of razor blades, the note attached said “see you on the other side”. Byron could not raise a smile to this one. The cup of coffee under his nose began to steam his reading glasses, the noise from the coffee shop began to filter back in, Byron added a sigh to the general blare. He sat uncomfortably in his middle twenties, of average height and weight (if not a little undernourished). The one redeeming feature he held was the cause of the destined solitude he had endured his whole life. Beneath his dark and untidy hair, matted in places, hid his eyes of indistinguishable colour. They were dark, of that people were sure, but how dark no one could say, they appeared to be permanently under shadow. It had led to his peers never knowing or understanding whether he was actually looking at them or not. Therefore he had never been included, his appearance made him an outsider to the normal folk. But it was something he never did mind, his voyeurism on life gave him a perspective he thought he would not have had if his eyes had been blue, possibly a forced superiority complex of his own. Those who did see him, and did not look to his eyes first, may have seen the scar on his arm if it was uncovered. And they would still have walked away. His left arm had a jagged disfigurement running from his shoulder to half way down his forearm, the scar was raised in parts, indented in parts and the sewing punctures were still visible. The accident had happened over fifteen years ago, and still he was judged a man of questionable ethics, they assumed it had happened in a fight of somesort. They probably watched too much television.
When Byron was ten years old, he used to swim in the local reservoir. He was always alone, even at this age, although he did not understand, he had learnt to accept his fate. If you believe such things: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, may spin, apportion, and cut his life yarn, but his destiny was his own. Of this he was adamant. Byron believed he was in control of his destiny, a director, and not a player in somebody else’s. He had swam here for the last few years, no one asked him anymore where it was he was going, he had isolated himself long ago. The day was bright, the sun warmed his poets’ heart and he even managed a smile at the sky. He striped off to his cut up jean shorts and carefully folded all his worldly belongings into his towel. A yell of excitement echoed through the woodland beside the reservoir as Byron threw himself into the dark blue water. The glacial chill accepted him again without emotion. The water was always cold even on a hot day like this, as it stung his bones and reminded him he was alive. An event was soon to happen that reminded him what being alive was. The fair folk of his hometown had an inherent laziness when it came to the dumping of household bulk, the tip was another town away, and the reservoir was not. The basic mathematics of humankind dictated that an old bed and half a car were better off under water. Unfortunately certain sides of this reservoir were not man-made and therefore sloped as nature’s erosion intended. The stinging at Byrons' bones was no longer just the cold, he had twisted under the surface to swim back to air, but as he did, somewhere between the iron bedsprings and the decaying bonnet he became stuck. The iron springs gripped at his arm, the bonnet snapped at his legs like an emaciated hippo. As he struggled vainly his lungs expelled the air he wanted to keep, rising to the surface in bubbles, each bubble wore a face of mocking as they burst to the surface leaving Byron behind. Panic pushed adrenaline to all corners of Byrons small frame, his legs at last came free, and with what little oxygen that remained reflexively hurled his feet against the solid metal of the dead car. The sting became a burn in his arm as he exploded towards the surface to inhale a breath to rival his very first. Pain swan across his arm and legs, he lurched against the agony to reach the bank and dry land. As he crawled out he noticed his legs were cut and bleeding, the water mixed and turned the blood pink as it cascaded across the downy hair on his shins. Not too badly hurt he thought, until the pain in his arm forced his eyes to look. A hideous mouth stretched from his shoulder to his forearm, white puffy tissue smiled at him, blood did not pump, it seeped maliciously from the opening. Blind terror forced his other hand to grip at the fissure, trying to force it back together, it was then it started to bleed. In sporadic coughs the blood that was supposed to feed his brain vomited from his arm in thickening clots. Grabbing his t-shirt and wrapping it about the gash, more to take his eyes from it than to stop the bleeding, he slammed his feet into his trainers and ran home. Blood pumped faster around his body and it was sheer terror alone that got him to his front door. He kicked madly at the wooden blockade, his heart in his ears. He remembered his mother’s face, looking worried for the first time that he could remember, her screams for his father were the last thing he could remember before passing out.
The doctors had said the reason for the uneven technique on his patching up was due to the fact that parts of his flesh were literally scoured out and that they had to bunch the skin in places, it could be corrected by cosmetic surgery after it had healed. Byron looked at his forearm now, it had never been corrected. Partly, he remembered, because of his stubbornness not to have it corrected, it had made people care after all, but mostly because he slipped back into anonymity soon after the accident. He remembered getting a telling off by his father, never to go back to the reservoir again, the disciplinary speech rose in tone as his father demanded that Byron look at him when he was speaking. Unfortunately Byron was looking at him. His father walked away in mid scream, yelling to his mother that the boy was impossible, that he didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to him. Life wound on.
Behind this memory was the passion to meet the personification named Death. He knew she existed, he had told the councillor that, after his accident in the third and final meeting before he was dismissed, he had seen her. Death was a girl the same age as him, he was sure. She was in the water with him, she had swam to the surface with him, he remembered. He remembered her complexion, ghostly white, nearly florescent under the darkness of the water. She had walked from the water with him, always a few steps away, looking at him calmly, constantly. His mind racing with the pain he had hardly noticed that she was there, until he thought back later. She had run all the way home with him, just looking. Her face blank and expressionless, but within the features carved from stone was something, something of a feeling rather than any impression that he got from her, sort of like compassion, maybe even concern. As he reached his house, she stopped behind him, and then Byron could remember no more. He knew that she had been Death. She had been wearing a black dress. Her lips were red, her eyes were black, utterly black, without pupils. They had reminded him of his own eyes. Byron had been persuaded that it had been part of the panic he had felt, that his mind had been playing tricks on him. But Byron knew it to be true, his ten year old logic told him so, and so he had kept quiet about it ever since. Begrudgingly leaving the warmth of the coffee house Byron began to speculate, his resolution still fixed on his truth; that it was her turn now, to stay quiet about his existence.
The day was cold and the warmth of the coffee shop disappeared quickly from his bones. His arm had begun to ache. The city he had moved to a few months ago, the city he now attended, busied itself around him, it paid him no heed as he meandered through street and park. Those he looked at he recorded their faces, he could watch longer than others, who can pass only the merest of glances between strangers for fear of making too much eye contact. A sad state that people can no longer greet a stranger in the street without being branded a pervert, a mugger, a thief, or a killer. Even hormones are fought in the battle not to touch another’s eyes with your own, men do not want to be mocked, or worse, misinterpreted for a rapist. And women do not want to appear to offer themselves as prey, or become part of the male dominated sport of “nice arse, shame about the tits, but I could still ‘ave her”. If angels sing in the clouds it is without societies enlightened inhibitions.
The letters clutched in his hand were a weight to his soul, the huge park he walked through seemed nothing more than an offensive scar on the city’s otherwise self delusive perfect complexion. He discarded them, threw them in a passing bin and muttered a curse pulling his coat around him tighter. “Hey glum gus, Maybe there was the reply in that lot.” For a moment Byron ignored the voice of the woman sat on the park bench next to the bin, Byron wasn’t used to people making conversation with him. “Hey you, do you hear me?” Still no reaction. “Byron you plank.” She spoke again, this time with a little more volume, enough volume to rival a gas explosion. Byron heard his name, from someone other than himself, an odd experience he hadn’t been familiar with for a while. He stopped and walked back a few paces to behold the women calling him, apart from a little tug in his stomach at the appearance of the pretty stranger no recognition fired in his mind. “You think I’m pretty? Why thank you.” The voice took on a girlish tone of sugar, the kind fathers cave into all over the world. Perplexed, Byrons face showed an emotion that may have resembled a smile, but it lacked practice. He continued to look at her silently, the subtleties of manners passing him by with a tisk. His colourless eyes whirled in reverence at her milk coloured skin touched with peach, presented to him by a plunging v-necked jumper and visible between the open lapels of a heavy woollen coat. She uncrossed and crossed her legs unconsciously pulling his eyes to her short skirt and thick woollen tights, all cloth made of black. Byron's eyes followed the indulgent symmetry of her reclining figure, ascending her slender neck, the colour of her skin and slow recognition, to her poetic face. Her full lips were painted light blue, the colour was vibrantly alive compared to the paleness of her cheeks, her eyes were wide, open, and beautiful. And they were black, without pupils. She flashed a smile at him. “Do you remember me now my little Houdini? I’m a bit dryer than when you last saw me.” She whispered with sugar. “Death? …but your older.” Replied Byron, the total lack of notation of a possible insult passing his non-existent people skills with deft speed. “Why thank you.” Death replied indignantly. “No I didn’t mean... I’m sorry” Stammered Byron, his alarm diminishing as Death flashed another playful smile. “I didn’t think you’d reply,” He Said, “They thought I was mad you know, when I told them I saw you all those years back. Behavioural problems and delusional tendencies they said.” Byron stopped. He’d noticed Death looking at his face quizzically. “I know, my eyes.” The sorrow in his tone discharged the excitement he felt at an actual conversation. “They’re pretty.” Death replied. “They’re grey.” Byron flinched unable to disguise his astonishment. “Are they?” His voice nearly pleading for confirmation, “I didn’t know, or at least I knew but no one else has ever known. Thank you. Your....” “I know, you think I’m pretty.” Death laughed easily, Byron could just stand, stupefied. She reached out a slender hand her fingers tipped in blue to match her lips, chilled to the touch she gently caught his hand and pulled him carefully to sit next to her. She swung around on the bench and sat cross-legged facing him. He turned his head, a little overwhelmed, his eyes darting across her beauty and to the floor without control. His brow furrowed for a second, his mouth forcing a question to challenge his reason, a conversation is a powerful tool to those who cannot converse with ease. “How can I know that it’s really you? You could just be another nut or predator like the others that responded to my ad. Or would you like to save my soul?” Byron avoided the girl’s eyes, unfortunately the sweep of her sweater offered the only other view. Byron’s eyes narrowed, just visible under ribbing of the v-neck was the tip of an odd tattoo, it was a crude design, it looked freshly scribed but in a style that must have died in the last millennium. From what he could see it looked to resemble the tip of…., “It’s a scythe.” Death pulled the neck of her jumper to the side, quite an unfortunate act for Byron’s already shivering heart. Her skin lifted with the shape of her breast, too smooth and faultless, it seemed unreal. The barely perceptible crescent of subtly darker pink whispered promises of equally perfect nipples. Byron’s attention flitted nervously between the two. Finally, and surprisingly, the black and ancient shape of the scythe won. It looked engraved rather than painted into the skin, scoured by tools that no longer existed. He looked to her eyes for an explanation. “It was done by a people that live now only in myth, just before their island sunk. And yes, it hurt like hell. I am Death Byron, I don’t have to prove it. I am who I am, just as you are who you are. And stop looking at my breasts.” She demanded. He looked shameful in his questioning, embarrassed with his line of vision, but to most people Death’s anthropomorphism was a fictional creation at best. Byron was just touching on a corner of society’s rationalism, within its square was a place totally void of fancy. Life. A place, to his credit, he did not visit often.
“Now this tryst that you requested, shall we begin?” Death leant forward, Byron’s eyes, heart, and lap, twitched in foolish and uncontrolled anticipation. His heart nearly gave up as he saw Death’s tongue dart across her lips, wetting them before a kiss. She touched her lips to his. The delicate pressure fed his heart with as much adrenaline as it had ever tasted, soft was a word that would be left describing thorned bricks in comparison. The frictionless moisture pressed against his dry mouth, her lips opened slightly and he felt the tip of her tongue like a waterfall sending pulses of sensation through his chest, some parts of him indicated that they might explode. Death pulled away slowly, tracing the bow of his top lip with her tongue before she departed. Byron could not open his eyes. He dare not in case she had gone. “Open your eyes little one.” He heard hear voice and knew she remained, but it sounded different, the atmosphere it resonated in had changed, they were somewhere else, but where? There was a slight echo to her speech, inferring a space enclosed, and the silent wind of the park was now deafening in its absence, but how? Slowly and anxiously Byron opened his eyes to find himself still sitting beside the figure of Death, he went to breathe a sigh of relief, until he realised the park bench he had been sitting on was no longer a bench.
Death sat beside him continuing to stare at him with a smile wide across her face, the ease of her smile failing to subdue him. “Where the hell are we?” Byron jumped from his seat, which now took the form of wooden seat at the bow of a half built river barge. That is to say the barge was without cover, the wooden seats were the only interior visible, and they stretched back the thirty or so feet to the stern in shapeless irregular rows. The boats rudder was manned, if such a description could be bestowed on the creature leaning nonchalantly on the ancient and knurled wood, the only other presence on the boat. Red lensed glasses perched on his long nose, his skin looked as it had been weathered by the sun, for about eternity, his hair struck out from his scalp to resemble the sweep of the device he leant on, it too had been bleached by the sun. The skeletal frame held on to his skin loosely, as if it could no longer be bothered with the effort. A cloak of faded black, more fitting in style to Byron’s travelling companion, used him as a coat hanger. It lay undone giving up the fight to maintain any decency the creature had left. The creature’s eyes stared calmly ahead in a tranquil lilac colour, a dry smile permanently pulled at the side of his mouth. “Charon.” Death acknowledged the man, her voice soft but carried to the ears of the ferryman as if she had stood next to him. “Lady Death, how’s it sailing cheri?” His voice carried back in the same manner, his accent for some reason was of New Orleans descent, yet he must have been in existence well before the United States were even a twinkle in Columbus’s eye. “Good my old friend, this is Byron my.. Guest.” She replied. “I though I smelt life in him. I will not question, I just hope he pleases your loins.” The gravel of his voice broke into a dry chuckle. Byron sat bemused. “This is the river Styx?” He asked instead. “It is live one, it is indeed.” Charon chuckled again. “So we’re going to Hell?” Byron’s voice took a tone of understandable panic. “That’s an inaccuracy of journalism at the time. Myths may start in truth but the truth rapidly becomes invention, a necessity of recital I think, who knows? Charon ferries all dead across the river, to the Island, and to the wait.” “What Island?” Byron queried with idiosyncratic predictability. “That one.” Death pointed before them, and Byron wished he had never asked. The river, if you could call it that it was too calm for any reality to present itself as the norm, was more like a sea in it’s sheer size. Byron had not questioned what land they had come from, for there was nothing behind them but what was in front of them. The whole plane seemed to be covered by a dome of clearest blue sky sporadically interrupted by opaque orange clouds This offered uneasy explanation for the eerie echo to every uttered word.
The boat came to a halt suddenly on the beach now very much beneath them. There was no tide washing back and forth, just glittering sand which seemed as it should be shimmering in the sky and not on ground beneath them. The beach stretched as far as the eye could see to each side of them, but instead of the expected steady incline of the beach leading the quintessential height above sea level theory, twenty feet away from them inland the Island became concave, graded to create a huge basin. Everything else was there, the sparse foliage leading to a denser, sanded forest entwined with well-trodden paths in no particular direction, just the land forgot to rise but fell instead. “Where is this? Where are we?” Byron asked, before he made any attempt to vacate the old wooden barge. It seemed safer. “Precisely or with a touch of fiction? Precisely we are inside one of those tacky snowglobes which currently sits on the desk of an estate agent, a present to him from his brother. Or with a touch of rational fictionalisation, this is the Waiting. People…, wait here.” Answered Death plainly. “For what?” Asked Byron suspiciously. “Humans like to wait, what can I say?” Vagueness, Byron was beginning to understand, being one of Death’s multi-faceted talents. It wasn’t that she answered Byron’s question, or even hinted that she could not give an answer, she merely hinted that to enquire further would be a mistake. And still she smiled. “Why have you bought me here Death? Am I to die?” He stood stock still even his unusual sanity was beginning to question itself. “You asked to see me, requested a tryst sitting in your chair of finest apathy.” Her voice took a mocking tone, playfully he hoped. “But why did you decide to answer me?” “Because you asked.” She responded sincerely. “Not many of you even believe we exist anymore, it’s nice for a girl to be asked out once in a while. Now come on.” Death pulled off her coat and fell to a seat on the glistening sand. She hurriedly tugged at her shoes, throwing them down the beach like an excited child, with more grace than Byron thought possible she squirmed her bottom on the sand grabbing at her tights and pulling them off and discarding them the same way as the shoes. Death jumped to her feet beaming at him. “I love the feel of this sand, it’s like dew touched grass.” Byron watched her bemused and enchanted and Deaths unimpeded happiness crept onto his face in a small smile as she wiggled the sand between her blue painted toes. Can you love Death he thought, or was that just a mixed metaphor? “You can love me if you wish.” She replied. “Now do I have to kiss you to move you anywhere?” “Yes.” Byron mouth opened before his brain could intercede, or even think. He felt his face blush red, an unusual feeling he had not felt for a long time. He tried to look away but just felt his eyes drawn to the newly unveiled legs of his companion, aiding his embarrassment tenfold as blood left his head and began to migrate south. His body had mutinied, and his mind was quick to follow, as he momentary thought of running his hand from her feet and over her smooth calves. He saw her legs bend before him in a curtsy, pulling the sides of her skirt slightly away from her thighs in mock reverence. “Thank you sir, your thoughts are most becoming.” Byron forced himself to look at her face again, past the burning in his cheeks, to read her features in prayer that she was joking once more. Her smile remained, the burning of his face began to fade. “I’m sorry, it’s just I haven’t been in many situations of conversation, especially with someone…” His voice trailed into silence unable to eek a compliment from his diminishing confidence. “It’s alright, you’ve said already you think I’m pretty.” Death cut in. “Beautiful.” His mouth spoke again without his brain, this time he was pleased. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to say, I mean your jeans seem to be trying to tell me all on their own.” Byron closed his eyes and realised how lucky he’d been, to be able to forget exactly what embarrassment felt like. He was being reminded now, he didn’t even have to look, he felt the crotch of his jeans push out with a further kick in the teeth pulse of blood. Death continued to laugh easily, the sound impelled him to reopen his eyes. The laughter stooped and the girl Death stepped closer to him, her face tilted down slightly but her eyes wide and provocative staring into his with the innocence of a devil, Byron could do nothing but stand stock-still. With one hand around the back of his neck the other brazenly caught and squeezed his jeans in the place that had been the source of his embarrassment, his jeans pushed back in an attempt to imbedded itself into her palm. She giggled again. “Now are you coming or what?” Again she touched her lips to his, and again he fell into an abyss of rapture.
The sensation of both of Death’s hands on his face, the gentle but passionate touch of her tongue entwining with his, bought Byron back from the heady darkness. He felt her pull slowly away, kissing him twice in quick succession as if to bring him round. The world suddenly felt as if it tumbled awkwardly 360 degrees but forgot to tell Byron, noise filtered back into his ears, or became noticeable because of its new abundance. He felt a cushioned bench beneath his rear and assumed he must now be sitting down, something pushed his shoulder. “Come on Mr Diaeh, open up. What flavour soda do you want?” Byron opened his eyes again slowly in time to see Death’s foot poke him in the chest again. She sat crossed legged on the table in front of him, grinning again, she withdrew her foot and folded it beneath her. “Can I kiss or what? So what flavour do you want?” The oddity of the question did not fail to pass Byron by, the reasoning behind it became clear as he saw where he was now sat.
Something you get few of in England, are the million or so evolved life forms known as soda shops. The whole place was clinically clean, decorated in memorabilia from what must have been the dawn of time, like one of those hideous themed places. It looked to be a small place but there was a feeling that if Byron attempted to walk from one end to another it would take him half an eternity. The carbon trimmed booths and red vinyl bench seats shone with a newly born glow, the chequered floor immune to the dust friction of the rollerblading waiters and waitresses busily taking orders and asking for no payment. The place was almost full, the reverberation of uncountable conversations bounced of the plate glass walls. The building appeared to be situated within a graveyard, also seemingly without boundaries. Byron looked harder amongst the infinite gravestones of all shapes and sizes and saw groups of mourners scattered around the grass and gravelled ground, they were inconsistent in their spacing, and all were obviously unaware of the ceremony beside them, or along from them. His head began to ache. “It sometimes helps the new arrivals to put their current circumstances in to perspective.” Death answered without being asked. “You mean remind them unequivocally that they are dead.” Retorted Byron with muted emotions. “Yeah, something like that. The funeral just in front of you is happening in a small village in Cumbria” They sat silently together for a while, Byron saturated with a dozen feuding feelings of fear and laughter. His face was stony, the standard expression, that his face could fall into without the compromising action of thought. He watched the tearful mourners closest to him, Cumbria oddly being not a dozen metres away from the glass. He saw the deceased quite obviously standing amongst them, the dead man’s face was serene and calm, breaking only into concern as he looked upon what Byron assumed was his wife, crying without the restraint of stability. He saw the man walk towards his preoccupied wife to hold her, it offered her no comfort but the deceased appeared placated. Drawing himself away from these proceedings Byron finally spoke. “Cherry peach smoothy please.” “And a blackberry milkshake.” Continued Death as the waitress materialised at the table. Byron saw the waitress show some amount of surprise and fear as she immediately recognised this particular customer. “Certainly Lady Death, my name is Tess and I’ll be your waitress today.” There was an air of stammer in her voice, behind the well-practised words. Death smiled at the girl. “I know your name Tess.” It was a statement, purely and simply, but a statement can never be simple. The waitress skated away barely managing to disguise the speed in which she wished to depart. “What’s up with her?” Asked Byron. “Well its like if you find your proprietor sitting at a table, and you want to please her in case she makes you work here for another century.” Byron’s mouth opened to question further but Death looked at him, without her smile, and he fell silent. Tess appeared again next to the table and placed the tray with their order on next to Deaths knee, as she remained perched on the table. “Will there be anything else? Food perhaps, substance, waiting times?” The waitress asked timidly. “He is not waiting Tess. But thank you.” Tess bowed her head briefly and without question, and skated away again in some relief. “She’s scared of you.” Byron stated looking directly into Deaths eyes for a response. Death continued to watch waitress Tess roll away but replied. “Everybody is scared of Death.” She said absently, Byron tried to read the words, between them, through them, even underneath them, but found it just to be a sentence, nothing more, nothing less. To Byron’s relief Death’s smile returned as she turned back to him. She uncrossed her legs and placed her bare feet on each of his thighs, she handed his drink to him and playfully rolled around the straw in her own drink with her tongue. “So Byron Diaeh, what do you want?” She asked with a small sway of her legs, forcing Byron to compel his eyes with renewed vigour to look only at Deaths eyes, a feat he surprisingly managed, much to Deaths humour. “You have me here, what do you want to ask?” To tell the truth Byron had never thought this far, he believed he knew Death was alive, or in existence anyway, but it was the type of belief that he was happy just to believe in, and not actually test. This was, with a few exceptions, the longest conversation he had ever held, he just wanted to stay here and talk, but he hadn’t the slightest idea what about. He remained silent, Death continued to look at him drawing slowly on her drink, she was not known for her lack of patience for she must have forever. When the silence was broken, it was neither by him nor by her, it was by another.