Eerie Silence

Tension was more than adequate to describe the atmosphere in the apartment.

Amy stood in the kitchen, hovering above her bowl of cereal while Damian sat on the bed. His eyes looked to her on occasion before dropping back to his hands. Black hair was free, falling about his sharp jaw and casting long shadows across his cheeks.

There was a knot in Amy’s stomach that stopped her from eating the soggy flakes and banana that she had gotten for herself.

Neither one had spoken since leaving the school. That was nearly six hours ago.

She found herself wanting to lie down and rest although she was not tired. The idea of sleep was tempting, but Damian sat on the bed and she did not wish to disturb him, or engage with him. With a constantly shifting facial expression, it was clear that Damian was deep in thought. Although sleep would allow her to escape any potential argument they might have, Amy would have to ask him to move off the bed and then Damian might insist they talk.

They weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on anything at the moment. There was a time when Amy and Damian had spoken of everything from music to history. Damian strayed from speaking of his own past, but could recount historical events with vivid detail and enthusiasm. Not too long before the night she was hit by a car, they had talked for six hours about two books they had recently finished reading. Now, Amy was afraid of eye contact.

One wrong move and she could start world war three in their living room.

She started straight into her bowl and watched milk rise to the surface of the cereal. The silver spook was pinched between her thumb and pointer finger, poised to lift a mouthful from the blue ceramic bowl. Her stomach growled, but she remained still.

“Amy,” his voice brought her back to reality. “Where’d you go?” There was a forced smile on his lips and the sound of a voice in the otherwise silent room was eerie.

Amy wanted to curl under the counter and escape him, run from his haunting gaze. “I just spaced,” she mumble and swooped a mouthful of cereal to end the conversation.

Nodding, Damian stood from the bed and moved leisurely to the dresser. “I…” he pulled out a long sleeved black shirt, “think that we should move. You’re too close to your old life here and there is no point in having you meander about with the risk of discovery.” Picking out new black boxers Damian turned and faced her. “There’s one other item of importance that is mandatory to discuss.” He took a plush towel from another drawer. “The collection, our assignments, should be dealt with together.”

She tossed the bowl into the sink, milk sloshing out and a crack running up the side. “I don’t need you to babysit me, but I’ll settle on us having more time together. We don’t need to move. I know I can’t go back to school, but this is my home.” She saved a few choice words to mutter after Damian entered the shower and she could hear the water. He would suffocate her, but Amy remained in love with the control freak.

“You’ll have to watch them grow up, move away, and then eventually die. You don’t want to see that.” What he did was to protect her. Damian had promised he would never hurt her when he told her he collected souls. Everything he did now was to protect her, as though she was still human and required his protection. Even he couldn’t stop death though, and there was nothing to protect her from now.

Without Damian in the room, she was open to her personal thoughts. The tension remained, throbbing like a living organism.

Amy rested on the bed, back pressed into the pillows and her eyes locked on the ceiling. Pondering what new order Damian would return with, Amy sighed. They would somehow survive her new “condition”; eventually, Damian would see things her way and understand what a blessing they had been given. She would make him see that they helped people in their most desperate hour, and that she had been given a second chance to live.

Or, she thought bitterly, he would become so frustrated with her that they would kill each other.

She hadn’t changed with her death, she wanted to tell him, she was still Amy. How could he be so angry with her now? Was it because they were finally talking about death? Damian held a curiosity about what had happened to her and yet he was so determined to keep professionalism about the job.

Shooting upright in bed, Amy knocked two pillows onto the floor and sent a book which had been resting peacefully at the foot of the bed flying into the living room area. Massive, loud ringing clouded her thoughts as the sound penetrated her hearing despite her best efforts to muffle the obnoxious volume. She grimaced and plugged her ears. The sound intensified. Snatching a pillow up, she covered both ears. Louder yet.

Toppling off of the bed, Amy landed on her knees, hands cupping her ears. She hardly felt the impact of the floor as the sound rocked her body.

It drove her out of the apartment. Down the street and around the block, she raced, trying to escape the sound. She had sat penitently though the lessons, waiting to be able to return to him as his equal, as a partner. Nothing had actually prepared her for what was happening.

She found her way to the crash, a wreck that had totaled two cars, ripping metal from metal. The sound dulled. Approaching the first car she saw the blood mingled with wreckage. Her stomach twisted, but Amy pressed forward. There were police and firefighters pressed around the other car. The car she approached was empty, but blood splattered the seats and windows. A small elephant stuffed animal rested on the floor, blood painting its long trunk.

Around the wreckage she walked. The second car had only one person in it, and she was trapped behind the wheel, her big pregnant belly pressed to the airbag.

Her heart dropped. The screaming in her ears had died down, a slight whisper now. Walking up to the car she passed through the back door, ignoring the strange sensation of metal passing through her chest and legs. She felt cold. Fear was coiled within her stomach as she moved from the back seat to the passenger seat. Broken glass coated the seat, but it didn’t bother her. She knew that she couldn’t be seen by any one of the living, but Amy looked up at the officer who was barking orders outside the car.

They were going to try and get her out of the car, but she had to be stabilized, her neck secured and her face protected before they could rip the roof from the car.

They didn’t know. They didn’t know the baby was already gone, and the mom wasn’t clinging to life. She was passing slowly.

The bundle of light was pale and warm moving towards Amy in the tight quarters of the car.

Tears ran freely down her face, blurring her vision. Her nose ran and she felt an overwhelming sadness. This was the death of a child that had never lived and a mother that would never know the life of her child. Something about this was worse than seeing her mother move on.

Amy was convinced they were going someplace nice, heaven or a second life. Still it was sad.

Gathering the bundle in her arms she felt the child stir. It was a girl, she knew from some sixth sense.

“Amy!” his voice broke her concentration on the baby girl curled in her arms. “Let her go.” He passed through the car the same way she had and sat in the back seat.

The bundle fell away, drifting away towards a pool of blue light.

“What’s happening?” her voice trembled. The roof pulled back with a terrible screech.

Damian touched her shoulder and she felt a new wave of sadness.

“No,” she screamed, and the men around her paused. Then they moved quickly to remove the body from the car. “No, she has to go with her daughter.” Amy tried to pull away from Damian, but he had climbed over the seats and pinned her in the car. “She is dying. They can’t take her. She is supposed to be with her baby.”

“You don’t get to decide.” His voice was gruff and cruel, and caused her to hesitate.

Through blurry eyes she looked up at him, pushing hair from her face and glared. “I felt her dying. I’m supposed to collect her and she is supposed to be with her baby.” He met her glare with one twice as hard. She noticed then how different he was when the job was involved, when death was involved. Damian had done his best to keep her from seeing him this way, to keep her human life separate from his life as an angel of death.

“What happens to the baby now? She needs a mother?” Amy sobbed.

“You can’t give up that woman’s life just because she lost her baby… you don’t have the right to take her life, Amy.” He wrapped his arms around her and lifted from the wreckage. Amy shifted carefully against him, managing to wrap her arms around him. “We don’t get to know what happens to them. We just move them from here to wherever they are going. That’s it.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, breathing the scent of leather in. His jacket was soft against her cheek and warm around her waist. Damian hummed that off tune song she had grown familiar with over the past four months of dating. Carrying her away from the wreckage, he hummed and she felt herself drifting away, her mind shutting down. There was a wave of emotion threatening to break, but she was numb.
Damian tucked her into the bed and sighed. Sitting on the edge he hung his head, black hair cascading over his pale sharp featured face.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled from beneath the comforter.

A small smile was thrown her direction, but he shoulders sagged and he kept a hand on the side of his face, holding his head up.

“Maybe,” she pushed herself up in bed, holding the blanket to her chest, “you were right.” Her emotions were on a rollercoaster. “About leaving that is. I still think we are helping them, but I didn’t think… I mean does that mean that baby was alive?”4

“I don’t know, Babe. It had a soul.” He turned and rested on his back. “You need to take this slow, that is why I wanted to stay with you for the collections. Typically any of us that are in the area will get the call and come to the scene. I was close behind you.”

“I just,” Amy sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I had this idea of what you did. You never talked about work, and I never really thought about death, but I guess I believe that there is something. Otherwise why would we collect their souls? My mom… I thought at least she was going someplace nice, and my dad will be strong and after he mourns it will be okay, but that baby, it never even had a life.”

A shiver ran down her spine and her thoughts rushed around her mind, one thought chasing the other like a game of cat and mouse.

“I try not to think about death,” he sighed. “It is our job to take the souls, but we will never know where they are going. From what you have said about your death, I believe there is another world where the souls go, but they keep moving from there. Perhaps it is purgatory or limbo,” he chuckled. “We won’t know.”

Shaking, Amy pulled the blanket tight around her body and closed her eyes. He slipped his arms around her and pulled them down to the bed, keeping her pinned to his chest. Her head rested below his chin, hard jaw pressed into her hair. Hands pressed into her spine, fingers rubbing small circles. Her own arms looped around his hard form. Their legs tangled together, thighs pressing against each other as their ankles crossed. Amy breathed in his scent and squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

“Go to sleep, my love. In the morning we will talk,” he whispered. She wasn’t tired. She had been told that she would not need much sleep.

“Go to sleep,” he said again as she opened her mouth to protest. “You’ve had a long day and should rest.” She wasn’t sure what had happened to her today, holding that baby’s soul in her hands and knowing that wherever it went it would be alone.