I Will Never Know

No one would ever know that the soft, melancholy drumming of the rain was the last heard, and the last she could see was black. Suffocating black, omniscient black, evil, smirking, laughing black. Her wrists and ankles itched with pain, but there was nothing she could do but sweat and pray to the gods that someone would come and find her. She had been doing that for four days now, and she was already beginning to lose hope that she would be found.

I simply sat in the back of the room, watching her as she rolled around on the floor, trying so desperately to scream. She was a pretty thing, I noticed. All those long days in the cabin were beginning to make her thinner, and her hair was getting ratty and knotty, but she was still such a beautiful girl. If I could have seen her eyes, I would have known the most exquisite blue I had ever been faced with. I wish I had the chance to see them. But I would never know.

I think she saw me once, around the third or fourth day, for she instantly stopped her attempts at screaming, and her face was pointed towards my cloaked, bony features. She must have felt my cold presence, because she began shivering and rocking back and forth. The murmurs I heard from her hidden mouth sounded somewhat like prayers, but I will never know.

When she finally did leave her own body, her soul was resisting coming with me. She screamed at me and fought with me, always pulling back to try to grab her own lifeless hand. Her eyes were empty sockets then, just dark holes into depths of black that she once feared. After a while of convincing, she seemed to understand what was going on, and she followed after me like a reprimanded dog. Many souls did that. I'll never know why.

Many souls I encountered would resist me for days or weeks, they would just sit by their old body and mourn. They would beg to see their family one last time, or some form of loved one. They wanted to see something for the last time before I took them away. Sometimes, I allowed it – I had seen all of their situations, all of the ways each of them left the physical world. The more gruesome or saddening, the more of a chance they had getting to do one last thing. I will never know why I have such a soft spot for them.

So I let her do one thing, I granted her one wish. She said she wanted to see her mother. I learned from her scarce words that she and her mother never got along when she was younger, and even then, when the girl was twenty-eight. We arrived at the nice-looking house with bushes that embraced the sides, and we entered without a sound. In the kitchen, a woman with long brunette hair stood, grinning at two three-year-old faces. Twin boys.

At the sight of the two little boys, the girl at my side broke down into hysterical sobs. She kneeled on the ground by the sink, and she reached out for her mother as she passed by. Her hand simply passed right through the hand that dangled at the mother's side. The girl stood and walked to the little boys, tears falling from her sockets down her too pale cheeks.

I saw that the boy felt her presence, for they reached out as if to grab her hand, too. It was then that I decided. I gently touched the girl's arm with my bony fingers, and she recoiled at my cool touch. Reluctantly, she followed after me while staring longingly back at the boys and her mother.

"It's over."

But no one will ever know.