A Deal With Death

I was only 16 years old.

My mother was terminally ill with cancer.

My father had died in a car crash just after I was born and I had no other living relatives.

My mother and I were as close as mother and daughter could be.

She knew what balance was.

She was able to be my mother and friend at the same time.

I loved my mother more than anything in the world.

One morning my mother fell and broke her arm on the fall, so she had to go to hospital.

I remember walking through that hospital as I had done many times before.

My mother was always in hospital for test and checks and everything.

This time it felt different.

This time it felt worse, I knew it was bad.

I never left my mother’s side at this time, I would sleep in the hospital with her and do my school work in her room.

When I was doing this I kept catching glimpses of a black hood out the corner of my eye, I always thought it was just some emo kid.

After only three days my mother went into a coma, I knew it was really bad.

After this happened I would sit there and brush her long dark hair.

I was so much like my mother, which made me happy sometimes and others not.

I could see her in me, a reminder of her but I could never see my father.

My mother said I had his smile and nose but I can never remember his smile, I can hardly remember him.

I had dark brown hair and light blue eyes like my mother.

Her hair was long though whereas mine was short and always kept straight.

I had slightly pale skin thought not that pale; it was known to tan from time to time.

My mother was Irish and my father a mixture between English, Dutch and German.

My mother and father were brought up in England.

When my mother fell pregnant her and my father moved to New York, America.

The land of opportunity.

To me it seems the land of death, because that’s all they seemed to have gotten here.

One night when my mother’s stats were getting worse I was having a very restless sleep.

I woke in the early hours of the morning to find a heavily hooded man standing over my mother’s bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked him as I shot up in bed.

“Go to sleep little girl you aren’t supposed to see me” he gave me a lopsided smile and moved closer to my mother.

I jumped out of bed and pushed myself between them.

I realised who this man was, or should I say thing.

He was very stereotypical.

He was holding a scythe and a scroll in his hand and a long hooded cloak.

“Please don’t take her, I’ll do anything” I clasped my hands together and begged.

He stood there deliberating for a moment.

“If you give me your soul she can live forever,” he offered.

I didn’t want my mother to live forever and I didn’t want to give up my soul, I wanted my mother to live for a normal period.

He and I argued for a few minutes before he came up with another offer.

“I will take away your mother’s cancer and she will live for five years but…” he smiled deviously.

“But what?” I asked cautiously.

I was making a deal with death and I wasn’t thinking about the logistics of it.

I didn’t even give the situation a second thought it was too precious.

“For those five year you will work for me”

And that was the start of my deal.