“Alright, time for bed,” I hear the mom say.
One of the girls groans and her younger brother droops his head. However, within ten minutes the living room has cleared out, and that’s the end of that.
Death blinks, like he’s waking from a trance.
“It is strange to watch them, Lazarus,” he admits, turning away from the window. “I have assumed that living is what you and I do,” Death says. “I forget that it’s the exact same thing that millions of other humans do every single day.”
Millions of humans. He’s mentioned that number before, and I cling to it. Millions. There are still so many of us alive. All hope is truly not lost.
Death is quiet as we return to his steed, which has been munching on the lawn like he’s a real horse.
Silently, the two of us get back into the saddle. It’s only now that I feel the rest of our agreement closing in on me. Death promised to hold off on killing a city until he caught a glimpse of their humanity.
Now he has.
Maybe he’ll wait until we’ve actually crossed the city lines—like he alluded to earlier. It honestly doesn’t really matter. The thought of what comes next makes my stomach twist all the same. This is the part where good people die, taking with them all their love, all their light, all of their spirit.
The thought of those small children not existing tomorrow is painful, as is the thought of that couple, who drank alcohol from mason jars and draped their legs on each other’s laps.
“Let them all go to sleep first,” I say hoarsely.
The silence stretches out between me and the horseman, punctuated only by the scuff of his steed’s hooves.
I feel Death’s heavy intake of air and I want to believe he feels some hesitation or regret for what he’s about to do. I want to believe it, but I don’t know.
Finally, he says, “I will, kismet. I promise.”
We’re still threading our way through the city when Death says, “I still need to find you a place to rest.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I say. “Not here at least.” The thought of waking up in that city once everyone is gone … if I have a choice, then I want whatever the other option is.
After another pause, Thanatos says, “I will find us a house outside of the city, though I cannot promise you anything grand.”
I don’t care. I never cared.
Several minutes go by, and I’m still devastated by what will happen to that family—to this entire town. It never gets easier.
“Tell me a secret,” I say, my voice raw. “Something you know that no one else does.”
Maybe it’s the fatalism in me right now, but I need to make sense of all this anguish. If the world is going to burn—if some great God out there wants it to burn—then I need to understand why—or at least that it’s somehow right. Because I’ve looked at it from every angle I can, and I still can’t make sense of it.
“Curious creature,” Death murmurs fondly. “I will tell you all sorts of secrets,” he says, “but you must give up your human ones in return,” he says.
“What human ones?” I don’t have secrets.
“Oh, you have plenty,” he says.
I mean, I could give him the family’s secret recipe for the best peach cobbler in Georgia, but honestly that’s about as wild as my secrets get.
“What do you want to know?” I say.
“What is it like to be a child?” he asks.
The question catches me by surprise. I guess it shouldn’t, not when we literally spent an evening watching tiny humans run around.
“It’s always going to be strange to me that you don’t already know these things,” I say.
“I have met many souls who’ve died young,” Death agrees, “but I want to know what kids are like alive.”
“I don’t know …” I begin. I mean, that’s such a big question, it’s hard to form any sort of real answer. “They’re like every unguarded emotion you've ever had,” I say. “And sometimes they’re annoying.”
“Annoying?”
I almost laugh at the note of shocked outrage in Death’s voice. Whatever he saw tonight has definitely warmed him up to kids.
“Yeah, they can be really annoying,” I say, thinking of my siblings’ kids, bless their souls. “When kids are upset, they can be the meanest little shits you’ve ever come across. And they will happily ask you a million different questions. And they tell the longest—and I mean the longest—stories.” I smile a little, remembering one of the last stories my niece Briana told me about her cat Melon. My throat chokes up at the memory. What I would give to get it all back.