Day 108 Writing Short Stories

The Watcher

Death was the great equalizer. It had been her job for as long as she could remember to sit with the dead, so that when the soul finally stepped out, it wasn’t alone to leave this world. As a child, the mute body and the hollowed eyes gave her the creeps, wishing she could run out of there and not sit with the dead, but now, as an adult, she knew what the silence meant. In the moments between ticks, Death stepped around the living, retrieving its own. And if she looked ways, she could see its shadow.

She had become good at conversing with the dead and the moments between the ticks. There was never an answer back. Just silence with a whole lot of meaning. But they were there. She saw glimpses of souls as they moved from this world to the next. Sometimes they followed her home, unable to let go of the life they had lived. In those times, she had to ease them to let them forgive themselves or their loved ones for how life went and what was left behind in death.

The dead body beside her lay silent. The washers had dressed him in all white. They had laid a blanket over his body. All the silver and metal had been stripped from his body. They would be buried with him in his grave, but now, here with her, they would hinder his transition into the afterlife. His eyes were shut, so that his soul couldn’t take the living with his gaze.

She crossed her legs. The tick would happen. It would arrive, and she would tilt her head and see.

She licked her lips and stared at the spot on the timber wall where a nail had been left for a forgotten reason. Maybe for a talisman, maybe for cloths to be hung.

The iron nail was her anchor, and as it rippled, she knew it was time. She kept her eye on the nail, and when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, she knew she was no longer in the now and here; she had voyaged into a liminal space. She kept her view on the nail, but stood up. The shadow beside her stretched tall. It had no face. But it was more than a thought. It was something—a being with intelligence and perhaps intention.

“Are you real?” she asked, daring to let a voice into this sacred moment.

There was the head of the tick that would let its tail come eventually, but for now, it was just a potentiality. In this moment, there was only the shadow, her, and the dead body, and the soul still intact.

“Real?” a voice asked. It had no characteristics. It had no tone. It just was there.

“Yes?”

“What is real?”

“Concrete, material, tangible,” she offered.

“Concrete? Material? Tangible?” came back almost like an echo, but not in her voice.

“Like me.”

“Not like you. Different…” The pause was long. She knew somehow that the shadow was thinking. That ideas of new were formed. “…but can be.”

She felt something cold touch her shoulder. She flinched, but stopped herself from pulling away.

“Is this real?” the voice asked.

“Yes.”

“I see.”

Then the tail of the tick came, and the shadow was gone. The dead body gave a huge heave, and its chest sank. The soul was gone.

She sat back down and took her place, guarding the vessel until nothing could claim it as its own. Sometimes when the soul was gone, crackling and snickers echoed around the room. Whatever was out there didn’t dare to step in as long as she sat there awake.

—

I took liberties again. What I got was a conversational horror story of voyage and return, written in the first person. I wanted to write about death. Before I went to sleep last night, I got this sentence, telling me that Death had its way to everyone’s hearts. That no one on the planet is left untouched by it. I have been thinking about dying a lot lately. Mostly, the passing of my cat triggered the same fears of death I got when my father passed away—that one day, a flicker and then nothing, just emptiness. The idea feels so terrifying. And I’m not sure what to believe or think in this highly material world, where statistics and facts rule. I have always been agnostic about a lot of things, unable to know where I stand. I was raised in a house where ghosts were real, and you could tell fortunes by cards and other premonitions. Yet, that never sat right with me, not in the way my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother believed. I went to university, and all the answers were there in the science of the brain and social. But here I am, standing, facing life, death after death, and the great question comes—the ultimate question of it all. And the silly thing is that it cannot be solved, not in a matter-of-fact way. You have to believe one way or the other and accept it. The accepting part is heart when the fear comes in waves just before you have to go to sleep. Minds are tricky that way.

I used to study old burial practices at the university. The first essay I ever wrote at the university was about old Finnish burial practices. It didn’t get good marks, but that was because of the writing and because I didn’t know what the heck I was supposed to do. But the passion for the subject remained. I studied comparative religion. I have forgotten so much of what I learned because I haven’t used it in day-to-day life. Writing this sparked my curiosity, and I think I will revisit my old texts and books.

Thank you for reading! Have a lovely day and see you tomorrow ❤