TW: death, depression, hospitals, suicidal thoughts, car crash
This whole chapter is about death, so take care and proceed with caution.
---
When Tommy was seven, his second-grade teacher asked the class to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up. She handed out a sheet of lined paper to each student, telling them to first write down a list of things they liked doing, then use it to think about what job they would want to have. When they were finished with their list and had chosen a career, she said, they could come to the front of the class to grab drawing paper and begin their picture.
Within ten minutes, every student had shown Miss Bourdle their list and received a paper along with a gentle compliment of their work. They shoved their grubby fingers into the crayon and marker buckets and began scribbling.
The only student without drawing paper was Tommy. He had finished his list (it was fairly short, consisting of football, watching YouTube, and math) and had thought about what careers went along with his list, but couldn't see himself in any of them. He could imagine all his favorite YouTubers, all his favorite football players, but couldn't imagine himself there. It was the strangest thing.
"Why haven't you started drawing?" Miss Bourdle asked, leaning over his desk to look at what he had written.
"I'm not finished with my list yet," he lied.
"I think your list is just fine as it is," Miss Bourdle replied. "It doesn't have to be long, as long as it's true. But if you are still working, I'll leave you to it."
At the end of the day, everyone left with their finished drawings shown off on the bulletin board outside their classroom, except for Tommy.
Miss Bourdle had handed him a blank sheet of paper and a small box of crayons, telling him he could finish it at home and bring it in tomorrow, then she would hang it up. Tommy nodded and grabbed his backpack, walking out of the school and into his mother's car.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A project I didn't finish."
"It looks like you didn't even start it," she chuckled, and normally he would vehemently object, but today he just didn't have the energy. "I guess I just don't know where to start," he sighed, staring at the blank paper in his lap. His mom looked at him in the rearview mirror curiously.
"What's the project about?"
Tommy explained what they had to do, and his mom nodded for a moment, thinking. "So you finished your list but you couldn't draw the picture, is that right?"
Tommy nodded.
"Do you want help drawing it?"
Tommy shook his head. His mother tsked quietly, in a teasing way.
"Then is there any other way I can help?"
Tommy shook his head again, growing frustrated. "I don't know," he huffed. "I don't even know why I can't draw it. I'm so stupid."
"Hey," his mother scolded gently. "Don't talk about yourself like that. Maybe you just have... artist's block. I'm sure once you figure out how you want to draw your picture, it will have been worth the wait and yours will be the best in the class."
The atmosphere of the car grew lighter after that, Tommy offering her a gentle smile. She met his gaze in the mirror, eyes full of love at her baby boy bundled up tight in his winter coat, cheeks rosy and blue eyes gleaming, lips offering her that small, private smile that was only reserved by children for their mothers.
A screech came from their left and she turned her head just in time to meet the terrified eyes of a school bus driver, mouth open in a scream that she couldn't hear.
There was a crashing sound and crying. Then darkness.
---
The night of the accident, as Tommy drifted in and out of consciousness, he saw those eyes for the first time. Doctors had left him alone for the night, saying sleep would help everything, but they hadn't given him anything to help him get there. He was too young and his body too fragile, and besides, the pain meds would do the trick without anything extra, they said. They were wrong.
So he was left staring at the shadows of his hospital room, wondering if his mother was okay. If she was alive.
While staring, he met those eyes for the first time. They blinked in the darkness, reflecting the moonlight streaming through the window in grey irises that peered at him, unjudging.
"Hello," Tommy said softly, tiredly.
"Hello," a deep, rich voice replied.
"Who are you?"
"It doesn't matter. You'll meet me soon enough."
---
His mother was alive, albeit with a broken arm, two broken ribs, and a concussion. But she was alive. As soon as she was cleared to walk, Tommy received a visit from her. She sat down in the chair next to his bed and held his hand loosely between both of hers. Neither of them said anything for a while.
"I don't think I was meant to live," Tommy eventually said to the blanket draped over the bottom half of his body, refusing to look up. If he looked up, he'd see the heartbroken face of his mother staring down at him, with the blue-purple-yellow-green surrounding her eyes and her bandaged head.
"Don't ever say that," she whispered from above him, grasping his hand tighter. "Things are hard right now, I know, but please don't ever say that. Have hope. The world will recognize how great you are, Tommy, and then you'll know that you were saved. You were never meant to die. You were meant to live."
But Tommy couldn't muster up a smile for his mother this time to reassure her. He just kept staring at the hospital blanket, ignoring the pain all throughout his body.
---
As he recovered, the pain in his bones faded. His bruises healed, his cuts scabbed over, his muddled brain cleared a little bit. Enough for him to be able to pretend, at least.
His mother and father had sent him to a psychologist, who had diagnosed him with PTSD from the crash, along with severe childhood depression. He didn't know what that meant, just that it made his parents very sad to hear, and that they always looked at him differently after that.
After his diagnosis, he meant with a therapist regularly. He liked her office; it had toys and fidgets she would let him use. There was a basket of plushies in the corner, and he could pick any one he wanted to cuddle with if he felt like he wanted to. He usually felt like cuddling the shark plush, who he dubbed 'Sharky'.
She said he could tell her anything and she didn't have to tell his parents what he'd said. She said she wouldn't judge him for whatever he said, she said he wouldn't be punished for saying the wrong thing. She even said that in her office, there was no such thing as saying the wrong thing. And if he thought it was wrong to say something, she would help him figure out how to communicate his thoughts in another way.
So he told her what went through his head on a daily basis. He told her about how tired he was, about that project that he couldn't finished from Miss Bourdle's class. She asked him why, and he told her what he'd told his mother in the hospital that day; he simply wasn't meant to make it that far.
Instead of pleading with him, begging him to stop saying such things like his mother did, she just asked why again. And for the first time since stepping foot in her office, Tommy lied to her. He said he didn't know. He didn't mention the eyes in the shadows of his room that night, of the short conversation he'd had with their looker. Perhaps it scared him too much; perhaps he was desperate to keep it a secret. After being poked and prodded at, wrapped up in gauze and pinched with needles, interrogated by a psychologist and being forced to hand his third-grade teacher a paper that listed all his medications and why he needed to take them, he wanted something of his own. And those eyes, the way they looked at him like a friend and nothing more, was something he wanted to keep tucked away in his little heart.
---
The next time he saw those eyes was when he was twelve. He was standing a few feet away from his grandmother's bed in the hospice center, watching her chest rise slowly up and down underneath her thin blanket. She hadn't opened her eyes when he came in, but at the sound of his voice, her hand twitched as if trying to wave at him in the only way she could.
His mom stood behind him, strong, steady hand an anchor weighing heavily on his shoulder, grounding him to the floor and reminding him where he was. Who he was. Why he was here.
"Hey, Grammy," he said softly. It was morbid, but he couldn't stop passing his eyes over her face and how dead it already looked. Her hair was gone from her head, sunken shadows sat beneath her cheekbones, and her temples were deep like bowls on either side of her head.
"I don't know what to say," he whispered up to his mom, eyes frightened. She was crying, but smiled at him to reassure both of them. "Tell her about school. About your friends. What you've been up to. I'm sure she'll like that."
So he did. He told her about his favorite class (science), his least favorite class (history), his friends (many (he lied)), and how piano lessons were going (well (he was lying again)).
"I miss you, Grammy," he said after a lapse in silence, desperate to fill this stale air with something other than her wheezes. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I love you so much. I always will. And we'll meet again someday, I promise."
His mother turned him around in her arms, hugging him tightly. "Go give Grammy a kiss," she whispered in his ear, and he nodded, because he was a good grandson.
Ignoring his racing heart, his shaking hands, he stepped across the linoleum floor and peered down at her pale forehead. He placed a gentle kiss on her head. "Goodbye, Grammy," he whispered, trying to keep his tears from landing on her, and his mom went to usher him out.
Before the door closed behind him, he saw those eyes again. This time, it was light enough to see who they belonged to.
It was a person, seemingly made of shadows, donned in a trench coat and top hat. Gleaming grey eyes peered out from under the brim, staring right at him. One hand was in the figure's pocket, the other resting on his grandmother's shoulder. Tommy kept his eyes locked on the person until the door shut.
As they drove home from the hospice center, mother and son's laps covered in growing piles used tissues, they got a call that she had passed right after they had left.
---
Tommy knew the person from his grandmother's death bed remembered their conversation in the hospital room all those years ago. Perhaps they were curious to learn more about Tommy. Perhaps that's why they had come to visit him, without occasion or announcement this time.
Tommy became close friends with Death. They walked through the park together, trading few words (if any) and enjoying life. His parents were glad he got out of the house more as he grew older, and didn't bug him about his lack of friends. He appreciated them for that.
Tommy never knew why Death chose him to become so close with. Perhaps he reminded Death of life; perhaps he reminded Death of itself. Either way, he was glad for its company.
"Do you remember everyone you've taken?" Tommy asked one day. They were walking down their usual path, the sky overcast and breeze biting and chilly.
"Yes," Death replied. "Every single one leaves its mark on me. It's the way their soul moves as it comes into my hands, the way it sings or cries. I never forget any soul I take; it's the least I can do to honor them."
"Do you feel anything when you do it?"
"...Sometimes. Rarely. I've been doing this for so long that it's easy to push aside how I feel —necessary, really— but every once in a while, a human comes by who I can't help but watch. I follow them through their lives and feel... regret, along with selfish relief, when I finally hold their soul in my hands."
"Why relief?"
"Because their pain has finally ended, and despite all the pain I caused while doing it, I was the one to end it for them."
"Am I one of the humans you've latched onto?" Tommy asked. Distantly, his brain reminded him that he should tread carefully with his questions, but he had stopped listening to his brain when he had met Death. Death was more powerful than his brain.
"Indeed," Death said.
"So you'll... feel something? When you come to collect my soul?"
Death hummed in thought. "I'm not sure. You may not believe me when I say this, Tommy, but you're special. When I come to collect your soul, I'll tell you what I feel."
---
"Tommy?"
"Yes?"
"Do you remember when I told you that when I came to collect your soul, I'd tell you what I felt?"
"I remember."
"Well, ask me now."
"What do you feel?" Tommy asked. Death stared down at him. "Fear. Fear and deep sadness."
"Why?"
"Your soul is so light, so delicate. I'm worried that if I touch it, I'll drop it."
"I'm sure it's stronger than it looks."
"I'm sure it isn't. I'm sure I'll break it. I can't do this, Tommy."
"But I want you to."
"That's the problem. You're supposed to tug away, to fight back. Instead, you've just floated into my hands, like you've been patiently waiting all this time."
"But I have."
Death sighed. "I want to break the rules for you, Tommy. I want to give you more time, because you're the only one who's never asked. And I could; I could leave your soul here, to rest in your body, until someone finds you and takes you to a hospital."
Tommy's eyes widened in terror. Death continued. "But I won't. It has struck me, Tommy, that I must be kind. I must go against what I want to give you what you want. I've never had to show kindness to anyone before. Death isn't kind."
Tommy smiled. "To me, you've always been kind."
Death smiled back, much more sad and withered than Tommy's had been. "Then I suppose I must be kind now."
So Death held Tommy's frail soul in its gentle hands, carrying it away from his body and letting it float away into the air, disintegrating until all that was left were the memories.