1,959 words"I'm not sure when I first met D." Alicia paused a moment and looked off at nothing, trying to pull some long lost memory back into existence. Before continuing she leaned forward, resting on her arms that were lying on her crossed legs. "But I'm certain there are things she's not telling me."
"She?" Martin asked. "Are you sure?"
Alicia gave him a 'you're strange' look, then slowly responded, "Yeah."
"D didn't look like a she to me," Martin replied with a shrug. "But you've known, ah, her, longer than I have."
Alicia frowned. "How could you think she was a man? There ARE noticeable differences."
Martin crossed his arms. "Well most women I know don't have five o'clock shadows."
Alicia blinked several times before responded. "Are you telling me D looks like a man to you?"
"That's what I just said, isn't it?"
"D," Alicia tried to clarify. "The person I introduced you to this morning."
"Yes."
"At the hospital."
"Yes," Martin replied again, starting to get impatient.
"The doctor."
This time Martin frowned. "He wasn't a doctor, he was a maintenance worker."
Alicia eyed Martin, then spoke carefully. "Why is it again you wanted to know how I met D?"
Martin sighed. Slowly he stood up from the chair he had been in and took a look around. Alicia's home wasn't all that fancy, but more eclectic than Spartan. She used furniture to section off the one large room at the front of her apartment into distinct areas. The back of the couch she was sitting on served as the "wall" of the living room that claimed one side. A desk with shelves on it that rose almost as tall as he was designated a corner as the computer area. Some sort of table that was tall enough to need a bar stool in order to sit at it marked where the kitchen began. The walls were painted, clearly amateurishly, a soft cheery color. The few pictures that were put up around the place were not in frames, but simply taped right on to the walls. And each horizontal surface supported at least one trinket of some kind. A figurine, a decorative container, a candle, or some odd souvenir from far away.
A hallway led out of the great room. Martin assumed a bedroom and bath were back there. As he surveyed the location he was currently in, he didn't expect to find much different back there. Assuming he would even be allowed to see it.
(What am I expecting to find?) He wondered to himself. (An alter? Some weird crazy crap I'd probably not believe even if I did see it?) His gaze came back to rest on Alicia. She was all but tapping her foot waiting on an answer from him.
"Are you aware you are the only one who can see D?" Martin asked her.
Alicia looked at him like he was crazy. "Did I or did I not introduce you two?!"
Martin held up his hands and motioned for her to settle down. "Yes, yes," he replied. "What I mean is that no one can see D if you are not there to point him out."
"Her."
"Fine, her," Martin acquiesced. "Look, D is...," he moved his hands slightly as if he could grab the word he was looking for out of the air. Finally he gave up. "You are... special," he settled on. "You have a gift. One I'm not sure you're aware of."
"You've said that before," Alicia pointed out.
"Yes." Martin paused a moment, trying to decide which direction to take the conversation in. "Okay." He sat back down and leaned towards her. "Do you know who D is? I mean really?"
Alicia pursed her lips. After a few seconds she nodded.
"And that is?" Martin prompted.
"Death," Alicia confirmed for him. He nodded that she was correct. Then she added, "At least, that's what she told me her name was. I call her D because it makes people uneasy when I address her as Death."
"Of course," he replied.
Alicia regarded him for a moment. "You really think D is Death, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"And you think she's a man."
Martin's face scrunched some to indicate he didn't quite believe that. He shook his head and explained, "I'm betting Death isn't a man or a woman. I saw D as a man. You saw D as a woman. My guess is Death doesn't actually have a gender. After all it's not actually a human either."
Disbelief started to cross Alicia's face. She uncrossed her legs, her feet finding positions on the floor for support as she moved to sit a bit nervously on the edge of the couch. "D might be a bit eccentric, and who wouldn't be if their parents had named them Death. But you, sir, are down right crazy."
Martin softened his voice. "Alicia. Death is a concept more than anything else. Okay maybe death is an action, or event more than anything else. But it's not some tangible thing." He watched for her reaction as he spoke. So far she was only partially soothed by his change of attitude, apparently remaining skeptical of what he might say next. So he said it. "Except to you."
Alicia gave him a dubious look. "Let me get this straight. Are you trying to say that I'm seeing a ghost of someone who died?"
"No. I'm saying your seeing a personification of... of...," he threw his hands up, "of death! The process that eventually causes life to cease. Think, Grim Reaper."
Alicia stood abruptly, taking up a very standoff-ish pose. "The Grim Reaper!? You're telling me, what? That D is an ominous skeletal creature wearing some sort of doctor disguise? That's insane! I've seen her. She IS a human. She talks, and walks, and everything! She can touch me, I can touch her. And it's not a cold touch," she said the last sentence with sarcasm.
"I'm telling you that-"
"Get out," she ordered him, pointing firmly towards her front door.
"Alicia please," he implored. "All I want-"
She hurried over to the door, taking the long way around so as not to get within arms reach of him, and opened it. "Get the hell out."
"Okay. Okay." He was careful not to get too close to her as he gathered his things to do as she told him. "But would you at least consider what I'm saying as a possibility? Ask D yourself, see what he-," he shook his head at himself, "she says."
"You're insane," Alicia informed him as if trying to explain something obvious to someone who was clueless. "You need to get out of my house. And you need to get help."
He walked calmly to the door, but did not step through. "Think back. Every time you've seen D, what was going on around you two?"
Alicia started to close the door on him. He planted his foot sideways against the base of the door to hold it open. "When you realize I'm telling you the truth, you're going to have a lot of questions," he told her matter-of-factly as he pulled a small stiff piece of paper out of his pocket. He held it up in front of her face so she could see it was a business card. "Call me." When she didn't take it from him he turned and put it on the closest horizontal surface. Then he left.
She quickly closed the door behind him and exhaled her relief that he was gone.
"Yeah, questions," she said to herself. "Like if Death really was a person, why would anyone in their right mind want to meet him?" She picked up the business card to find out what Martin did for a living. She expected something like Private Investigator or Funeral Home Attendant, but wouldn't have been surprised if it had said Psychic or Insane Asylum. It said Accountant. She read it twice to be sure. Then tossed it aside with a dismissive shake of her head.
That night when she was falling asleep she couldn't help but think about D, and what Martin had said. Of course he was crazy, but that didn't keep her weary mind from entertaining all sorts of scenarios. What if he was right? What if he was trying to set D up for something? What if he just needed a friend? What if he was a dangerous wacko? What if she had misunderstood him? Why her? How had they met again? No not her and Martin, her and D....
No sooner had she slipped off to dream land, did her first memory of D surface. It was fractured by time and exaggerated by her emotions. She had no idea how old she was, but it had to have been before her family had moved when she was five because when she looked out a window she saw the family's old apartment building across the street. The one she only knew from pictures in her Mom's photo albums.
At first she was scared. The window was open, and she could hear screaming. Despite seeing snow outside on the ground, she felt hot, and she knew that wasn't right. Suddenly a blanket covered her, a pair of arms wrapped around her tight, and she was off the floor. It was her mother, telling her everything was okay and not to be scared and other such motherly comforts. She felt like her mother was flying they moved so fast. But it was Mommy, so she knew she was safe. Then the blanket was hastily discarded. Another window was opened, and in a blur of motion somehow her mother had gotten both of them out through it. Alicia knew she was outside because the cold hit her quick and hard.
The next thing she knew she and her mother were on the sidewalk in front of their own building, standing in the middle of a lot of people. Sirens were as loud as the screams had been earlier. Lights were flashing, and water was spraying through hoses from the hydrants nearby. From here she could see the building across the street was on fire.
And in the middle of it all, where firemen were laying down the people they were carrying out, were a handful of people with symbols on their coats that matched the symbol on the ambulances parked nearby. Except for one of them. The one had on a simple white coat that looked very much like the one the family doctor wore. In her dream Alicia knew it was D. She hadn't known at the time, but now she recognized D as the doctor amongst the paramedics.
Her dreams spiraled into various revisions of the fire, replaying over and over. Each time the dream started in confusion and ended with her seeing D. When she finally woke up in the morning, her first instinct was to get a glass of water. After she was done with that, she called her mother.
"Mom, when I was young, before we moved to the house, was there a fire in the building across the street? I had these really weird dreams last night. And I have this vague feeling they were real."
"Oh my yes," her mother's voice confirmed, heavy with the memory. "I can't believe you remember that! You were barely three years old. We had been visiting a neighbor's, Mrs. Bennet's. You remember her? The fire had started two floors down and we got trapped with Mrs. Bennet in her apartment. Eventually I knew we couldn't wait for the fire department to bring us a ladder, we had to make it to the fire escape ourselves. So I..."
Labels: BoD, NaNoWriMo 2005, Story
