The Man who Insulted Death

[WP] A person who insults Death is left alive to continue growing older and older until they truly learn to appreciate the role death plays in life.

Crinkled. Think of the tissue paper your mother stuffed into the grocery store gift bag she panic-bought an hour before Tommy’s birthday, she’s been drinking again and forgets sometimes but you forgive her because after all she’s your mother and so what if she sometimes doesn’t get you from school.

Paper. But not the sturdy white of the printer paper you shove haphazardly into the work printer because your boss demanded you submit that proposal, in writing, by 9:00 and it’s 8:54 and there’s no paper because night shift forgot and oh, I’m nearly late but it’s 8:59 and it’s now on top of the pile.

Transparent. That’s the word your wife used when she handed you the divorce papers, telling you that she needed to be straight with you about your relationship because you’ve spent an awful lot of time at work and your kid misses you and if you can’t treat your family like a family it’s over and you end up like your mother drinking all day and leaving your daughter at gymnastics and losing your weekends after the DUI and now you have nothing to live for.

Crinkled, Transparent, Paper. Your skin, stretched thin over bone with age. You thought you had nothing to live for. You spurned me, taunted me, dangled me over your head as a weapon against yourself, abusing me and my part in the cycle of life.

I’ll show you a cycle.

Too late. I don’t want you until you’ve learned yourself a lesson. I curse you to shrivel. I curse you to watch all you love disappear in the sands of time as you remain, haunted, afraid to come to me and afraid to stay in a world that will reject you year after year until the last empire falls.