Lucy had always thought about death.
Not in a morbid obsessed with day sort of way, but just natural human curiosity. She wondered when it would happen and how it would happen. Lucy wondered what would happen to her soul after, if you believe in that sort of thing. Lucy did believe. She believed in something at least. She hoped it was reincarnation, but she didn’t know for sure. All she knew is that she simply refused to accept that when she died, she would just be gone.
“When I die, I’m going to come back really rich, and maybe French” she had told her sister one day, after they had went to a funeral of a great aunt they didn’t really know.
When Lucy imagined dying, she pictured herself old and lying in bed, surrounded by her family and her friends. She hoped that even if there were some tears, that the room would also be full of love and laughter. Everyone would be sharing stories about her life, like that time she accidentally wore bright blue and black striped underwear under her white dress to a school dance. She hadn’t realized it when she was getting dressed, or when she was taking pictures. It wasn’t until it was much too late that she figured out in the right lighting, like the kind for a school dance, everyone would be able to see right through her dress. It has been embarrassing when it happened, but she had grown to find it kind of funny. Now she secretly loved hearing her mom recount the story to the same person for the fifth time when she didn’t remember telling them before.
Lucy imagined that if she were ever lucky enough to get a book published, a goal she has been working so hard for at the time, that there would be people out there to remember her. That maybe a piece of her, as she was in this life, would be forever etched into history. Maybe one day a future version of herself would get to read one of her books. One of Lucy’s biggest fears was that she would one day be forgotten, even after her death. She may have kids and grandkids and even great grandkids that would remember, but eventually, she would be totally forgotten. She wanted to create something permanent, become something permanent, so that she could live on in some way, forever.
And as Lucy laid there, having lived a life full of love and adventure, with her loved ones surrounding her, she would close her eyes and death would cover her like a warm blanket, pulling her into sleep forever.
This was not like that.
Lucy was not old, and she was not surrounded by loved ones. She was young. In fact, today was her twenty-sixth birthday. Even more so, Lucy was completely and utterly alone. She lay there on the cold hard street, waiting for death to come and relieve her from the pain, and Lucy thought about all the regrets she had in life. She wished she had worked less, she wished she had gone out more, but most of all, Lucy wished she had taken a different route home today.
The car had flown around the corner so fast that neither her nor the driver had time to react before it smashed into her, flinging her down the street and onto the wet asphalt. The scent of petrichor, ice, and just the smallest hint of smoke flooder her senses, the only thing she would be able to remember about this moment other than the excruciating pain. The driver shouldn’t have been going as fast as they were. The roads were too slick for the speed at which they took that turn, not that any of that mattered to her now.
She couldn’t move.
The impact felt like shattered every bone in her body. Lucy wasn’t sure if she was crying but the pain was starting to subside, and she was becoming surprisingly numb. She tried to reach her hands up to check if her cheeks felt damp, and they did, but Lucy realized she wasn’t sure if they were wet with tears, slush from the ground, or blood.
This is by far the worst birthday I have ever had.
Then she just laid there, alone, with only her thoughts, wondering what would happen next.
Maybe this all could have been avoided. Maybe, if Lucy had taken the day off like her boss offered her, or if she had left work earlier that day, or if she hadn’t taken a different route home so that she could swing by the bakery to pick up a slice of cake for her birthday, then she wouldn’t be laying there right now.
Dying.
It was at this moment that Lucy realized she was crying now. She was crying because as alone as she was, and as rough as this year had been for her, Lucy knew she did not want to die. She knew that it didn’t matter that she did not want to die. It did not matter that she hadn’t published her book or fell in love or created a legacy. It did not matter because was going to die anyways, whether she wanted to or not.
Please let the next life be a good one
She used her last moment to plead to whoever was listening. That’s when Death came for her. It wasn’t like a blanket, like Lucy had imagined. It was something more. He was something more. Death was an entity, almost like a human. Lucy watched him toward her, thick smokey shadows swirled around his feet, creeping out across the ground around him, as if they were feeling for anything in their path to consume. If she could cry out, she would have at the feel of them brushing against her skin. Lucy couldn’t raise her head to look at his face, but she could see his shoes as his feet stopped mere inches from her. Death leaned down and gently picked her up.
He is surprisingly warm was her last thought as she closed her eyes and drifted off.
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