Death’s Ribs
Written (or at least attempted) in the style of Edgar Allan Poe
Death is omnipresent in our world. He is lurking in our shadows, breaking young men’s backs, crushing old men’s lungs, kicking grandmothers’ knees, and preying on innocent beastly creatures. Death, as I have come to learn, is not malevolent. He waits until the moment is right, and only then does he bring these souls with him. Perhaps I am as people say - horrifyingly insane - for being so unafraid of Death. They do not see him as a friend, my dear Charon. They see him as a wretched monster, ever hungry, ever searching. Maybe Death is a malicious being. Maybe he is malicious until you have the fortune - or the misfortune - of meeting him for yourself.
My first encounter with the shambling creature called Death was as a young boy. My dear mother was taken by Death right before my very eyes, yet did not die until many months later. During that seemingly endless eternity, Death harbored himself inside of her. He wrought decay from the inside out, causing her hair to fall out, and her skin to fall in, and her organs to fail her one by one. I knew when Death finally left her, because her ribs rose up to meet the stale air around her. Death had opened a cage and set my mother free from her withering human body.
I began to despise Death. I was angry that he had released my mother before I felt that she had had enough time on this earth, leaving me alone to survive. I watched them lower her into the ground and I saw those gaping ribs mocking me. They taunted me because she was free and I was not. Her ribs burned themselves into my mind, torturing me for months on end. They haunted me in my sleep, becoming a gargantuan birdcage that I was trapped inside and could not find the key to. As my distress grew day by day, my sister’s health grew worse and worse.
She had been struck with the same malady as our mother, and she would soon succumb to the same fate, as well. I am selfish and cowardly, because once I knew that Death had become lodged within my sister, I could not step foot into her room. I was afraid that, as soon as I rested my eyes upon her dying form, I would see only protruding ribs. I did not see my sister from the day she got sick until the day Death left her and she was buried in the ground, right next to my mother. As I watched her corpse being covered in dirt, I saw that Death had been kinder to her than to my mother. Her cage was visible, but not yet free. I began to rest easy once again.
Many years passed. I came to cross Death’s path many more times, too many to possibly count. I all but lost the memory of my mother’s ribs opening up to the heavens. The further the image receded, the bolder I became in my proximity to that fiend Death. I found myself tangled up in many feuds and quarrels and deuls. I hunted and haunted many men for a lofty price. I pointed Death in their directions and watched as he took hold and then vacated, quick as he had come. I watched their chests. I waited for their cages to open and set them free, free from a world full of people who sent Death chasing other men’s heels. I grew eager to see their ribs. I became fixated, obsessive, and, some may even say, insane. Their birdcages were Death’s greeting to me. Death was acknowledging my success in bringing him to the right place at the right time.
In the midst of my profession, I found myself a wife. I loved her more than I had ever loved another living being. She replaced the memories of open ribs with memories of happiness, peace, and laughter. Perhaps this was why I was so shocked when death still arrived at her doorstep.
Death wrought the most devastating decomposition on her. I felt small and afraid again, standing at my mother’s bed and watching Death within her body. Death wanted to stay within my wife for months, working slowly. He warped her back, and flattened her lungs, twisted her knees, sunk her face, cracked her hands, and pulled on her ribs. The doctors proclaimed that she had no hope and that she should be put out of her misery. They wanted to evict Death earlier than he had intended. I did not protest. I left them to open my wife’s birdcage for her.
I returned for the funeral the day after. My lovely wife was lying peacefully in an extravagantly carved casket. I moved towards her, hoping to see her beautiful birdcage. I gazed upon her flowering hair, her resting face, her clasped hands.
I gasped in horror as I stared at her. Her cage was not open. It was not even visible! I tore away at her white silk dress, searching for her birdcage. She could not truly be dead if her cage was not open! She had to be alive! She had to be!
I felt hands wrapping around my own. I believed them to belong to my wife and I cried out, reaching for her. She did not answer me. I screamed for her, for her and her closed off birdcage. She was not free! Did these so-called doctors not realize this?
I was pulled away from my dear, trapped wife and brought somewhere I did not recognize. They put me to sleep very quickly and I did not wake up for many days.
My eyes did finally open, and they fell upon a tall, hunched figure at the end of the bed I was laying in. Though I had never seen him before, I knew him to be my old friend, Death - my dear Charon. I smiled at him, and he rested his cold hand on my chest. I soon realized that he meant to guide me along, to open my own cage and set me free.
I did not fight, as I wanted to so many years ago when I was staring at my mother’s awful ribs. I went with my friend gladly, as equals.
