Another day, another excerpt. This is from a short I’m writing but blanking out on. It’s getting fun to write, when I have the time. The above picture is illustrated by Adam Hughes. He’s a talented artist. The story is heavily influenced by Neil Gaiman’s anthropomorphization of Death. Anyways, here’s the short excerpt from What Happened After:
“At seven years old, I already knew she was aching beautiful. She was also older than I. Much older. We met at a family reunion, but she wasn’t related to me. I don’t think she has any relations. The reunion was very large, so much so that we had to rent out an entire park for the day. We had name tags. Mine was “Hello, my name is Arthur.”
She came slowly amidst the commotion of my gorged extended family. Nobody noticed her. No one noticed that extreme beauty walking casually among the four generations that compromised my generational tree. No one except me. It was when I saw her that my uncle, “Hello, my name is Neil”, started coughing up blood. His large boat like body couldn’t take the strain of being overtly bovine and his heart exploded. She came to greet him. She looked at me, surprised that I saw her. Smiled. Then she left. My own heart exploded. That moment, at seven years old, watching her take away my uncle, I knew I was hers. We were always hers….
After the family reunion, I met her again when I was a soldier. Like every war, it did not go well. Even when my side was winning. I was shot. The doctor told me I was dead for three minutes. I lost more blood than a living person should. He laughed, claiming that it was a miracle, as doctors are wont to do when they fail at explaining their failures. It was her fragrance that signaled her arrival. She didn’t smell like acetone, embalmment fluid, or gangrene flesh. Her fragrance was like snow upon a clear winter evening of brilliant stars. Fresh. Cold. Clean.”
