Leah Casey 28/05/2025 Leah Casey 28/05/2025

Death Drinks Tea: Part One

I have visited the woman a few times in her life, but she has never seen my face. It has never been her turn. Every time my cold hands have taken from her another person she loved. She thinks I’m cruel, and maybe I am, but that’s not the whole story.

She sees me as the man who takes and takes and leaves her world black. I don’t know why this woman got to me. I am as old as time, and rarely have I been seen fully, but I found myself at night twisted up by her hatred. I wanted her to see that although my cruelty gave her pain, I’d also given her gifts. I didn’t expect her to think them better than what she’d lost, but I needed her to understand, amongst all the black, I had left her with something too.  I wasn’t just a man who took. I’d never needed to be understood until the moment her eyes went black the last time I saw her, the last time I took from her again.

I have never visited the living before, not unless I was taking them with me. I was nervous, which was not a feeling I’m familiar with. It was uncomfortable. I paced for hours waiting for the dark to come. The day was long, but my only option was the night. I doubted myself, I hesitated, I resented how she had brought with her a need to explain, but the time came slowly but far too quick and I knew I couldn’t change my mind and so to her I went. 

When I got there, she was sleeping, and I watched her for a while. She was restless. Her face frowning. I could not control her dreams, but I knew I impacted them. I had never spoken to the living and the pressure closed my throat. I knew my coldness would wake her, so I touched her arm, I did it gently, but she awoke with a fierceness I had not expected. I gazed down at her and expected to see a look of fear that I am normally greeted with, but her eyes fixed on my face with an animalistic anger. 

‘We need to talk.’ Was all I could manage to say. 

‘Wait for me in the lounge. I need to get dressed’ she spat at me. I was caught off guard. She seemed to have been expecting me. She was without fear. 

I waited for her. I heard the kettle boil and her feet padding with purpose around the kitchen. She appeared with a tray: two mugs, a sugar bowl, and a milk jug. ‘Help yourself’, she spat at me again. She pulled her cardigan around her like a blanket, the first sign of her vulnerability. 

‘Why are you here?’ She tilted her head slightly to the side as she said it. She looked at me, searching my face as if whatever I said she would listen to with more than just her ears. She recognised me and I hadn't expected that.

‘I wanted to explain myself to you. I wanted to make you understand that I may have taken so much that you loved, but I left you with things you didn’t have before. I shone a light on things you already had that you never realised.’ The laugh that followed was hollow, spiteful. It stung me, and I longed to be invisible again. It was so easy to not be questioned.

‘You have come here to make me understand you after everything you’ve taken from me? You expect me to ever be grateful to you for those you’ve taken? Of all the insanity I have endured the level of delusion you must have tops the list. You must know what you’ve done to me? You must know how you turned my world black and left me with too many losses. Losses that I carry like the weight of a thousand worlds every single day, and now you’re here wanting me to listen?’ She stopped then, it felt like she cut herself short. Her lips went tight like she was holding it in, and I’m sure I saw a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before. I watched her for a second. Curled up in her cardigan, hair messy, eyes heavy. She stared back so unafraid.

‘I don’t expect you to be grateful. What I took from you is irreplaceable and I know that. I just wanted to show you the whole picture. I’m not delusional. I know how I am viewed. I am as old as time, and I have walked this world leading souls away for as long as souls have existed. I have met many men, women, and children. I have seen the fear and sadness. I have witnessed the screams of the living as I’ve taken their loved one’s hand…. And I do take their hands. Although the living see me as cruel, I take the dying with love. I hold their hands and guide their soul away. Some tell me stories of their lives; some walk silently by my side. I do not scare them; I guide them to another space and time where souls do not exist, and they…’ I stopped then. I wasn’t sure why I was explaining, and I didn’t know how to explain what happens to the souls I take. I’d never thought about how to explain it, the nothingness, the peace that comes with that, how they are not scared by the time we reach the final end.  I expected her to take advantage of my silence and the anger that palpitated from her to explode, but she remained silent, staring, and searching my face. We stayed like that for a while. Her and me just watching each other. I am not sure how long we sat there for. She felt uncomfortable first, I imagined she wasn’t as used to the silence as me. She shifted herself and added sugar and milk to her mug. I watched her hesitate before asking me how I took my tea. The living are funny like that, driven by hospitality even in moments of discomfort. As if politeness is a language that makes every situation more comfortable. She finished my tea quietly and then settled the cup in front of me. She picked up her mug and drew it to her chest, hugging it with both hands and returned to watching me.

‘I took your brother young,’ I saw her harden as I said the words, but she didn’t interrupt so I continued. ‘I remember his soul. I remember your mother’s scream, and I remember that your innocence left when he left with me. I am sorry for that. You were too young to lose your innocence. He was too young to be taken. I don’t like taking the young.’ I heard my defensiveness as I said it. She raised an eyebrow, mocking me. I felt judged. The man in me shivered. ‘I don’t, and I don’t get a choice.’

I was flustered. I don’t remember the last time I felt flustered or if I ever had. I stood up and moved to the window and stared at the blackness. I felt her eyes on my back. I knew she was studying me, but I needed a moment. I hadn’t been studied before. I did the studying. Sometimes I would turn up early and I would watch as the living held their breath, sensing me nearby. I watched as they begged, or as the love poured from their mouths like it would save a life. As I felt her eyes on me, I felt comfort in the changing position I found myself in. I thought it would be easy to explain, but the words didn’t feel too simple now. I am not sure how long it took me to turn around, but when I did, she had barely moved. I sat back down and looked at her again. She said nothing, waiting, challenging me, daring me to finish.

‘‘I do not deny your hurt. I do not deny the blackness that came with the loss. I do not deny that you continue to carry that around with you. I do not want you to feel grateful that he is no longer here, I just want you to understand what that brought out in you.’ I saw her eyebrow raise again but continued ‘When I took your brother, when you lost your innocence, it gave you a perspective and appreciation that you did not have before, and only a loss of one so young can give you. You have spent the years since always aware that you have a life, a life he didn’t get to have, and it has given you a drive to survive and accomplish and experience because he couldn’t. You have done so much because he couldn’t. You have pushed yourself when you have felt like you have nothing left because you have not lived just for you since that moment, you have lived for him too.’ I was irritated by the pleading in my voice. How much I needed her to understand.

‘I would have rather he lived.’ She said it simply. She had made her decision about whose life she would have rather been taken. I didn’t respond. I saw her hardness waver for just a second at the thought of him. I gave her a moment. I have learnt when souls need that. I watched as she composed herself and she stared at me again.