Death Makes Friends..

Evie perched on a barstool, nursing an ice-cold gin and tonic, the slice of lemon being slowly jiggled about in time to the rising bubbles. He was a lanky chap, all angles and shadows, sunken deep, dark eyes, prominent cheekbones. He was drinking a pint of lime and soda water. He hunched over his drink, as if someone might steal his drink. He wore a threadbare hat with a wide brim that cast his face in perpetual dusk.

"You look like you could use a proper drink," Evie said, her voice husky from too much smoke and laughter. Evie was the sort who liked it on the edge, life, action, partying, everything.

Death looked up, his eyes still, bottomless. "And you," he rasped, his voice quiet but strong, as if you would hear it in the next room, if only you listened, “you look like you could use a proper goodbye."

Evie, looked at him perplexed by his response. The thought popped into her mind that she could see him holding a large scythe and an hourglass, but when she really paid attention, it was just him with his lime and soda.

Evie, always one to tough it out, snorted. “Drama, drama, drama. I ain't going anywhere yet."

He smiled, a thin, humourless thing. "Not tonight, perhaps. But life, my dear, is a fickle mistress."

Intrigued, Evie slid onto the stool next to him. They talked, or rather, she talked, a whirlwind of stories about her life as a stuntwoman, about how her heart was as battered as the bones she'd broken. Death listened, his silence a stark counterpoint to her effervescent chatter.

As dawn painted the sky in bruised purples, Evie realised she'd never felt so understood. Death, with his morbid charm and quiet wisdom, became an unlikely confidante.

“I like you,” she said, “although you do look as though you could do with a good dinner.”

“You ain’t so dusty yourself, sweet cheeks,” said Death with a flick of the brim of his hat.

Their meetings became a ritual. Evie, between motorcycle jumps, fire escapes and pyrotechnical mummery, would find him here and there as she went about her daily life, often in forgotten corners, a silent observer.

Over the weeks and months that followed, their friendship deepened, transcending the boundaries between life and death. They found themselves often in each other’s company. Death showed her forgotten graveyards and abandoned asylums, places where the veil between worlds was thin. Evie, in turn, dragged him to bustling pubs, clubs and festivals, showing him the vibrant chaos of life.

And then one icy cold January day, Evie found him by the Thames, his usual melancholy replaced by a grim, cold urgency. "A storm's brewing," he said, his voice tight. "A bad one. There will be an accident, I will have many souls to collect. I’m going to be busy today.”

Evie, her adrenaline junkie heart pounding, knew what he needed. She wasn't afraid. In fact, she liked the idea of helping out. ‘At least it’s something meaningful,’ she thought. Together, they navigated the chaos, Evie's agility a counterpoint to Death's stoic, steady work. Death walking among the bodies, reaping souls, Evie soothing the dying with whispered reassurances and a cooling hand held.

Evie saw a different side of Death that day. Not just the reaper, but a shepherd, a guide. No judgements, no arguments, he stilled the fear, whispered the truth of it. He wasn't just the end, but the transition, the bridge between.

Later that year, On beautiful starlit June night, perched atop the National Gallery, which Evie had climbed ‘just because...’, their unspoken bond solidified.

"You see things differently, don't you?" Evie's voice was quiet, tinged with the lingering ghosts of past relationships. "The fear, the regrets, are all laid bare to you and you absorb it, every last bit of it.”

Death nodded, his obsidian eyes reflecting the city lights. "There's no judgment on my side, only the truth of the transition."

Evie traced the scar on her wrist, a relic of one of many motorcycle mishaps. "And me? Do I leave a mark, something beyond the broken bones and fleeting thrills?"

"You touch lives, Evie," Death said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Life to the living seems long, well, it does until the end approaches, but in truth it's short and impermanent when compared to death. In those fleeting moments before the curtain falls, the spark of your defiance and joy of life ignites a flicker of hope in everyone you meet.”

They continued through the years, Evie always with an insatiable lust for life, but just as death had told her on that rooftop all those short years ago, life is brief and time’s arrow flies where it will and just like all the world before her and after her, when it hit Evie’s target she found Death waiting.

Another motorcycle accident, a really bad one this time, left her broken and clinging to life. Fear, cold and unfamiliar, gnawed at her. But Death was there by her hospital bed. He held out an ice-cold gin and tonic, with the slice of lemon jiggling in time to the bubbles.

“It’s time?” she asked.

“It’s time,” said Death.