Evil, good, dark, light, night, day, storm, calm, rain, shine, fog, breeze.

She sits in the passenger seat, chest heaving, mind a pressure cooker about to explode. The light she stares into is a cold, shiny gray, and the world outside is chill and rain-misted. A crow flaps dark across the pearly sky. She catches a glimpse of the black-cloaked figure, tall, gigantic gloved hands wrapped around a carved staff that ends in a tremendous steel blade. For a moment, the blade catches the light, and she blinks; when her eyes open again, and stare seekingly out across the parking lot, the figure is gone.

She journeys down the pavement, the cheap little bike squeaking painfully over the damp. Sunshine has burst through the storms from earlier. Rosy sunset light and the smell of growing flowers send up a heavenly perfume. She feels good. Her lungs are working, her heart is pumping, life is moving. When she passes next to the neighborhood park, her eyes, as usual, travel towards it to see if anyone is there. Two men sit with a little girl in the sandbox. One is very focused, working with his hands right in the sand, showing the girl how to build a castle out of wet dirt and bark splinters. The other is developing his own creation. Over their shoulders, the long dark figure stoops, peering over them. Rags fall loosely from its neck. The scythe glitters over Death’s shoulder. The girl frowns and starts pedalling harder.

She waits by the school window, watching the world pass by, making idle chit-chat with strangers when she needs to. The same conglomeration of pain, misunderstanding, friendship, love, expectancy, embarrassment, resentment, and joy leaps out at her from the people she sees passing by. The friend who does not see her as she departs. The acquaintance who approaches her to converse. The old enemy sitting down a few feet away. The popular boy from last semester who asked her to do his homework. The new friend walking below with his soccer team. She lifts her eyes, her brain and mouth burning, wishing for nothing more than to go home and sleep. And that’s when she sees Death again, standing by the skeletal tree outside, white flowers falling past him as the oncoming rain whips his rags. The scythe, as she watches, reaches out and taps the varsity track girl as she goes by, laughing with all her friends. No one else seems to see the blood running from her neck.

She watches the news a few days later, when the girl’s tragic car accident features. She hides herself in her room, heart pounding, heart sick. The daylight seems too harsh and bright for so much sin in the world. Outside the door, she can hear her mother mourning the not-harsh-enough laws on drunk driving that made this despicable crime possible. A few hours later, when day has turned to dark, the mourning turns to fighting, and the tears the girl cannot cry hurt her, inside her mind. The only things she possesses for company now are the furious voices outside her door and the figure sitting in the pile of clothes in the chair beside her bed. The scythe leans against the closet door. She made him put it there. She was afraid of it.

She rests a hand over her heart. Yes, the fissure is still there. Sometimes she wonders how everyone else is so blind. No one can appreciate the world around them quite like she seems to. Sitting in the shadowy room of students taking tests, their pencils scribbling furiously and their minute hand ticking by. She can read their bodies like books. The drama kid who sits by the light-switch, who hates her because she walks to class with a guy she likes. The boy packing up in the corner, who is going to make a B, because no matter how much energy he puts into pretending he isn’t smart, he still is. The social outcast in the other corner, who insists on denying the bullying she receives every day, just to keep her world from crumbling. The soccer player sitting three seats over has a crush on the girl, but doesn’t know how to say it out loud. Because of this he is causing their friendship to crumble while she knows and lets it happen. Meanwhile, the girl she hates has her eyes tightly shut; she has spent so much time stealing answers, she has developed none of her own to give. But the teacher is standing in front of the light to announce the thirty minute warning. Her eyes drop to the exam paper again. They cannot help but fall across Death as he sits in front of her, scythe penduluming back and forth very slowly, not quite touching the hunched backs of the two children in the seats flanking his.

Her room is cold, just like the rest of the house; just like her heart, she thinks sadly. Once again, she wonders if she has depression, or at least anxiety. The computer is sweating on her crossed legs. A million tabs lie open but she feels not the energy to organize them now. Angry thumps are coming from the wall behind her closet, the one shared with her parents’ bedroom. A yellow notification joins the rest on her phone screen. Music pours from the speaker in the corner. Fairy lights twinkle against the contrast of the night sky outside, and the hail and lightning. It is not a good moment. But she wants it to last forever. “Please, God, let it last forever,” she says out loud, but because she was not planning to say it until she said it, her voice is quiet and sounds little used. Despite her request, she no longer knows if a God listens. Or, who her God is. As the lights go out and the computer folds closed and the anger mingles with the storm, she can feel her heart break in half. Death’s cloak, hung in the corner of her room, looks perfectly soft and mended. The skeletal figure meanwhile dances in the rain. Life is a storm, and Death promises peace. She no longer quite knows what reality she belongs to.

Breeze, fog, shine, rain, calm, storm, day, night, light, dark, good, evil.