by Peter Markus
Death just sits there like a lump of dirt in this chair that looks like this is the day it is now to break.
Don’t break, we say to this chair.
Don’t wake up Death.
This chair does what we tell it.
It holds up all of that fat that is this man that we call Death.
On the tips of our toes, us boys, we walk past Death.
When we walk past Death, Death makes a sound with his mouth that makes it known that the sleep that he sleeps is deep.
This is the kind of sleep that we call the sleep of death.
Or so we think.
Death is up and is up on his feet when we make our way back past him.
You boys back for some more of Death, Death says to us, and his lips flick up to form a grin.
We’re just here to take back our dog, we say to Death.
Who’s here to stop you? Death says to us back.
When Death says these words to us, Death shrugs so that his head shrinks back up in the skin that is Death’s neck.
Not me, says Death.
You can see that there’s no leash round this dog’s neck.
Death is right.
Dead Dog is not the kind of a dog that you have to leash.
Death knows that dogs like Dead Dog have got no need to be chained up on a leash.
Dead Dog is a dog that comes when he is called.
But Dead Dog does not come for us now.
Not till Death says to Dead Dog, Go, dog, go home, get.
Dead Dog gets up and then like this he came.
We take Dead Dog home.
We walk with Dead Dog down the road through town and back through to where the road through town turns to woods.
We do not see a face that is not the face of one of us.
The sky we look up at is dark.
The stars we see do not shine.
There is no moon for the clouds to hide in.
All that we see as we walk through town is the dark that we know is Death.
IX.
THE KISS OF DEATH
When we got back to our house, Man and Girl were both in their beds dead.
Us boys, we both knew what to do with Man now that Man was dead.
With Man, we would dig a big hole out back of the house to put him in and then we’d put the dirt back up on top of him till our eyes could not see the face that was the face of Man.
It was a face we would not miss.
But Girl, the way that she looked all dead in her bed, it made us boys want to kiss her.
We knew we would miss her so much.
So we kissed her.
When we kissed her, her girl eyes, both eyes at the same time, they looked up.
Girl sat up in her bed.
I had a bad dream, Girl said.
I dreamt I was dead, she said.
Well, you’re not dead now, we told her.
Who’s he? Girl said, and she wiped at her eyes when she saw the dead man in the bed next to hers.
He’s dead, we said.
We did not need to say a thing more about Man that that. Man was just a dead man now.
Girl got up and walked from the back part of the house up to the front.
It was not for her a far walk.
Girl walked slow.
She walked on the tips of her toes.
It was like she walked this way so she would not wake Man up.
We let her go.
We watched Girl light a fire in the place in the house where fires were lit to burn wood, to cook food, to boil things to drink.
Girl took up two stones in her hands and made a fire spark from where the two stones hit.
Us boys, we took Man by his feet and hands and we dragged him out back to the woods.
Out here, us boys, we dug Man a big hole.
This hole, it was so big that when us boys jumped down in it, we could not see out.
We climbed out and then we rolled Man down in it.
Man fell, face down, down in the dirt.
The moon in the sky, from this day on, Man would not see the moon eye to eye.
Us boys, we would see to this.
We filled in this hole with dirt.
When we were done, there was more dirt left than there was a hole to fill it in with.
There was a hump in the earth where Man was laid, face down, down in the dirt.
Us boys, we sat down right on top of this hump in the earth and we watched the sun come up.
Girl came out, to see us, to be with us, with two cups held in her girl hands.
Steam rose up from these two cups and curled up round Girl’s face.
For you, Girl told us.
Drink, she said, and she held out to us her two hands.
We each of us took from Girl’s hands a cup and raised it up to our lips.
What is this? one of us asked.
One of us said, It smells like death.
It is, Girl said.
And just like this, Girl turned back to be Death.
You tricked us, we hissed at Death.
We spit back out what was in our mouths.
You’re the ones who kissed me, Death said to this.
When Death said this to us, Death crinched up his dead lips.
Why don’t you boys give old Death here one more kiss?
Death shut his dead eyes tight and leaned in close to kiss us.
When he did, us boys, we ran back to our house.
Girl was back in her bed.
She was dead.
We kissed Girl right on her girl lips but she just stayed right where she was.
We did not want to dig a hole in the ground to have to put Girl down in it.
So what we did with Girl was this.
We let Girl lay dead in her bed.
Then we went to where the fire was and we took two sticks and stuck them in the fire till the fire lit up both of these sticks.
Then we went round the house and we touched these two sticks to the things in this house—the wood of the walls, the hay of our beds—that we both of us knew would burn good.
The bed that Girl lay dead in, this bed burned best of all.
We stood in the house and watched the fire rise up to take Girl in it till the smoke got too thick for us to see.
We walked out through the fire, with our hands on our eyes, and we walked back out to the woods.
The sun was up and on the rise now.
The moon was gone in the new day’s light.
We heard a bird, though we could not see it, sing out twice.
We heard too the hiss of fire.
We turned back one last time to take a last look back at our house as it got burned up.
When we looked back, what we saw was Death.
Death stood out back in the back of our house with a grin on his fat death face.
The fat on Death’s fat face made Death’s eyes look like two holes filled up with smoke.
There was a fire that burned in Death’s dead head.
There was a fire that burned in Death’s big fat gut.
Death held his big fat gut with his big fat hands and he laughed the laugh of Death.
The laugh of Death was like the sound that a dog makes when you take it by its tail and pull back on it hard to get it to come.
Death’s fat face got twice as fat when Death’s mouth cracked in half with the sound of this death laugh.
Then Death walked in, through the fire, in through the house, and ate up all that was left.
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