You're dying. Where you're going you're not coming back from. You will spend no more time here and you are the lucky one. I don't remember my life. I only remember being stripped of it. I know I was a child and a grownup once and now I am not. Instead I am what I think of as nothing. Yet nothing does not exist, so I don't know what I am. I have no body. You may not see me or hear me or touch my face. These things mean life and that is the one thing I lack forever. I don't know where anyone goes after their life ends but they are not here with me. Others may leave. Others may have the joy of leaving. But not me.

Why are we here? Why do we live? Is it only to live and die? Do our actions benefit the Earth? Each other? The future? Do we find joy or sorrow so it may be taken from us? You all get to live another life on some further realm. Not me. I've seen a million like you. I was likely just the same until it ended. I do not remember how. The end of a life must have, first and foremost, a beginning, but I have been here for as long as I can recall. I've spoken to all of them and I can tell you there is no other place where everything will be okay.

There was a child once. He was just like many, born to a loving mother and father. He went on to the next place too soon. Before he did, I watched him in his crib in the hospital. He was Darren, a small, unearthly shape with an unmistakable identity. I wanted to talk to him. I whispered in his ear "Child, you are one of many. Hold your innocence. It will keep you righteous in the end." He left us shortly after that. The mother there, she started to cry. She called out and held his body in her arms. I told them, "You hold your child there. You may touch him and you may look at him. You have everything." They did not listen to me. That was the last they saw of him. Darren's loving parents gave him up and I still don't know why.

I followed them home. The parents went into a small room adorned with bright colours and small clothing. Father picked up a stuffed bear. That's my teddy and my crib. They both started to weep, a sobbing gesture to their long lost, not yet forgotten son. "I am right here," I told my parents, but they did not acknowledge me. They did not, could not, see me.

What makes you righteous? Beauty and goodness? Is it love? I don't know love. Where does it come from? How does it grow? These children that I have seen grow and learn, I wonder what would happen should they learn all they ever would in an instant. I suppose life would hold no surprises and no gifts, becoming a dreary, meaningless existence. With life's pleasant mediation these children may learn from themselves, explore, find love, find life, find friendship. There is something to be said for childhood. You may not know your potential, it is something you must reach yourself.

I remember that soldier on the beach. He was asking God why this had happened. "God Almighty, I join you now." I looked at this man with tears on his face and blood on his hands. He watched himself slipping away alongside me but he never knew I was there. I reside somewhere in that light, that brilliance that gently takes you from your place here. It's a presence, that light, and a wonder to behold. I'm sure it is. It has to be.

This soldier, Timothy it said on the tags he gripped tightly in his hand, he fought back some of the pain, the anguish, to have one's life stifled on the forgotten landscape. I watched him for a very long time. He cried when he dug his fingers into the sand and sobbed when the insects attacked his wound. I needed to comfort him and tell him it was fine even if I knew otherwise. He was dying, just like you. I told him, "You never had a choice. It takes you away when you don't want it to. It will leave you when you wish for it most. Your time must come and you will be happy." I had barely whispered it when his eyes faltered and widened. He looked like he was gazing into a star of such wonder and magic that none had witnessed it before. The pain lifted from my body with a wonderful relief. Those tags, those tags that hold my identity, all I am on this world, I could feel them slipping from my palm. They landed with no sound and buried themselves in the red sands so close to my face. Foam rippled up near my nose with all the cool sensation that it could offer and as a parting gesture, it took me from that beach so that I could be alone in the sea.

One more Timothy. I met a thousand men on that beach and each one stared at the sun right through me. Would they remember this? Would they relive the pain forever? Surely death would not be that cruel. They would not be soldiers again, I surmised. They would be granted more fulfilling lives, ones where they may better use the wonders that life bestows upon them. Perhaps they will be given a chance to live over again, to change what they will until they are perfectly happy. They must remember their time here then, otherwise they could not correct their mistakes. Life is chances and no ever said how many you are given.

Chances are so delicate. I remember how that woman decided to take a shortcut home. She was Cynthia. She was pretty, with long brown hair, dimples, a small mark just below her left eye. Those other men in that dark, disgusting alley might have been attractive too had they wanted to. One hit her before she saw them and the other kicked her and brought her to her knees. She fought back as hard as she could and that made me happy, but I will never forget watching those next moments. Time is inconsequential for one such as I, but those frail minutes passing next were something I would endure for all my inconsequential existence. Yet it was not the first time.

They all thought no one knew. Those three would be the only ones who could see their evil and their maliciousness. I could do nothing, and I knew it, but I would remember the nature of those souls within them. I came closer to her when she was alone. She, beaten and bloodied, violated, near death, utterly alone, sometimes I think even more than I. She tried to speak, hardly talking to herself, "Carl. I never told you how I felt." Nothing I could say would help her, besides, she would not hear me. I said it more for myself, uttering slowly "You are not alone." I think she and I were together, if only for a moment. I thought about how stupid it was for me to take that shortcut. The pain was so much. It was not merely pain from my cuts and bruises, but it hurt so much that I would never see my home again all because I took that chance. My mother, no one was there to say goodbye. My hair. I spent so much time on my hair and now it was sticky with blood. It didn't matter, though, there was no one there to help me through the shame and pain. This could not happen to me. Not rape. Not this way. I endured the pain no more from that ruined body.

It's so fascinating how we can all feel so loved and cared for during our lives and how we may fill them up with people that we love in return. Yet we need only a moment to bury them all and feel like the sole person in the world. I must pass it off to the moment. The moments we remember most are the ones that matter to us. I think we should remember all the times. After all, if we may care for these people like we really do, then no moment may be of more worth than another.

And then there's you, Frederick. Such an old man, so frail, so sickly. You have lived your life and lived it well. There is your wife in that chair, holding your hand, your rings touching each other. Know that you matter the most to her and she to you. That beeping machine with all those buttons, wires, readouts, does not tell the doctors, wandering about, that you still live. Only you know if you have really lived. I remember the same scene before any such invention existed. You and she, touching, looking in each other's eyes, listening to each other's breathing... until yours stops. Do not fear it. Remember what I told you about the light. I hope it makes you happy just as I know being here with your wife does. Her aging face, each wrinkle a memory, each reflection in her eye a new thing to remember, it will look at you with love even long after your body holds you no more. That frail hand that holds yours, the same one you placed that ring on so many such significant years before, will hold yours again some day. I always thought it was amazing how loving Edna's eyes are. She keeps me warm despite those pangs of cold that rack my sides with shivers. What would I tell her to make her know how much I love her? I know I shall see her again. I'll hold her hand again some day. I feel like I'm drifting away. Wait. Not yet. "I love you, my dear. Always."

I spoke. These are not my feelings for her. I love her more than anything and through all those years. I've seen this before a million times. What is different? No difference. There is nothing else I can do but be with her until the last moments. This last time here will not be filled with silence. But it has never been filled with silence. I've talked to every one of them. I've comforted them, tried to help them, but they've never listened to me and I... never listened to them. She listens to me. I can remember my life, and I can remember a billion more, and even more than that! Mine has to have been one of those. But I have been here as long as I can recall. It is I who has been stripped of my life and everyone I've tried to help... to share with... it's always been the same. There has been countless like you, Frederick. I remember Darren and Timothy and Cynthia. I remember being with all of them when they died... everyone... many at the same time... but how could I have...?

I know who I am now.

I am no longer nothing. I have no body, no features. You cannot see me, hear me, touch me, for I have no qualities of the living. I am no plague, nor monster, nor cursed one. I am merely myself and no better and no worse for having been so. I appeared to have had lost myself in wishing to be like you, to be one of you, to feel like you. But I am not. I was once a lost soul and now... Now I have become Death, not the destroyer of worlds, but the carrier of hope.

You may go on to the next place. You may see that light, that brilliance, that wonderful shining glee that I once wished to see so much for myself. You may find your new chances, you may find each other again and I will help you to do so. You may have the joy of leaving, but not me. I am blessed with my eternal life.

-A story by Porkchop