Death Rewritten

He held her lifeless body in his arms, her unseeing eyes burning into his conscious. Her hair was matted with blood and tears. Her left arm hung lifelessly to the side, dropped from the end of her days. Her lips were pale, open in relaxed awe. Those once beautiful lips will never form another word again, never uttering a single sentence. He brushed his thumb over her clammy cheek, smearing the blood away from her mouth. He loved her and she was gone, taken away by the unforgiving reaper of souls.
He came like a whisper in the wind, silent and stalking. His cloak was soaked in the blood of his victims, starting as the original onyx cloth and fading into the crimson liquid. His eyes were flowing with darkness, unrelenting in their conquest to destroy all who gaze upon them. His love, his one and only, fell victim to that gaze. He approached her as any other, stopping a reasonable distance away. What came next though, the man was not prepared for.
He watched in frozen horror as tears of blood began to stain her rosy cheeks. The laughter died away from her eyes, the color from her lips. Her body’s only response was to step away, away from the monster that stole her soul. He heard her first cough, her hand pressed against her mouth as her own body betrayed her. Her other hand, clenched into a fist, was pressed against her chest, desperate for the pain to stop.
The whole time he watched his love die and wither, the reaper simply stood and allowed an innocent life to be stolen. Mind racing, her recalled all their time together until that moment, searching for some reason he was being tortured so. His heart throbbed and twisted in his chest, grief and anguish filling his veins as his girl collapsed to the ground, the grass breaking and parting beneath her weight.
Leaping forward, he forced his body to command him, to move him toward her fading body. Blood flooded his ears and he could hear nothing but his cries. He cried out to her in fear of her life, in anger for the reaper, and for himself who may never love again. Tripping over his feet, he landed with a thud to his knees on the grass. Rocks and litter scraped him as he scrambled closer, ignoring the stench of death that followed the reaper.
Her head rolled to the side, her eyes pleading for him, his help. There were no whites to her eyes anymore, blood having blooded her system. He saw her chest shake as she shuddered, her body growing colder without a soul. Her mouth opened and closed, gasping for a breath to fill her lungs. Blood oozed in between the strands of her short hair, defiling the chestnut coloring he loved so much. Even her pools of ocean blue were stained by the reaper’s curse.
Soon, no breath inflated her chest. No movement at all disturbed her body. The reaper was gone. Silence made the night air much colder than nature intended. Heart stopped, she stared at him, and those eyes still pleading for a release that at last came; a release that came only with death.
He crawled over to her, hands shaking in heart-wrecking sorrow. She was gone. Gathering her up into his arms, he pulled the limp body onto his lap so that he may hold what was left of his other half close to his chest. He trembled, forcing his tears back in an effort to keep his resolve. Lifting his head, he gazed into her beautiful eyes, memories of the way they used to sparkle filling his mind.
He thought back to those petty fights they used to have, the way she puffed out her cheeks in frustration before pouting. She always looked so cute when she was angry. During those times, he would smirk and pull her close, despite her resistance at first. Those times often ended with a giggle and a kiss, forgiveness always there. Her mood would often fluctuate, being silly and full of life one moment and then serious and drained the next. He loved it when she was smiling at him, for him, like he was the only one in her world. She was definitely the only one in his.
Now, his one and only was stolen. Her heart no longer was beating for him, no longer racing at the touch of his fingers, no longer his to hold. Her body was an empty shell for him to hold and cry over, remembering the way things once were before the reaper stole her away. He would never feel the warmth of her breath on his face as they pressed their foreheads together, both panting from the passionate kisses shared. Never again will he feel her tiny fist beat against his chest in playful fits of jealousy or anger. Or the way she felt tangled up in his arms beneath those thin sheets on his bed.
He looked at his girl, looked into her eyes one last time in an effort to see life inside them. All that stared back were two pools of icy nothingness. Heart-broken and torn, he lifted a hand to close her eyes, making her appear to be sleeping. His sleeping beauty would rest now, free from the pain that was inflicted upon her by death. Clenching his jaw, a tear slid down the side of his cheek, leaving a drop of salty wetness on her skin.
It was painful for him to sit there, holding onto someone he cared for that would no longer hold him back. The reaper cursed his life until the day he died or chose to end it all. Death cannot be rewritten, no matter how desperately he tried to wish it to be so. She was dead, gone. Sucking in a deep breath, he lowered his head carefully, his lips hovering over hers.
“I will always love you,” he whispered.
He placed a kiss gently upon the softness of her lips and shifted her back to the ground, brushing the hair from her face. He would have to return for the body after finding the coroner and describing what had happened. Standing, he numbly made his way away, constantly looking back in futile hope that when he did, she would be standing there, alive and smiling back at him. Shaking his head, he vowed that she would always be in his heart.
Death can never be rewritten but love is a never ending story.