Mistress Death

These itty-bitty circumstances are entirely new, totally unprecedented and uniquely our own. We can't fight the wars of our fathers and mothers or our children. It's up to every generation to take up the torch, wrestle it from the cold dead hands of our ancestors and hold it aloft to light the horizon.

Reach back into your memory and drag past solutions into the present. We can raid the past like a pantry or store cupboard, nay, a garage full of tools, nay, a basement full of meat hooks and cleavers and chopping blocks. What's that dark purple stuff all over the floor?

It looks like a hand, two hands forming in the dark liquid, almost like two hands made of oil reaching up from the puddle of blood. Then you see Her. She's fully formed, standing a few inches in front of your face. You can smell her. She smells like the sea floor, decomposition and waste.

You can hear her breath rattle, her jaws clicking and this weird gurgling sound like water running out of a drain. The sucking sound gets louder, bigger somehow. She too, somehow, is growing. Her purple face passes yours. See purple eyes, purple teeth. Then her neck slides past you, her throat, collar bones and chest. Stomp stomp, motherfucker, Mistress Death comes knocking.

She interrupts the greatest parties, weddings and play groups, everywhere you'd really rather not see her. She's there, a shadow to everyone's shadow. Every single one of us is united in our collective true enemy. Let's fight with dignity and grace.