Damnit, Death, why won’t you come? Don’t you know how hard it is to surrender? I hate how you just laugh at me. My life is just some big joke to you. I want to die so often, so much. But you won’t let me. Why? You know I can’t take it any more, so why do you make me suffer? It’s like you want me to suffer. Want me to feel this way. Why? Why would anyone, even you, Death, want me to feel like this? It’s like I feel—undead. My lungs breathe and my heart beats, but when all I can think about is you, and this pain, then perhaps by body is alive and my mind and soul ARE dead. But then the question comes up again—why have you trapped me here, in this living, breathing, beating body? This body so alive, yet so scarred. The skin is alive and can feel, on its own or when I, its undead master, tell it to, so it can yield more scars. My lungs breathe on their own, my heart beats on its own. They are not undead. Perhaps because I cannot control them. My stomach eats when I tell it to, it runs on my command. It may be alive, but it is at the mercy of the undead. I am in pain when it defies me, howling from the depths of my body. I command it to be silent, and when it obeys I am whole, for a moment. Then I go back to being undead. And still, you won’t take me. I may be able to see and hear, but that’s because you force me to. Death. Being alive is so hard. I see things I don’t want to see, and hear things I don’t want to hear. I feel things with my skin and my undead soul that I don’t want to feel, and I think. I don’t want to think, I want to die. I just want to die. That would be so easy, to not have to think or feel or breathe or beat. Damnit, you’re so stubborn. It would be so easy for you to just come and take me. To surrender is difficult. It hurts to surrender. But if you took me, just swooped down and grabbed my soul out of this undead beating body, everything would be so simple. So complete. So easy. You know, it’s so hard to write about dying when you can’t. Death, you know, it’s all your fault. If you were more compliant with my wishes, I wouldn’t be here complaining. Perhaps there IS a greater plan in mind—who knows. Maybe you, Death? I don’t know. That’s silly. But as far as this living, breathing, beating, undead person is concerned...