O, Death

O, Death

Won't you spare me over til another year

Well what is this that I can't see

With ice cold hands takin' hold of me

Well I am death, none can excel

I'll open the door to heaven or hell

Whoa, death someone would pray

Could you wait to call me another day

The children prayed, the preacher preached

Time and mercy is out of your reach

I'll fix your feet til you can't walk

I'll lock your jaw til you can't talk

I'll close your eyes so you can't see

This very hour, come and go with me

I'm death I come to take the soul

Leave the body and leave it cold

To draw up the flesh off of the frame

Dirt and worm both have a claim

O, Death

O, Death

Won't you spare me over til another year

My mother came to my bed

Placed a cold towel upon my head

My head is warm my feet are cold

Death is a-movin upon my soul

Oh, death how you're treatin' me

You've close my eyes so I can't see

Well you're hurtin' my body

You make me cold

You run my life right outta my soul

Oh death please consider my age

Please don't take me at this stage

My wealth is all at your command

If you will move your icy hand

Oh the young, the rich or poor

Hunger like me you know

No wealth, no ruin, no silver no gold

Nothing satisfies me but your soul

O, death

O, death

Won’t you spare me over til another year

Won't you spare me over til another year

Won't you spare me over til another year

~Ralph Stanley, O' Death

One moment, Grim was lying in his bed debating with himself on whether he was ready to go to sleep or not, and then suddenly he was in the depths of a deep body of water. It was almost totally dark; and, although he couldn't feel the cold, he knew it was there. He tried to determine which way was up, and considered going for the surface out of instinct. It didn’t occur to Grim to wonder why he had come to be there or how he had got to be there. His life was full of surprises just like this one. Then something caught his eye. Several yards in the distance he noticed what seemed to be an unusually large and unnatural looking pile of rocks in the midst of what was even ground made mostly of silt, sand, and small scattered rocks with sparse vegetation. Grim was sure the rocks had moved. 

A bright beam of light cut across the path of his vision and stole his attention. It was a diver in scuba gear pushing a great bright light, which was now pointed directly at the same rock cluster. As the diver closed the distance, Grim could tell it was a woman. She took no notice of Grim and instead kept swimming toward the rocks. He wasn’t sure why he was so transfixed in his observance of the diver, but he slowly drew in closer to her wondering if she could see him or not. Grim moved parallel to the diver; and, just as she got within a few feet of the rocks, the cluster suddenly sprang up from the ocean floor like some primordial Jack in the Box and spread out its fin-like arms and enclosed her within them.

She seemed to try to scream and the regulator came loose, sending a steady stream of bubbles towards the surface and briefly obscuring Grim's view of the struggle. The woman thrashed about trying to get free, but the beast held tight. As the bubbles cleared, Grim's eyes met the bulging eyes of the diver, and he saw the horrifying gulping motion of the mouth trying to find air where there wasn't any to be had. The terror etched on the her face was a plea for help as well as to not let this be the end.

Grim reached out his boney hands and tried to find purchase on the creature's fins to pry her loose, but his hands couldn’t deter the beast from its deathly grip. Grim called to the beast over and over to let the diver go. He was desperate to save the her life until he realized there was no longer a life to save. All movement of the diver had stopped and the body was slack. The whole thing had played out in about a minute. Grim dropped his hands from where he’d been pulling on the beast’s fins and it released the diver, who slowly descended to the sea bed, bubbles still streaming from the regulator. 

Grim looked closely at her face and realized she was probably in her thirties. Her mask had went missing somewhere in the fray, and left behind open, glassy eyes with pupils fixed in a mixture of terror and shock. Her skin was blue-gray and although her facial features were set in that look of terror, she was a beautiful woman. Or, had been a beautiful woman. A few droplets of blood escaped her mouth before Grim looked away.

He turned his eyes towards the beast and studied its form. Out of all the animals of the Earth known to Grim, it seemed that it most closely resembled a manatee with its skin having the same texture and color, and its body having the same overall shape. But, it also had some human-like features. For instance, its face bore human characteristics with a slightly protrusive small nose front and center and a wide, human-like thin lipped mouth with teeth that were slightly set apart and a bit jagged. Its face drew down to the hint of a chin, but its head really just expanded rapidly into its trunk as it was absent a neck. Its eyes were closer together than most sea creatures have, and were forward facing and almond-shaped. Its trunk was heavy at the top and narrowed towards the bottom, where a very large and muscular fan shaped fin was separated by dense tissue spikes. Its elongated arms were very thick at the top and led down in cone-shaped forms to more large fan-like fins.

Grim thought it might be a reasonable assumption that somewhere in the course of time this creature and humans had a common set of ancestors. One simply chose the water, and one chose the land. Grim was speechless for a moment looking at the beast and then looking back at the dead diver as he processed what had just happened. The beast paid him no attention as it turned and started to swim away. 

"Why did you do that? Why did you kill that woman? She didn't do anything to you!" Grim screamed, and then came the realization he wasn’t screaming at all. He was communicating with the beast in a telepathic way. He also knew that a language barrier was being broken down and translated in their communications, as its language was very different from his own. How was this happening? Grim didn’t have even the beginning of an explanation. 

"It's none of your affair. Go back to where you came from, Devil. Or, if you are here for me, I welcome your mercy and will go willingly," the creature answered. It stopped swimming and drifted towards the sea floor, resigned to impending death.

Grim raised his hand and started to give him the finger, but recoiled as he heard Avi in his head, "Grim, no matter the circumstances, you must never take a life out of your own initiative. We do our job, but blood on your hands can never be washed off. Not only would you incur the wrath of the powers that be, I also think you could potentially create a paradoxical situation with a catastrophic end. At the least, innocents will likely die untimely deaths because of your lack of control. At the worst, the balance could be destroyed causing the end of us all. You see, you never can know what that person may be destined for; and, if they die at your hand prematurely, then that destiny will never be achieved. Our duty is to preserve the balance, and it is sacred. Do you understand? Don't ever do it. No matter what."

"Why did you kill her?" Grim asked the beast more calmly this time. 

"Because she would've told people about me and my kind. She would’ve brought more and more humans to look at me and marvel. They would eventually bring a net and take me away for humans to study and add more misery to my existence. Then they would look for more of my kind to imprison and torture in the name of science. It is an indignity that we cannot bear. For many years we've remained hidden, and we want to stay that way. She came to me, not me to her. I had to do it," the creature said bluntly and evenly as it slowly swam along the bottom of the sea. 

"Maybe she wouldn't have done that. You never gave her a chance! Why did she have to die for things she might do? Grim pushed for a better answer, although he knew there wasn't one. 

The creature stopped swimming and turned its body to lock eyes with Grim intensely.

Grim saw the blinding white light again, and found himself on a lush green knoll overlooking a rocky shoreline. The sea met the horizon line in a brilliant and colorful light display as the sun neared the sea in early evening splendor. Hundreds of men, women, and children in simple animal skins and coarse textiles were gathered together on the shoreline for some sort of celebration of ancient times. Some young women were singing in a language Grim didn't recognize, but it seemed to have a Gaelic sound to it.

Grim kept hearing the same word "Mur" repeatedly, until it was shouted out by a young man who was pointing to the sea. A large man stood from his chair with his hand over his eyes and scanned the surf. Then he slowly began to descend the beach towards the surf. He had a huge ragged scar that started on his forehead, went across his brow, and continued down his cheek at a slant. Grim realized this was the leader of these people, and he'd likely earned his position in the manner that got him that scar. He was obviously revered -- a chief, or a king, or maybe a holy man, and all eyes looked to him as all mouths became silent. He walked down over the rocks to the surf as more beasts like the one Grim had just encountered started to surface and make their way to the shallows, where they were half out of the water and standing upright on their tail fins. They stood almost motionless as the man waded through the surf towards the beast closest to shore.

There were big ones, smaller ones with heavy breasts, and a wide range of even smaller ones. They were families: fathers, mothers, and children. As the human closed in on the beast, he embraced him as one would a brother. With his arm still around him, he turned towards the land and gestured towards the quiet gathering on the beach. Upon the man’s gesture, a woman held aloft a tiny swaddled infant. The man was proclaiming to the beast that he had become a father. The beast nodded his approval and they had a happy exchange as they spoke in broken words to one another, each trying to speak the other's language and both doing it badly. This was the first time Grim had actually heard the Mur native tongue. It was beautiful. It seemed to Grim as though someone had taken the best of every language, improved it exponentially, and gave it to the Mur for their own. 

Finally shivering from the cold water, the man made for the shore while the Mur swam and played in the surf for a time. Both sides seemed in reverence of the other and it was obviously a planned and fine occasion to meet with one another. Smiles were on every face, and the feast on land began after what appeared to be a prayer by the human man. Baskets of fish were brought down to the sea for the Mur with much ritual, making it seem the fish were an offering or tribute.

As dusk fell, the Mur came together in a circle; and the last rays of light fell perfectly over them, making them glisten like diamonds against the dark backdrop of the sea. The setting was purely magical and Grim felt privileged to bear witness to this ancient rite. Then the Mur began to sing and Grim was instantly overtaken by emotion. It was a harmonious and otherworldly melody, starting slow in tempo and soft in sound until it reached a crescendo of voices and noises unlike Grim could ever have imagined. Although it wasn't in English, Grim could understand the meaning, as it was a universal tale as old as time itself. Grim thought that if there were really angels in heaven, they couldn’t ever have sounded like the Mur. The song told the story of the world and of all those who had passed through it. They sang in perfect unison; it was rich and haunting in the most eloquent of ways. Even the birds gave their attention, and were quiet until the song ended. Grim was so disappointed when it started to slow back down to a series of hums, indicating it was coming to a close. The song had been a euphoric experience, and Grim felt as though he could stay under the spell of the Mur song for eternity. But, the Mur simply went back down to their home, leaving only the one who’d talked with the man. He took one last look at the shore, and then he sank beneath the waves at the exact moment the light died out and darkness ruled once again.

                                                              * * *                                         

The bright light flashed once more, and Grim found himself on a rocky outcropping overlooking a village of stone-walled huts in the dark of night. There were animals in pens next to the huts and a well in the center of the settlement. It was quiet and still untilt the ground suddenly began to shake violently. In just moments, screams came from every home as their houses collapsed inward before they could even get out of bed. Boulders came racing down the hillsides in giant leaps and crashed down on the village. The shaking went on for several minutes, and the sounds of rock slides and the earth splitting apart were matched only by the screams of the injured and dying. Then Grim heard a deafening crack followed by an incredible boom. In the far distance, he could see where an unimaginably large volcano disguised as a mountain blew its top and one of its sides spectacularly. 

Grim knew he had to act fast, and ran towards the rubble of the hut closest to him. The scarred man from the feast was clawing his way out of the debris that had been his home. Grim reached out his hand, but the man didn’t seem to be able to see him or his hand. So, Grim just tried to take the man's hand; and, although he’d been able to grip the beast’s fins before while trying to save the diver, Grim’s boney fingers just passed right through the scarred man’s hand. It was as if it was made of air. It occurred to Grim his role in this tragedy was that of an observer, because it wasn’t really happening. He was witnessing an event that happened long before; and, in this replay, there was no impact he could have on the situation.

The scarred man dragged a bloody sack with him out of the ruins of his home as a fall of ash started descending upon the few survivors running around trying to save others. He screamed something, perhaps his wife’s name, over and over. As he cleared the rubble, the scarred man pulled the bloody sack to him and pushed aside the wrappings to look upon the face of his dead child. His woman emerged out of another opening covered in blood and holding one arm with a gruesome compound fracture to her. She was dragging one leg behind her and scooting on her side; and, when she got close enough to the scarred man that she could see their dead child, she simply stopped moving and lay back on the rubble and fixed her eyes above on the sky, never making a sound. The ash was falling so heavily now that the ground ceased to look like ground anymore. Instead, it looked like the surface of the moon. 

The survivors, mostly all seriously injured themselves, tried to find their loved ones, secure animals, and gather necessities amidst the destruction around them. They laid out the mangled and bloody dead, and the almost dead, in the center of the village around the central well. The injured cried, screamed in pain, prayed, and begged for help from those that were mobile. The rock falls continued without mercy while the ashfall gave way to ash mixed with hot pumice, which rained down in a final insult and lit patches of thatch that had served as roofs for their huts. The survivors who could still walk had no choice but to run for their lives, and leave the wounded behind. Grim looked towards the volcano, which had disappeared behind a rapidly advancing, giant wall of ash. 

The scarred man looked to his woman who still stared at the sky as red hot ash ignited her shift near her feet. The smoldering glow began to spread across her garment; still she never moved. The man began to tremble and then he threw back his head and sent to the heavens a guttural cry of anguish before laying his baby in the arms of its mother. As the man turned and ran for shelter in higher ground, the smoldering garment leapt into a full blaze around her and the infant. It subsequently ignited the thatch that lay around her in a funeral pyre mockery just as the pyroclastic flow rolled across the settlement. There were no more sounds from those that remained. 

Grim was unaffected by the flow and watched as it met his position. In the cloud of ash were bits of glass, lava, molten rock and flaming gas pockets that moved past him at very high and destructive speeds. He imagined it was very similar to being in the blast zone of a nuclear explosion. The people ran for the caves in the hills, hoping to find refuge there. Some made it. Some didn’t. As Grim saw the events that followed, he understood that those who died that night were the fortunate ones. 

In frames, he saw the clan remnants watch from a ledge leading into a cave high on the hillside as their village, their crops, their livestock… everything they had burned. Grim saw other small gatherings of survivors across the land digging in the inches and feet of ash fall, their starving bodies looking for a weed to chew on. He watched a woman with a starving, lethargic toddler in her arms jump from a cliff, desperate to end the nightmare. He saw the scarred man, who had been reduced to a near skeletal status on his knees below a thick cloud cover that blotted out the sun, eating rotten vegetation mixed with charcoal amidst the desolation of his homeland.

Another flash and Grim was in the bottom of the sea again, watching as the Mur suffered an equally horrific fate that day. Rocks rained down on them from higher ledges. Then the sea bed cracked and splintered; and, as the trench spread wide open, it sucked many Mur down into it in a sudden downcurrent. Rather than releasing the Mur once the trench had opened, it sent up corpses, hot gasses, minerals, and magma which turned the water into a boiling and toxic cauldron of death.

Many, many Mur died within the first twenty minutes of the event, but there was post-event collateral damage as had also happened with the humans. Areas of the sea were completely poisonous, but the poison couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. A Mur would be swimming along and they would unknowingly enter one of these pockets. By the time they realized something was wrong, they were already dying an agonizing death. The cataclysm had also caused many of the food sources of the Mur to dry up, and they had to go further and further to find hunting grounds. It would’ve been best if they could’ve just relocated the entire clan, but there were too many injured, too many young, and too many old ones for the few able-bodied adults that remained to be able to evacuate everyone. So, no one evacuated and every day there were less Mur. 

Another flash, and Grim found himself back on the rocky beach. It was similar to before in some features, but overall the topography had changed significantly. The previously beautiful beach now resembled an alien landscape with great black lava tubes, evidence of where the lava had flowed for miles into the surf. A much smaller clan of about a dozen humans hid behind rocks, looking out at the sea. But, this time there was no feast, no children singing, only battered individuals, who were shadows of their former selves, armed with nets and weaponry. In the forefront was an older and hardened version of the scarred man. Grim looked to the sea as the Mur emerged from its depths. Where before hundreds of Mur had come, this time there were only a couple dozen. After they came into the shallows and circled with faces upturned to the sky, they started to sing their song of the world again. The song was different this time though. It spoke of every sorrow a being could endure. 

Grim had once again been so transfixed by the song of the Mur that he hadn’t noticed the humans creeping down to the shore and into the water as the song of suffering ended. The humans suddenly descended upon the Mur, cutting off their escape routes, and slaughtered all they could with savagery and bloodlust. The humans dragged the carcasses to shore and built a great fire. They cooked their former friends in chunks on the ends of poles positioned along the sides of the fire. Then they ate ravenously of the meat. Scene after scene replayed of humans hunting the Mur who dared be glimpsed by a human eye. The humans had somehow resolved that the terrible events which preceded that day were caused by a direct and intentional act of the Mur. They didn't know of the Mur losses. They didn't ask. Perhaps, the starvation had perverted the peaceful and kind people they once were, so that they could justify the brutal extraction of their revenge. Maybe, their losses and struggles had driven them mad. Or, maybe they were just hungry. 

The sadness that washed over Grim was as heavy as it was deep. He watched through the eyes of the beast as his child was speared by humans right in front of him, and then taken to shore to be sold at market as a delicacy. His wife, tortured by the loss and overwhelmed in grief, swam to the shore and voluntarily gave her life, as did many others. The songs of the Mur were no more.

Grim came back to himself with a final flash of light as the beast broke his eyes away and went back to swimming. His message had been communicated, and the beast moved slowly, fatigued from the conveyance of memories too unspeakable to even imagine, let alone to have endured. Grim finally spoke to him with kindness and sympathy when he asked, "You were the scarred man's friend, weren't you? You led your people to the massacre, didn't you?"

The beast continued to swim, but very slowly and without observable aim. Finally, after a while, he found the words and answered Grim with, "Yes. And, for some cursed reason, I survived. I thought the purpose was that I had to protect those few others who managed to get away. I wish I wouldn't have every day. They are all gone now, too. And, still I remain. My living hell is a constant and just punishment for having been so foolish and failing my brothers and sisters."

"There’s none but you now?" Grim asked softly. He was absolutely traumatized by what he'd just witnessed. He couldn't imagine what this Mur still felt, as there was no amount of time that would lessen that kind of pain. 

"I don't know. Maybe a few dozen now in various places. All too cowardly to end our own existence honorably."

"Do you still gather and sing?" Grim winced at the inconsiderate stupidity of his own question as soon as it came out of his mouth. 

"What is there to sing about? We mate for life, so there are no new unions. We no longer procreate, so there are no new Mur. There's no joy. No family. No one to love. Just a few weary, scared impostors left awaiting a death too slow and stubborn to end our pain. So, do us a favor and get on with it."

"I can't... I'm not here for you," Grim said. 

"Then why are you here?"