SHE SIGHED AS she laid on the top of the apartment complex, wondering what she was doing.  She just knew that she had no friends to make plans with in the new city, and that all her friends were hours and hours away. 

            “What’re ya doing?”

            She jumped, not expecting to hear someone’s voice.  When she didn’t find anyone, she hesitantly called out, “Who’s there?”

            “Hey, Lia.”

            Lia stood up, confused as she looked towards the shadows of the tree, wondering if that was where the person was at.  Searching through her memories, she froze as one hit her.  “Ellie?  Is that you?”  Her brown eyes watered slightly as she looked in the general direction the voice came from, hoping that she was correct in her guess of the person. 

            The brunette walked out, a sheepish grin on her face.  “How’re you doing?” 

            Lia was still, her hand covering her mouth as she tried to control her emotions.  Finally, after what seemed like hours, she choked out, “You do know my name is Abigail, right?  Not Emilia.”

            Ellie nodded, laughing.  “Yeah.  You told me a few years ago.  You were fifteen and I was about a month or two from being fourteen.  2018.” 

            Neither girl moved from their frozen stance, but both broke out of it as soon as Abigail’s hand fell from her mouth, sending them flying towards each other.  They held onto each other as if their lives depended on it, and for Ellie, it just about did.  After a moment, they loosened their grasps and took a small step back, looking each other in the eye. 

            “There’s something I may have minorly left out when we first started talking,” Ellie said, being extremely blunt, especially for the sort of person she was. 

            Abigail ignored the statement and grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the miniature house that she was still unfamiliar in.  However, in just a split second, she found herself already standing in her room.  She swung around, looking at Ellie with wide and frightened eyes. 

            “What,” she stated, “the actual hell was that?”

            Ellie grinned a half smile, which reminded Abigail strongly of a fictional character she obsessed over while watching television.  “Funny story…”

            “You’re not possessed by a demon, are you?”  The sarcastic grin fell from Abigail’s face as soon as she saw that Ellie didn’t have any reaction.  “What the hell?!  You’re possessed by a demon?  That’s supposed to be in books, and movies, and TV, and fanfiction!  Not real life!  How did that happen?!”

            “I’m not possessed, Lia.  But it’s a bit of a long story.  You should probably sit down.”

            And Abigail did just that. 

//

            “You mean to tell me that you –  the pale, short, sick twenty-two-year-old female that I met through Tumblr – are Death?”

            Ellie licked her lips, leaving her tongue sticking out as her eyes scrunched up.  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”  She clapped her hands together, intertwining her fingers, grinning as if she was a schoolgirl at a sleepover.  “Isn’t that weird?”

            Abigail stood up, going towards her door.  “Yep.  And guess what?  I became friends with a complete psycho.”

            The younger girl grabbed her wrist, her light eyes pleading.  “Wait.  Please listen some more.  I didn’t finish telling you everything.”

            “That was only part of it?”  Abigail shook her head, sighing in frustration.  “Ellie, that’s not even possible.  You aren’t actually Death.”

            “Then how’d you get to your room so quickly?  Huh?”  Ellie shook Abigail’s wrist.  “Tell me how you went from outside, on top of a building, to inside your apartment room.  Answer me that.”

            Silence filled the room as Abigail thought.  It had to be some coincidence, didn’t it?

            Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern.

            “If you can look me in the eye and do it again,” Abigail hesitantly said, “I may think that it’s real.  But since you can’t, I’m not going to believe you.”

            And then she was in the living room. 

            “Lia, you need to trust me,” Ellie whispered.  “Did you trust me before I told you this?  Did you trust me when we just knew each other from online?  Did you trust me when we just met?  Better yet, do you still trust me?”

            The tanner girl didn’t pause to spin around, loudly proclaiming, “That was before you told me that you’re Death!  That was before you began to lie to me!”

            “I am not lying,” the younger girl hissed.  “I have not lied about a single thing tonight.  And do you remember the fact that I’m dying?  That’s because being Death is making me weaker, weaker than I already am!  But you’re perfectly healthy, Lia.  That means that you can be Death.  But if I’m Death and I die naturally, nobody else will die.  No one will die.”

            “You just said that you’re Death, and now you’re saying that you’re still able to die?”  She glared slightly at Ellie.  “That’s impossible.”

            “I have the responsibility of Death, but I’m still human.  Can we please just talk more?”  Desperation filled her eyes.  “Please.”

            Instead of answering, Abigail just sat down on the couch that had come with the apartment and sighed, rubbing her face with her hands.  Ellie smiled sadly as she asked, “Do you want any coffee?  This could take a while.”

            She nodded, about to tell her what she wanted, but the coffee was already in Ellie’s hands, one iced, one hot.  “Here you go.”  Abigail took the hot coffee in her cool hands, wishing she had a hoodie with her as well.  As if her mind was read, Ellie handed her one that had previously been in her room. 

            “Can you please explain how you’re doing this?” Abigail asked, exasperated. 

            Ellie shrugged.  “It’s a perk of being Death.  The shadows just… I don’t know.  Call me?  Summon me?  Something like that.  Your hoodie was in the corner of your room, under a pile of other clothes, and I remembered that, so it came to me immediately.  Prepared coffees that used to be…” Ellie looked at the names on both coffee cups, “for Lily and Mickenzie.”  She frowned.  “Do you think these are the ones that I added into the family?”

            Abigail shrugged.  “At this point, I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.  Just that my name is Abigail and that I may be going insane.  But ignoring that last part, what else are you able to do?”

            “Well, I basically just control deaths.  If someone’s in a coma, they prove to me why they’re worthy of still living.  Someone just attempted suicide?  If I can get there fast enough, I can save their life.  And if I continued to be Death until I died naturally, it’d get passed right onto my oldest child.”  She then snapped and pointed finger guns at Abigail.  “Guess who never got married and is too sick to bear children!  This weirdo right here!”

            Despite the strange situation, Abigail couldn’t help but smile slightly. 

            “Even if I adopted, it still wouldn’t work.  But, you’re engaged and you’re gonna have kids eventually.  Congratulations on that, by the way.  Good job.  Anyway, you’re perfectly healthy and in the prime years of your life Lia.”  Ellie shook her head slightly, almost scoffing.  “We both know that I’m not.  At all.  I never had the lively – healthy – years of my life.  I was doing doctor’s appointments left and right up until I was about eight, stopped for about a year, then did it again when I injured my ankle.  Then allergies, and the sickness, and all that lovely stuff.

           “I’ve never been the best candidate for the position of Death, and it doesn’t even look good on college or job applications.  Those are plain and simple facts.  I only got this role because I thought it’d be cool, and like I was the child of Hades from Greek Mythology.  I wasn’t.  In fact, for a sick person, it just makes life more miserable.  I would offer it to my brother, since he’s gonna be a brain surgeon and could possibly give someone the extra push to survive if they were on the edge of dying, but he’s got an auto-immune disease.  And dying naturally at twenty-four, with a fiancé and schooling and what could soon be a family would not be ideal.  I wouldn’t put that on him.

          “That lead me to you, Lia.  I completely understand if you turn this down, not wanting the pressure.  If you don’t want it, you need to tell me as soon as possible, because if you don’t tell me soon enough, I could die from it.” 

          Abigail’s eyes widened slightly.  “You mean that you’re gonna die soon because being Death is attacking your immune system?”

         Ellie sighed and put her face in her hands.  “When you say it like that, it sounds really stupid.  Sorry for inconveniencing you,” she said, standing up, “but I’m just gonna leave now.  If I don’t, you’re going to think I’m a real fool.”

          “Wait!”  Abigail took a deep breath with her eyes closed before continuing.  “If this doesn’t weigh you down anymore – if it doesn’t… kill you anymore – will you still be dying?” 

          The pale girl shrugged.  “I’m not sure.  I don’t think so, but there’s still a slight possibility.  The person I took it from, my great-grandma, said that since I get sick easily it might attack my immune system until it’s deadly, but I don’t know if the sickness is from being Death or just getting sick so easily.  And if I manage to pass it on, it still may take a little while before I start to get back to less-sick.  But I could just as easily still be dying.”

          Abigail looked into the eyes of one of her best friends; one of the people that knew almost everything about her.  One of the six girls she had become extremely close to online, until they created their own little family.  The only one out of the seven of them that was actively dying.  The youngest one.  The one that was meant to be the healthiest was the one that had to make several hospital visits a year. 

          “This won’t kill me, will it?”

          Ellie shook her head, a smile on her face.  “No.  My great-grandma, the one that was Death before me, died naturally when she was eighty-five.  She also did bowling quite often and walked a lot.”  She shrugged.  “Basically, she was active.  I was – still am – not.”

          Abigail chuckled.  “Wonder what happened to you.”

          “I got sick, remember?” Ellie said, nudging Abigail in the side, a smirk on her face.

          “Anyway, what do I have to do to accept this?  Kill someone?  Summon a demon?  Kill a vampire?”

          “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

          “Shut up.”

          Keys jingled as Ellie pulled them out of her pocket, one of them looking old and antique.  “These are the keys to your little ol’ house in the land of the dead.  Once you accept these, you also accept the responsibilities of being Death.  The final one is that you can’t kill of anyone you don’t like.  It doesn’t come naturally, and you’d still have to kill them yourself, not with the perks of being Death.”

          Abigail nodded, the action reluctant.  “Okay.  I won’t kill anyone.”

          Ellie let go of the keys, letting them fall directly into Abigail’s hands.  “There.  Now you’re Death.  Any questions?”

            “Yeah.  Why are most of the keys new but the one older?”

            She frowned.  “That’s a good question.  I think it’s because… I don’t know.  But the rooms are really nice.  It’s basically a mansion.  I love it.”  She shot straight up, a smile shining on her face.  “Also, any destroyed books, or phones, or inventions, or instruments, all show up, too.  Lia, there are ancient Egyptian artifacts there.  There are things there from B.C.  It’s amazing!”

            “Okay, that you’ve gotta be lying about,” Abigail immediately said.  “That’s not possible.”

            “I talked face-to-face with Alexander Hamilton’s ghost.  I talked to freaking King George III.  Anything’s possible, Lia.”

            “Except for vampires.”

            “Right.  Except for vampires.”

            “Any other questions?  If not, I’m gonna curl up and sleep, because I am completely and utterly exhausted.”

          The older girl smiled and walked away, letting her rest, even though she was lying in the middle of a wooden floor.  “I’ll be here when you wake up, El.  Unless I’m late for work.”

          Ellie chuckled softly, wrapping the blanket around her as she closed her eyes, able to rest completely for the first time in six years.