I was four years old when I encountered him for the first time.

 
Without a single sound he emerged in my bedroom, wisps of shadow exuding from his ragged, worn cloak. His drooping hood hid his emotionless, still face absent of any life. His darkness seemed to envelop my surroundings, slaughtering any color it once held. The sharpened edge of his scythe gleamed in the dwindling moonlight, nearly blinding me. He held it confidently by his side, twiddling the weathered wood handle between his fleshless fingers. He took delicate care to step between the Legos and action figures that littered the now dull, desolate floor. 

The physical embodiment of the one thing humanity cannot control. 

The next morning, I awoke to my goldfish upside down in his tank, lifelessly clinging to the surface of the water. 
 

My first experience with death. 
 

I stumbled to my mother, who was already at the door witnessing my muffled cries. Snot-filled tears plastered my face, uselessly reaching for short breaths between sobs. 
 

My mother held out her arms, bright and warm with life. I clasped my small, innocent hand in hers. I felt every etch of the chasms that concaved in her fingerprints, each individual vein lining the inside of her palm, every indentation within her flushed fingertips. 

My panicked breaths came to a standstill. 
 

Her hand, her hand, 
I need not understand. 
 

The cloaked man did not visit for a while. I saw him time to time in fleeting shadows and in the quick silhouette of his scythe in broad daylight. Always traveling, always traveling.

Then I was fourteen. My grandfather had grown older. His limbs grew weaker, his breathing became softer, his hair had grown thinner, his eyes lost their vibrance. Time was slowly trickling away, each tick growing closer and closer to the cloaked man’s arrival. 

One night, he emerged once more. He carefully danced around game controllers and dirty laundry flooding the floor, bubbling darkness seeping into the carpet like staining poison, his weapon prepared for a malicious strike. No words were exchanged, and yet, I knew. 

At my grandfather’s funeral, they buried him into the suffocating dirt, silence weighing the solemn air. My mother quietly stood beside me, intertwining her shaking hand with mine, an unspoken comfort injected into my veins.

Her hand, her hand, 
I need not understand. 

Years passed. I grew with the seasons. I went to college, married the love of my life, got my dream job.

I was at peace. 
   

But then I was twenty-two. I tossed and shifted relentlessly, the hard mattress beneath me protesting with each half-hearted turn. An uneasy breeze drifted through my open window, gusts of black beginning to show through. I jerked up, chills shooting down my stiff spine, recoiling away from the curtain. The shadow of the weapon appeared once more, quivering menacingly in the starlight. The cloaked man quietly tiptoed around diapers and my business suit strewn across the hardwood flooring. 
 

“No,” I croaked, eyeing his scythe warily. “You’re not taking anyone else away from me.” The man stared with his eyeless frame, a sad somberness seeming to carry his traceless pace.  He faded away. 
   

The next morning, my mother had passed away in her sleep. I cursed the cloaked man. I loathed him with every single breath, every single second I spent living.  
   

At her funeral, I watched the pastor’s hollow, mindless words fall to the ground. His pale palms numbly gestured to the sky for wretched emphasis. A few older ladies daintily dabbed their rosy cheeks, shaking their heads gravely. They began to cover her beautiful body with poisoning dirt, each shovelful taking a fragment of my soul with her, clumps crumbling aimlessly to the sides of the coffin.
   

Instinctively, my trembling, calloused hand reached out for her hand to comfort me. 
   

But it was not there.
   

Her hand, her hand,
I need to understand.

Angry tears began to fill my eyes, my hands now balled into tight, veined fists. I lifted my gaze to the forests, my heart dropping to see a man far off in the distance silently observing from afar.
   

His cloak seemed heavier than before. His scythe was lowered to his side, sweeping the grass beneath him. 
   

He remained still as they finished burying her, his silence speaking more than words ever could.
   

We locked gazes, and he gave me a small, chilling nod.