Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

It was comforting to have an animal, so consistently near and needy, to focus on, to nurture. Just to have another heart beating in the room, a live energy, had cheered me. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been, and then suddenly I wasn’t alone at all. I had a dog. Never again would I be alone, I thought. What a gift to have such a companion, like a child and protector, both, something wiser than me in so many ways, and yet doting, loyal, and affectionate.

Oh, how I loved him. How much life there was rumbling in that furry thing just astounded me.

Sometimes I felt that my mind was just a soft cloud of air around me, taking in whatever flew in, spinning it around, and then delivering it back out into the ether.

If those birch woods across the road were good for dawn walks, my old pines were more for midnight. Shut in under their dark canopy of thick branches, sound was dampened by the nesty carpet of dried pine needles underfoot. The space the pines made was like an interior, like my den, a place where you’d sit and read or listen to records. A glass of bourbon, a warm wool sweater, a green glass desk lamp, a dark mantel, these things would have done nicely there.

Walk. Breakfast. Garden. Lunch. Boat. Hammock. Wine. Puzzle. Bath. Dinner. Read. Bed.

It was dumb and cruel that anyone had to die at any moment they weren’t ready for, if they still felt there was more life to live.

Life was persistent. There it was, every day. Each morning it woke me up. It was loud and brash. A bully. A lounge singer in a garish sequin dress. A runaway truck. A jackhammer. A brush fire. A canker sore. Death was different. It was tender, a mystery.

It was too much effort to disrobe, wait for the water to heat, address my body for what it was now, so little, just a little thing I had to keep clean, like washing a single dish one uses constantly.

That is the sound of silence, isn’t it? The sound of death? The sound of nonexistence? The friction of not being?

Death in her hands