Death Bought Band-Aids

By Cheyenne Mann

Death sat in front of her, wearing a thrifted Hawaiian shirt and eating pancakes without syrup. Elizabeth preferred to drench her breakfast in sugar. She liked food so sweet it would scorch her organs. A haphazard smile, stained by black coffee, beamed out at her from behind Death’s lips and her bones felt like honey. He smiled a lot. She loved it when he smiled. It was warm, like eggs in the morning. Elizabeth loved Death with every bloody-plucked heartstring in her chest. 

In his middle age, Death kept himself presentable. He had a full head of plush, dark hair that feathered out from his scalp like a crow. His eyes were burnt molasses and they crinkled with laugh lines in the corners. Death didn’t have skin. That was something Elizabeth loved about him. He was old television static. Flickering, squirming, always searching to fill the shape of a man. He was a void; nothing but chaos and pancakes. Skin issues were a commonality between them. Something that linked them beyond their fondness for each other. His skin was in constant motion and hers, perpetually rotting. Genetics were flesh and blood. Death had neither and Elizabeth had too much of both. 

“My knee is bleeding,” she told him. He paused, fork halfway to his swarming lips. 

“Again?” he asked with genuine concern. 

“I’m going to go to the store. We’re out of Band-Aids.”

In the few years since Death had adopted her, he had spent thousands of dollars on Band-Aids. Mornings would roll around and once more Elizabeth would apply as many as would fit, desperately trying to plug up the gaping hole in her knee. The Band-Aids would sop up ungodly amounts of thick, sweet blood until the wound eventually overpowered the itchy adhesive. Knees were not her strongpoint. She had hurt her left one badly and the skin never knit itself back together.

 ...

The air of the conifers hung lightly, smelling of mint and pepper. Elizabeth liked to hike up the mountains. She consumed the flesh of the trees with her calloused palms and memorized the texture on her fingertips. To climb a conifer was to conquer life. Atop a throne made of branches, she would sit and swing her legs. The earth breathed below her, shifting in shades of green and brown and blue. She swore if she leaned in close enough, fixating her vision on the intangible lungs encrusted in rock, she could pulse with the skin of the world. 

One humid day in mid-spring, she leaned too far forward. Razor blade branches sliced her arms, scraping her body raw at every angle as she fell. She landed knees first into the hard-packed, pebble-embroidered ground. Blood abandoned her body as fast as it possibly could, racing out of capillaries to water the grass around her. Her body was ruined, cracked at every angle, and she knew that this was where her skeleton would dissolve. The impact bounced its way up her bones and rattled in her teeth and when she looked up from the explosion of her legs, she saw TV static. That was how they started; instead of taking her away, Death simply stayed.   

...

“I’ll go with you then, kiddo.” 

“I can go myself.” 

“I’d like to go with you.” 

She returned to her eggs, covered in thick crystal sugar. Elizabeth poked the spongy, yellow blob and watched as it withered into soggy, green rot, shriveling in on itself like a leech. Blonde hair fell in her face and covered her eyes but she didn’t dare move to tuck it behind her ears. She didn’t want to rot. Death took care of it. His boney pinky drifted across her cheekbone. Swarming lips kissed the top of her head, gently. 

“I love you,” he told her, and she wondered why. 

Death drove and she didn’t argue. Instead, she looked out the window at the slurry of grey slush on the road and imagined what it would feel like to fill her lungs with it. Harsh, compressed crystalline ice that would drown her slowly, creaking in muddy strain as it was pushed lower and lower into her body until she popped at the seams. It would be nice to feel it. The rawness. It would scorch more than sugar. She'd never be able to do that, though. She’d never be able to touch her organs. She didn’t want to rot. She didn’t want to be just bone melting into putrid, liquid flesh. Death would be lonely without her. And she’d be lonely without him.

 Death parallel parked, hitting the curb just once, and they went into the store. The medical aisle was a wonder. It was decorated for Christmas. Shiny blue garlands glistened like cellophane on the shelves. They looked sharp and itchy, and Elizabeth wanted to wrap herself tightly in them. She’d have to touch her skin to do that, though. 

“I like these ones,” Death mused and held out a light pink box. Strawberry Shortcake grinned at her, a peach-colored Band-Aid decorated with fruits stuck to the bridge of her nose. Elizabeth smiled at Death and dropped the Band-Aids into her shopping basket. 

“Anything else?” Death asked. 

“I’d like some fruit.” 

As Elizabeth walked, the leg of her jeans stuck to the open wound. The patch of skin had been missing since she was eight and had fallen. It was surely still out there, somewhere, living alongside sphagnum moss and snail shells. If found, she could reach out and touch it. Would that skin be more real than the skin she was wearing? Or would that skin rot if she touched it too? Blood pooled and congealed on the pure white linoleum tile underneath her as she grabbed a mesh bag full of Red Delicious apples. 

“Ready?” Death asked her. She nodded.

Elizabeth got in line for the clerk with the balding, sandy hair. She liked his smile and the marmalade acne that dotted his cheeks. He smelled sharp, like pine. 

“Electric chair,” Death leaned close to her ear and whispered. He did this often. It was a fun little game of theirs. Death would tell her how people would die, and Elizabeth would smile and bleed.

 “He goes on a cocaine-induced bender in ten years. Kills a family of four while driving a car he stole from a grocery store parking lot. The car is blue. There’s a pink bumper sticker that says ‘I honk for reusable straws.’ The daughter is eight. She dies instantly. The parents die at the scene. Blood loss. The son is ten and he's the last to go. He dies at the hospital, alone. The clerk gets convicted of quadruple homicide. Electric chair.” 

The cashier grinned down at her. “Would you like these apples in a bag?” 

“Yes, please.” She smiled her most lovely smile at him. “I don’t like touching the skin.” 

Death reached into his wallet, dropping twelve dollars and forty-two cents into Elizabeth's open palm. She placed it on the counter beside the register and took the plastic bag from the clerk. 

“Merry Christmas,’’ she said, and Death ruffled her hair. 

Stepping out of line, she reached inside the polyethylene bag. The apples were rotten. Liquid sludge splashed around the bottom of the bag, drenching the Strawberry Shortcake Band-Aids in a moldy batter. The scent of acidic mildew creeped into the air. She brought a handful of mush up to her lips and cried. 

“Oh dear, you touched the skin, didn’t you?” Death clicked his teeth in disappointment. 

“I just wanted an apple.” She should have gotten oranges; a rind protects their skin. Maybe she could’ve eaten one of them. Maybe the citric acid would have been strong enough to tear her esophagus to shreds. 

Death wiped away a tear on her cheek and she buzzed like a swarm of bees. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced an apple, Red Delicious, shining like ruby gemstones. Her mouth watered and she wanted to yell. She wanted to pull her teeth out one by one so she could never bite into anything again. 

“You know you need to ask me for help with things like this,” he said. 

Death held the fruit to her and she bit into it. Winter crisp and sweet as sugar, Death smiled and the world was static.