The window is a wide, floor-length affair, delicately paned and clean as the finest crystal at the level of his eyes. Lower, at what could barely be called knee height, are a trail of telltale smudges and sticky handprints. Some of the glass is tinted lightly blue, creating a pattern that might be floral. The entire thing is held together by expensive honey-colored wood, thin around the individual pieces and thicker at the hinges. An entire panel had swung back, exactly like a door into the room beyond.

Doubtless someone had rationalized that. The stuffiness of the room, perhaps. The beauty of the day. Even now, with the evening sky purpling, the air still holds the faint smells of summer. Lush greens and sun baked stone and concrete are implied in the breeze that makes the flimsy curtains flutter.

He steps in as quietly as any puff of air, then shuts the window behind him. It was most careless of them to leave it open.

The room is as lovely inside as out. Spacious and warm, tactfully expensive. Examples of good taste jostle with light irony against the messier decorations given to the place by its owner. The usual result of the clash of a parent’s dream nursery with the arrival of an actual occupant. This one seems to have a particular taste for the artistic, with crayons as a forte and paper as an optional tool.

He tries not to step on any of the masterworks as he makes his way across the floor. Picking over the dangerous terrain, he takes care not to give so much as a subtle nudge to the piles of glossy picture books or well-worn stuffed animals. It probably doesn’t matter, as notoriously messy as children are, but it’s giving him something to concentrate on.

The bed is a high four-poster, and absurdly large in comparison to the size of its soul occupant. She is, he knows from the case profile, four years old. She looks younger even than that.

She should not have lived past the night of her birth.

For one moment, he burns at the thought of what her parents must have done to keep her here with them, in the land of the living. Blood was spilled for this child before she was given her name. Then his anger melts away as he looks down at that pale face, memorizing (as he does with every case) the spill of dark hair on the pillow, the little finger hooked into the corner of her mouth. What parents would not fight to keep their own private miracle?

These are the jobs he hates. The ones where his sympathy comes into play. It’s best, he’s learned through experience, to finish them quickly.

There are a plethora of pillows on this bed. He picks up the closest one with near-nerveless fingers and does what he has to do.

There is a moment when she struggles. Little fingers clutch at the fabric of the coverlet, then her arms reach out to him in mute appeal. The tiny body twists. Next she starts to calm, Her frantic motions are weaker, instinct’s no longer able conquer the lack of air and force the breathless body to move. He pushes harder, fighting against his own natural longing to pull away. He wants too run out of this room and keep on running, to never stop until his heart has burst in atonement for what he’s done.

He wonders why this didn’t happen to him, years ago. What cosmic joke was it that no one saw what an abomination he was? Where were the agents then? They should have killed him like this, held and pushed and pushed until even his cursed body gave up the struggle. It should have been him, so that he would never have to do this to another.

He can’t.

Before he realizes it, he’s thrown the pillow as far away from himself as possible. But he knows immediately that it’s too late. He’s done something wrong. She’s breathing, but in great wrenching gasps. There’s something odd about the way her chest and face look, and blood has smeared everywhere.

He must have pushed too hard.

And her eyes. They don’t seem to see anything, but he knows she knows he’s there. Yes, she says to him with those wide, unblinking eyes. I know you. You’re Death.

He is Death. He is a killer of the innocent, and there is nothing he can do about it. Every time he thinks he’s made himself understand, someone else looks at him with that horrible last moment of understanding, and he realizes he will never learn to cope with what he has become. No. What he’s always been.

He’s going to have to put her out of her misery.

He’s got his hands around her neck, now. No point in making it look natural when there’s already so much blood.

He hates this. Hates himself. Hates his work, his apparently unending penance. Not enough to be a murderer once, not enough to kill a hundred times. He hates his life. Most of all because sometimes he forgets, and starts to love it. Too often. Too easy to take it all lightly and forget that this is what it’s really all about- a pulse growing dimmer under his fingers.

He Hates.

The anger comes spilling out of him in gouts, like dark blood. The power of it is ripping sketches off the walls, tearing books and toys to pieces. He’s forgotten what he’s doing, hands clenching convulsively, so hard that he’s broken through the skin and there’s something moist spraying onto his sleeves.

He tears himself away, looks at the meat under his fingernails. It’s disgusting, so he tries to get rid of it, jamming his fingers into his mouth and sucking hard.

The child is a mess too. And still watching him. He shuts her eyes.

By the time Tatsumi finds him, he’s managed to lick her mostly clean, too.

***End
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