Magnet Pull

“Listen, what do you think about me leaving the gas on and going to sleep? That’d save me a lot of overthinking.”

I didn’t know what to do after what happened last night, so if there’s one thing I’m good at—really good at—it’s pretending nothing happened. And that’s what I did.
I walked into her room in the morning. She was completely buried under the blankets, only a few strands of her hair peeking out.

She didn’t react to my words.
She didn’t react when I flung the curtains wide open.

“Anyway, I’m gonna leave the gas on.”

“…let me sleep…”

“You don’t sleep. You just pretend to,” I replied, and… honestly, I was a little glad she’d responded.

“I don’t care, just leave me alone.”

“What happened to stopping my death? How’re you gonna do that if you don’t even get up?”

I heard an exasperated sigh from under the blankets.

“The gas trick only works if you’re already asleep. Otherwise, the smell would keep you from dozing off.”

“I could take sleeping pills. Wouldn’t notice a thing.”

“Are you being deliberately stupid today or what?” she snapped. I could see her clutching the blankets, like she was building an igloo to hide in.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s decided.”

“HEY!”

I hadn’t even turned the doorknob when her voice froze me in place. I wasn’t sure if it was the volume or the tone. Something was off.
I didn’t let go of the knob but turned slightly to look at her.
It was strange—her face held a look of terror I didn’t know she was capable of.

“What’s wrong with you…?” I asked, letting go of the knob and taking a few steps back toward her bed.

“…I’m… angry…”

“Well… your face says the complete opposite.”

“Are you slow or what? Let me say it again—I’m angry!”

I could see the fear on her face. I think she noticed it too, which is why she buried herself under the blankets again.
I got it. No, actually, I didn’t get it. I mean, it was simple—anger—but at the same time, not so simple.
She wasn’t supposed to feel anything.

“I get it… no, I mean, I would get it, but coming from you…” My voice trailed off before I could finish. I tried to peel the blankets off, but I could feel her gripping them tightly.

“How do you… humans… deal with these… feelings?”

“They’re called emotions.”

“Don’t interrupt me with technicalities!”

“Okay, calm down, alright? Just… you know, do what you always do. Talk.”

“I don’t know how to explain it…”

“I don’t know how to explain a lot of what I feel either, and that doesn’t stop me from spitting words out like watermelon seeds.”

I waited for a laugh that never came.

“Idiot…” she mumbled, barely peeking out from the blankets.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll make sure it’s carved on my tombstone… Can we talk now? You don’t even have to come out of your labyrinthine blanket cave.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t understand how to process it. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.”

“Look, it’s not that hard to understand, just—”

“Shut up, I’m not done…” she said, emerging from the blankets. Her hair was a complete mess, like she’d been trying to dig through her own head under that fortress of covers. “There’s… something else…”

“You’re full of surprises today, huh…”She took my hand and placed it on her chest.
Yeah, I got a little nervous in that moment—it was kind of ‘intimate,’ for lack of a better word.
I mean, it was her chest, not her chest, but… you get what I mean right?

Her skin was cold, as always.
Five minutes of heavy silence passed between us.
The internal thump nearly made me jump off the bed.
Strange, almost impossible—no, definitely impossible—but undeniable.
It was a heartbeat.

Her heart was beating once every five minutes.

“How can you live with this constant feeling? How do you know what to say, what to do when you feel… like this?”

“One thing at a time. First off, a human heart beats sixty to a hundred times a minute at rest, obviously… not once every five.” The correction was, I think, more to lighten the weight of the situation than to give her a biology lesson.
Though that weight was something neither of us could fully grasp at the time.

She looked up at me, then down at my hand on her chest again.

“…Second, a lot of the time, we don’t know what to say, much less what to do. We wing it as we go. Emotions get the better of us like ninety percent of the time, you know?”

“How can you live like that? How do you go through your days with emotions you don’t fully control? And with those ‘thumps’ inside…”

“Yeah, it’s a rough morning for both of us…eh?” I said with a small laugh. “Our hearts start beating from the moment we’re born, so our brains get used to the rhythm. As for emotions…” I paused for a moment. “I wouldn’t know what to tell you. I’m not great at handling that stuff. If I were, I wouldn’t be trying to die… right?”

She gently pushed my hand away from her chest and pulled the blankets back up, leaving only her face visible.
“Is this… how you feel? How you all feel?”

“With the added bonus of the full spectrum of emotions, but yeah,” I said, trying to sound light, though we were far from a light conversation, and the day had barely started.

“There’s more?”

“A ton. What you’re feeling is just a part, no, a fraction of everything humans can feel.”

“Is that why you make that choice?”

“What? To die?”

She didn’t answer but nodded.

“Some of us, yeah… when we feel like we can’t take it anymore…”

“So that’s what they all feel in the end,” she whispered to herself, as if answering a question she’d asked long ago.

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing. I think I understand a bit better now what’s going on inside you.”

“Are you saying you’re finally gonna help me?” I asked, letting out a sigh and flopping onto her bed, way too close to her.
She looked at me for a while, didn’t speak, just shook her head.

“…So…?”

“Are you still planning to kill yourself?” she asked, barely letting the blankets slip.

I got up, slow and lazy—after all, I hadn’t even had breakfast yet—and walked to the door.

“Hey, I asked you a question!”

“What, you gonna get mad again if I don’t answer?”

“I-I don’t know… probably…”

“Great, that’s how it works. If you get mad, yell at me or something, let me know. Don’t try to deal with that kind of thing on your own.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m almost certain this is the first time in your existence you’re feeling something and not just acting based on how you think humans feel.”

“So what?”

“It’s too much to face alone…”

“How do you know?”

“Because I've been alone.”

We didn’t talk during breakfast.
I made two cups of tea, as usual, thinking maybe now she could feel the warmth of the cup or the taste of the tea.
I was wrong, one way or another.
Like I said, it was a quiet breakfast.

I wasn’t focused on the moment.What happened last night and what happened this morning reminded me of my first days with her, after I got out of the hospital.

After my observation period ended, the doctors told me I could leave.
I wasn’t eager to go home, but I wasn’t staying in the hospital either. Before they let me go, they said they didn’t know how, but my coat—a green parka—had gotten lost in the laundry.
Probably mixed up with other patients’ clothes, they said, and told me to come back in a few days to look for it.
I didn’t need to.
As I crossed the hospital exit, there she was again, waiting.

My coat wasn’t lost—she’d stolen it. And I say stolen because she never gave it back.

“People see a floating parka?” I said, approaching her. My brain was calmer now, so I decided to take the initiative. Probably the anti-anxiety meds kicking in.

“How do I look? Ironic, right? Death wearing a parka,” she said, letting out a couple of laughs between her words.

“Don’t answer a question with another.”

“Nobody can see or hear me except you, but I can interact with objects.”

“That’s a general explanation, not a direct answer to my question.”

“No, suicidal kid, they don’t see a floating parka,” she said, rolling her eyes in resignation. “If I’m wearing it, they can’t see it either. Gotta stay fashionable for the era, you know.”

“But you said nobody can see you.”

“It’s more of a personal preference.”

“In other words, you’re saying…”

“Yup, it looks good on me, so it’s mine now.”I didn’t have the energy to keep up that pointless conversation, so I just walked home.

It was getting cold; autumn was almost over.
Even though I took a different route on purpose, I could hear her footsteps behind me.

“How far are you planning to follow me?”“

The real question is how long,” she replied, quickening her pace to walk beside me. “I told you I’m not letting you kill yourself.”

“So if I decide to throw myself in front of a car right now, you’d stop me.”

“Hmm… no. That’s not how it works…”

“How does what work?”

“My resignation letter.”

Was being Death just another job?
Could you quit?
I didn’t think much about it at the time and didn’t keep talking to her either.
For a moment, I forgot I was the only one who could see her, and people were looking at me like I’d escaped a mental hospital.

Yeah, I was in a hospital, but it wasn’t a psych ward, and I didn’t escape—they discharged me.

Her voice sliced through my memory like when you’re watching a show and someone turns off the TV without warning.

“Hey, idiot, did you hear me?”

“Huh? Sorry, I was remembering stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Nothing important… What’d you say?”

“Oh… uh…” she stammered before continuing. “I asked… about what you said today, in the room.”

“I said a lot of things.”She frowned, clearly annoyed at my dodging.

“You said you were alone.”

“I did.”

“You were alone,” she repeated.

“Yeah, I was,” I replied, catching my distorted reflection in the tea for a moment before looking up. “I think… for a while now, I’ve stopped being alone.”