Death of the Monsieur

One one-thounsand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four… That’s how many seconds it took for my glove to reach the floor. Hundreds of beams supported the bridge across the valley fissure, with my hand out towards the strange, lost Monsieur.

“Monsieur! The bridge is dangerous! Please come back,” I cried. No one’s ever crossed the bridge, why no one’s ever tried. No one came to this abandoned place with mountains thick with snow, like a painting in a scene lost long ago. The blizzard had clouded everything and iced all the rails; the babbling broke ceased to speak, and no one could find the trails. With a platform left forgotten and banked by the blizzard storms, even with the constant sunshine, it was a struggle to keep warm.

“I am looking for the train!” he called, his lips bluer than the sea. “I know I heard the whistle, there! A little beyond the trees.”

“Monsieur, you are mistaken; there is no train here.” For if I just keep lying, then maybe it won’t appear.

“But why are there tracks here?”

“Merely wood on the floor.”

“No, I’m sure you’re lying. I can see the steam vapor!”

“No!” I shouted, stepping on the tracks, but the Monsieur merely twirled with his mustache wax. I grounded every step, careful not to slide. Why am I trying to stop him?! Why am I filled with so much pride? I caught the man’s hand, his limbs as stiff as stone; even with flesh of ice, he did not groan or moan. Snowflakes on his lashes and his face lightly dusted, and every corner of his clothes was snow-encrusted. “The train’s not there; it’ll never be there,” my voice said like a song on repeat because I would not let any man wander to defeat. “Everyone who meets the train, it takes them far away. And I am left alone again on this sunny day.”

The Monsieur looked at me with sadness in a gentle glaze, and something in his manner set my temper ablaze. “Tell me, child, what do you fear? What is the panic for?”

“No... more. I don’t want death anymore.”

“Why is death a villain? Why is death to fear? When death is the life-giver, it’s the reason we’re all here.” He would not stop down the bridge; I could not persuade him to stay. Instead, my hand froze to his, and he led me down the way. I clawed and scratched and bit at the ice, desperate to be free, but there was no stopping him or where he was taking me. He pointed to the frozen river, and on the edge nearby, a few small lilies twirled in the wind and struggled to survive.

“Consider how the lilies neither toil nor do they fear where the water comes from or when the sun appears. And every night, they bask in the glowing of the moon, never fearing once that death will come too soon. Because they know the sun will surely die, as have the stars that still light the night sky. The reason that you fear death is because it does not fit your taste; you are left with nothing but a cold embrace. It’ll shatter your life and spread the pieces across the darkest space, but it’s your fault, for death is a child without a home or place. You built your ego of gold, and friends, and all that you can obtain, and because death did not fit, you felt nothing but disdain for it. So when the song stops of this world you built pretending nothing will ever change, you scoff and mock and act as if death is the thing that’s strange.”

“But death is painful; I do not like it. I do not want it there,” I said to him as the whistle began to blare. It was coming, he was right, for I could not unseen. The train was coming, and I had to flee! When I looked down at my frozen hand, wrinkles! Wrinkles everywhere. How much time had passed? Why, I was covered with grey hair!

The man looked at me with a slight grin. Even he had greyed and was scary thin. “Death can’t hurt you, it won’t, though painful it may feel. The pain is only there to let you know what’s real. Death will rot the body,” he said as his hand turned to dust and was swept away in the cold wind gust. Up the cracks, up his face, around his icy lips. And just behind him, the western sun did his head eclipse. “And death may seem to tear all things apart, your ego is to blame, but it can never take what lies inside your heart. Love will never fade; it lives in the very air. Of the molecules of the past, all life has shared. And in your face is a portrait from long ago of all the ancestors who once loved you, and that love continues to grow.”

Now the man was gone, and his clothing fell through the tracks. It only took four seconds to hear them lightly smack. Even though he’d vanished, his voice was still in the air: don’t ignore the train, don’t you even dare. When the train suddenly comes, will you be caught unaware? Will you face the constant and see what there is to learn? If life is the lesson, then imagine what we earn.

I closed my eyes for just a moment. It wasn’t even a moment, just a long-paused blink. And in that very moment, the tracks quaked beneath my feet. The beating of the wheels, like the beating of my heart, life always ends just as it starts. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, fo—