A short story: Tired death

Darulmaarif.net – Indramayu, 20 September 2025 | 10.00 WIB

That night, the wind at the peak whispered like a parent who forgot his own language. The fog rolled between the stones, attached to the shrub plants such as shabby blankets that were no longer warm. In the distance, the lights of the city flickering. It was there, on a cracked wooden bench, death sat waiting-not patiently, but with fatigue that crawled at the ends of the fingers.

“Come again tomorrow,” he hummed to himself, the tone of his voice was half laughter, half the lament. The sound played and broke into the tails of the sound attached to the pine leaves. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the memories piled up: his whiter hair, life that was reduced one by one, the breaths he had once sorted like cooking rice in the stove-choosing who was willing to surrender his breath to him.

Under the bench, there is a rusty flask. Once upon a time, someone watched his shadow: Siang was incarnated, at night the roof turned into a slope. But this peak did not show a crow that night; Only the moon, and a faint light that reminds the hair salon lights – cold and sharp.

The sky reflects the sound. From the bushes, the steps closer, doubtful. Night tourists, a young woman whose body is like tea, closer. His eyes were red when he held something that could not be erased; Not afraid, but complaints.

“Are you really death?” he asked, his voice was hoarse like a broken twig.

Death opens one eye. “Maybe. Or maybe only one night forgot to go home,” he replied, but there was a tone waiting – always waiting.

The woman laughed bitterly. “People say you are cunning. Take when we are off guard, wrapping with the word ‘peace’. But I—” he was silent, holding the back of his own hand. “I’m not here to oppose. I want to bargain.”

“Bid?” Death raises eyebrows that can no longer be wrinkled. “What bargain? Life? Time? Or just a shortness of memory?”

“I want you to take my sadness, not my life. Take what makes me awake until dawn, which makes me forget how to laugh alone. Take the remnants of my longing if it’s easier.” He stared blankly at the slope, where small houses were piled like a boat in a dark lake. “I was tired of holding back memories about someone who left at dusk. In my breath, there was a picture of him, there was a scent of coffee that he had never drank that morning.”

Death almost smiled. “I thought-,” he began, his voice went down to the latitude, “I have no more death to give. My lover has gone on a blind dusk; Since then, death has entered slowly through the pores. But you … you don’t understand. Taking sadness is sometimes heavier than taking breath.”

They sat both in the wind. Below, as far as other stories, there is laughter that almost fades – a group of night hunters returned home with an empty bag.

“If what you ask for is my death,” said the woman, “then take it. I am no longer strong enough to bear this feeling.”

Death looked at him for a long time. There was something trembling there – a feeling that was not entirely foreign: empty.

“In fact, I have no more deaths that can be taken,” whispered a woman. “But you can take my spirit. Bring the place left by my lover. If that works, I will … smile.”

The woman snorted. “Ironic. The removal of the Spirit who refused to take the Spirit because of his own love.” He patted his knees, then chuckled wistfully. “How can you refuse if I come to knock on the door like this?”

“You come with another loneliness.” Death stands, shakes a suit that has never been lost in color. “And I, you see, more hungry to memories than meat.”

The fight was not a fight. They exchanged smooth clauses, like branches that touch each other. Among the words, the mountain keeps mute. The night is waiting for the climax – which always comes when two souls are confused to understand each other.

Suddenly, from the direction of the village, there was a quick step: an old man, white hair like gauze, heavy breathing. His left hand was holding a weathered stick. His wrinkled face stared straight at death, full of soft challenges.

“Old man?” The woman whispered. The man laughed, his voice was hoarse, similar to the friction of the leaves. “My dream broke …,” he said without further ado. “The dream eats me from the inside. I see the roof of the house into holes, and in every hole there is the voice of my lover who laughs in the past. I want to know: is this a punishment or a gift?”

Death leaned his head. He knew this man – his time was much older than ordinary age; He is one of those who are often called “almost finished”. “Old man, you want me to take you?”

“I? I just want to calm down. But calm down what I want is different: not like someone who gives up, but like a warm bread, which is exhaled into the air by the hands that know how.” The old man looked at the moon. “If you come tonight, don’t take it before I laugh again. Don’t take it before I send a greeting to all who has slapped my cheeks.” He raised the stick as if saluting in the past.

Women and death laughed, suddenly light. The laugh broke the fog. There, their dialogue changed-from bargaining to a strange small reunion between those who were waiting and the awaited.

He wrestled between the profession and the longing. He was required to take, but his heart awaited released. There is anger in someone missing: his lover. There is betrayal in cosmic rules: want to return what he does not have. The woman, on the other hand, brought the wound that she had judged as a debt. The old man brought humor as the last way to postpone the departure.

The night drove to its peak. At a point, death stood up, stepping to the edge of the cliff as if to see the world from its own perspective. The wind is crazy, carrying dancing leaf flakes. “Fine,” he finally. “I came with the condition: You both laughed at me first. I want to see the faces that understand that every separation has a rhythm-not dark, but the dance covered with applause.”

The woman and the old man looked at each other. They release laughter that is longer than the night allowed. Laughter is no longer bitter; He became a small symphony that refused to be enslaved by sadness.

When the laughter subsided, death touched the shoulder of the old man – a touch like the dew who gave goodbye. The old man’s breath was soft, as if pulled by invisible rope, not revoked. The old man closed his eyes with a smile, his lips said something that was not heard: “See you in a place where coffee is always hot.”

The woman looked down. He felt something shifted in his chest – not a vacuum, but a space that had just been given a gap to enter light. Death turned to him. “You ask me to take your sadness,” he said. “I will give a condition: Never close your memories completely. Make him a small stove to cook the days that you still have to live.”

He took a sheet of spirits from the woman, not all: only tangled threads that made him awake in the middle of the night. The yarn yawned like cigarette smoke, and the woman sighed, felt the weight of releasing something that he really did not want to let go completely.

The climax is not an explosion, but a subtle shift – like an old table that is moved slightly so that the moonlight can penetrate to the old corner of the dark. Death, which originally looked hard, found himself learning a new ritual: celebrating while crying, dancing while releasing.

In the morning thinning on the eastern horizon, the three of them sat to spread the unfinished dusk. The older one has gone quickly; The girl held a small cup that was now warm. Death looked at the city, then looked at himself – into his favorite dance hole.

“I used to think of death as a task,” he said quietly, “now I think of death as a meeting: we tie a hand for a few moments, then release it. Nothing is absolute here, just cooking. The night has taught me to reveal the mask before underestimating anyone.”

The woman put his hand on the hands of death, small actions like prayer. “If you miss,” he said, “Find me again. But not as a taker, as a friend.”

Death closes eyes. The wind carries a faint aroma of coffee. There, on top of the top, they celebrated something that was not named: soft transfer, and knowledge that even scary things can be laughed at.

Death comes not as the end, but as a binding veins. When the cities woke up, the woman went down from the peak with a step that was no longer broken; He brought the old man ash in a small box, the ashes he spread on the ground where wild flowers grew again.

Behind all that-behind the night that harbored the question, behind the whispers of the crow that might only be a shadow-mature walked back to a house without a window, fostering her white hair, combing the memories of the lost lover. He turned on small music, dancing himself, then sang a song that was only possible to hear by those who had lost.

And at the end of the story, let the words become a blanket: there is one thing that we agreed on that night, and hopefully you, readers, find out too-that separation, when welcomed like a small party, does not spend us. He gave room for laughter that had been thought to disappear, for the morning who was always on guard behind the sorrow. Death, in the end, is not an opponent who comes to close the book; He is a door keeper who knows when to knock, when to wait, and sometimes, when to stand with you at the edge of the top, stare far into the valley, then smile because the world is still wide enough to accommodate longing.

End.