"Let me make one thing clear, hombre," The Suited Man spoke in a low, purposeful voice as he rolled a cigarette, wetting the corners with a serpentine tongue a moment before passing it over his upper lip, "I have watched--with great joy, I might add--the nature of death." Then, pursing the cylinder between his teeth and offering a wicked grin, he punctuated his upcoming point with an audible flick of his lighter. Exhaling a pungent cloud in my face, he rapped his left ring finger across the length. "Everything is aware of its mortality; everything. The rich, the poor, the holy and the sinners; the birds, the ***** bees, all those saved whales and every single one of the hugged trees. Every squirming, writhing, wiggling, wicked little creeper and crawler that has ever existed and may ever hope to exist... all of them. Even the ******* atoms in the air! All things know that they're doomed--it's why even the single-celled beings have all those defense mechanisms; all those..." he smirked, flicking an ash, "adaptations, yes?--and yet, from the massive to the miniscule, none of them face their mortality with near the greed nor the total lack of grace as your kind. You've known since you were a wee lad that you'd die, hombre, so why resent it now; why fight for more time? Another hour; another day--hell, I could hand you a written guarantee that you'd have another decade to do whatever you wanted..." he shook his head and pulled the cigarette from his mouth to flick the growing ash and admire the ghostly trail that ascended to the mist-swirling ceiling fan. As the contemplative moment passed, he returned the cigarette to his mouth and leaned closer to me, bringing his cold, black eyes so close to my own that my vision knew nothing more. "What would that decade mean to you? For me it is nothing--those like me do not worry much about trivial human fictions such as time and... well, all of this"--he waved about the room with his index finger--"So I hope you'll forgive my skepticism; understand that it's just my ignorance to your pervasively infantile beliefs." He rattled three of his bony fingers on his jutted chin, "Tell me why I should sympathize with your plight over all others who have pleaded with me before you. Explain, if you'd be so bold, why I should adopt your urgency as my own."

It took me some time to find my voice. Between the smell of his herb--something that, in all my years of debauchery and romances, I'd never encountered--and the fierceness of his presence, there was a sort of little death that had wormed its way into my thoughts. I fought to sit up, but did not have the strength. I struggled to clear my throat, but could not command my lungs to work as I wanted. I worked to wet my own lips, cursing the dryness of my dated mouth. Finally, I gave up; succumbing to the reality that my body was useless for the soul occupying it. There was nothing left of me but my wits, and it was my wits that I needed now more than anything.

I shut my eyes against his overwhelming stare.

I held my breath against his foreboding aroma.

And I let the soul say what it needed to say:

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear, good sir," the voice I heard barely sounded like my own, "I have watched--with utter disdain, I'll admit--the passing of life. I believe you when you say that everything knows it will die, and I also believe that almost everything deserves to die. Not because almost everything is wicked or evil, nor because I feel some contempt or hatred towards almost everything. As I lay here I'm certain there are many eager to see me go, and I not only respect their right to feel that way," my lungs abandoned my speech's momentum and I paused to take a rasped inhale, "but I agree that I deserve the mortality that's haunting me."

"Do you understand you've already wasted more of my time than I typically allow?" The Suited Man asked, aiming his pointer and middle fingers--and the smoking cigarette pinched between them--in my direction.

I nodded, finding strength enough to hold up my hand; silently begging for a moment longer. "Please, I won't be much longer... and once I'm finished, I'll accept whatever fate you decide with dignity."

The Suited Man chortled at that, "And silence, I hope."

"Yes," I sighed, "and that." With my company motioning for me to continue, I succumbed to the voice of the soul: "You deal in death, so you must have seen enough to know that, while those like you care little for time, it is what defines all those who perish. What, if not those minutes, those hours, those days, years, and decades, are we to value? You deal in death, so I can't ask you to understand why we fight to live. To you, a book is not worth reading because it has an end, and that end represents a lack of substance; but that book, like each and every soul, has a story to tell. And the only thing greater than the limited time each and every soul has is the stories we leave behind."

The Suited Main rolled his black eyes and flicked another looming tendril of ash, "You bore me with your rant, hombre, and my smoke, like you, is running out of life. Get to the point or accept mine." He took in a rattled breath to fuel a dark and hollow voice, "Why should I let you live?"

"Stories are the most important thing for anything that fears death, good sir," I fought my growing aches to move my hand to the stack of papers at my left; the stack perched blissfully beside my old, dusty typewriter. Patting the pages--taking a certain satisfaction in the nostalgic feel of the stock I'd long since grown loyal with--I cocked by quaking skull towards the desk and its contents. "And while I await the day you'll finally escort me from my desk, there's a story that I've yet to finish."

The Suited Man narrowed his black gaze at me--the two orbs shimmering like obsidian beneath his timeless lids--before the glow of his pupils shifted to the desk for a long, tortured moment. Without looking away from the stack I still rested my hand upon, he returned the dwindling cigarette to his lips and inhaled before letting out a long stream of smoke.

Though I didn't see him stand, he was on his feet then. I took in his height with the same terrified awe that I'd received the rest of him--his sudden appearance in my late husband's chair across the room; his impeccable awareness, or my unwavering understanding of his purposes; everything that made him who and what he was--and allowed him to continue his long, tortured moment in gazing at the desk that had, just as much as the hours and days and years, come to define my life.

Then he was gone; him, his smoke, and the terror he radiated.

Letting out a labored breath, I struggled to turn towards my desk, trying to recall where I'd left off in my manuscript. As I settled in, I caught sight of a clean page secured in the feed of the typewriter with the only evidence that I hadn't been alone:

"YOU HAVE YOUR DECADE, HOMBRE. SPEND IT WELL, AND SAVE ME A COPY OF YOUR STORY."