Light blue sheets neatly tucked under a thin mattress. Pale cream walls. A faded water-color painting of a sailboat in a lake. A gray plastic trey table with a small call button in the corner. One shelf lined with old Nora Roberts and John Grisham novels. The dull hum of people playing cards gently emanating from the hallway, through the thick wood door. And Virginia, sitting idle in her faded green chair, acquiescent. Every item in the room as lifeless as the next, for she had long since faded into the sterile enervated existence of the nursing home. She sat here alone most days simply being, unable to walk. And then, she wasn't alone. Today, when she awoke, a young man, no more than 20 years old, sat in her room with her.
"When did you get here?" she inquired
"I've been here for a long time, Virginia...do you know who I am?"
He stood and approached her. She looked at him with a complacency he was clearly not accustomed to seeing. "Virginia...I am Thanatos. I am the End. I am death, do you understand?"
She looked at him. "Why have you come to me? Here...Now...What are you planning on doing?"
"It is your time, Virginia. I deal with those who are at their end, I'm here to take you away"
"Absolutely?"
He paused "Yes, absolutely"
He sat in the faded green chair. She stood in front of him. "You have been here for a long time, young man, have you?"
"Yes"
"You were at my wedding? You were in the farmhouse where I was born?"
He paused, "Yes, Virginia, that's right"
"and before?"
"and before."
"and was I there before? before that farmhouse?"
He was confused by the path of this discourse, but entertained her question, "I suppose"
"Are you an angel of the lord?"
He hesitated. "...yes,I suppose you could look at it that way"
He looked at her. She stood before him, no farther than before. "I have been here with you, as I was before?" she pressed.
"...Yes"
"Then how is this an end? Surely, there can be no end, not absolutely. No...Not absolutely"
He could find no easy answer. "Virginia...it's-"
"No, sir, not absolutely" She walked to the door, then turned to him. "You are dead, yes?"
"Yes, Virginia"
"How did you die?"
Perplexed, he muttered: "I fell. I fell a great distance"
She knocked on the door. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"What is there not to understand?" he snapped
"How can you take me? There is no way...no not an end. I'm sure. Why are you here, again?"
He jumped too his feat in bewildered anger "IT IS YOUR TIME TO DIE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! I'M DOING MY JOB!"
She waited. As the doorknob began to turn, she shook her head and sighed. "I don't know what death is"
The door opened behind her and a brilliant light burst into the room, piercing the walls and the flesh of the man, leaving him enervated on the floor. Virginia turned, walked out of the desolate room, and into the enveloping radiance, each step serenaded by a choir of seraphs.