Because I could not stop for death
Suzie was kind, friendly, empathic – a good listener. Suzie was a private person with a habit of pushing people away. Suzie was a genius; fixated on her work, obsessed with learning. Suzie was intimidating and dangerous and a murderer.
And at the bottom of the list Toshiko added one more point; dead.
Suzie was dead.
A fact that was yet to hit her, but she knew (from rather too much experience) that when it did she would start the usual process: throw open the windows, have her clothes dry cleaned, scrub the floor, wash the windows, burn her bed sheets, empty the fridge and donate the food to charity, have her hair cut before wiping off her tears, and getting on with her life; keeping her head down, trying to stay away from harm and stick to her computers; after all they were a lot less complicated than human beings (and less likely to break your heart).
She didn't notice that she was crying, until she saw the word "dead" spilling into a sea of black ink. Tosh found herself briefly wondering where Suzie was, not physically because she would imagine that she would still be in the morgue, but where Suzie was.
Did Suzie even exist any more, or was she just a person that would slowly fade from her memory until it was like she had never existed?
Maybe she was in a new place?
Hell? Hell seemed a bit harsh, but she definitely wasn't in heaven. Unless they now let atheist murderers into heaven.
She shouldn't be mourning a murderer, but in her head she was still unable to link the word "murderer" to "Suzie", or "Suzie" to "dead".
After all, only an hour ago she thought it was an ordinary October night; windy, cloudy, rainy, with nothing good on television. She ended up wandering round her apartment listlessly, reading Suzie's notes on the fridge, thinking about her computer program and wondering if Suzie would be home yet, briefly considering ringing the other woman, before deciding that if Suzie wanted her then she would call.
No sooner than she had had that thought, she was cut off by the ringing of the telephone, she was certain it was Suzie; after all who else would call her at 10'o'clock in the evening, on a weekday.
"Tosh," Jack, her boss said before she even had a chance to say hello. "It's Suzie," he said, and Tosh's heart missed a beat.
"Is she ok?" She gabbled, panicking, grabbing her car keys and pulling on her coat. Mentally preparing herself to hear that Suzie was hurt, that Suzie had been attacked, that Suzie had tripped on the stairs...
"Suzie's dead," Jack said, voice flat.
"What?"
"Suzie's dead. It was her that killed all those people," he stated, Tosh froze remembering the murder cases. The murder cases that she had been working on with Suzie. The murderer.
"How?" She whispered, shock setting in.
"Shot herself in the head," he was silent for a moment, before carrying on as if he had just made a casual comment about the weather, "Tosh, if you have taken any equipment from work home with you then I need you to return it tomorrow," Toshiko found herself nodding, despite the fact he couldn't see her, "oh, and I've hired Gwen."
With that Jack hung up, leaving Tosh winded, staring in shock as her mind attempted to piece together the information she had just heard.
That Suzie, Suzie obsessed with resurrecting the dead (the dead, that she in fact killed, simply to practice resurrection), was herself dead.
That Suzie, the woman desperately trying to work out how to stop death, because she was so afraid of dying, had killed herself.
She was trying to run from death, but had failed.
Toshiko placed her hand on fridge, to balance herself, and found herself looking through Suzie's notes on the fridge – mainly poetry – looking for her the most recent post-it, with only two lines written in Suzie's black scrawl.
She found it, read it and cringed at the irony:
"Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)"
I wrote this piece for my GCSE English coursework, and I stumbled on it the other day, and decided that I might as well upload it.
I hope you enjoyed it :)