Dying Man

I was the only one there when my grandfather died, my grandmother had passed away years before. I went to visit my grandfather with my parents every month, 2nd Thursday, January to December, each year. So long ago now. We'd go out and play games, childish games. I'd hide in the woods and he'd lurk around after me, searching for me and inevitably finding me, hiding in the hollow of an old oak tree. It was once so vibrant, the tree, leaves covering the thing most of the year. Somehow it never lost its leaves in Winter, sure they'd discolour, its discarded foliage littering the ground of the clearing where it resided, transforming it to gold and brown. But its branches always looked so full.

But each year a little more leaves would be lost, a little more green would fade, a little less leaves would return when Spring dawned. Each year, the tree would die a little more, and my grandfather would do the same. He grew older, of course he did, but I was young, I knew these things happened but not why. I simply couldn't understand why every time I visited he'd walk a little slower, he'd cough a little more, his eyes would sink a little deeper.

The oak tree had no leaves last time I visited, it hadn't all year, it had aged so fast. Trees were supposed to last hundreds of years. They're supposed to take years and years to die, not a few months. Why didn't it work the same for humans? This time it did, but not the way one would want. The tree was gnarled, the bark damp and black. And my grandfather was barely able to walk after me through the woods, I fled into the damp hollow of the dying tree, containing my laughter, believing as I always did that this time he'd never find me. He never did.

His legs passed by the small hollow, where my young body was huddled, my knees pressed to my chest to conceal myself within. He had stopped outside, the sound of his hand coming to rest on the bark of the tree with a soft thud above me. He dropped to his knees, before his torso flopped over to rest on the lifeless soil, his hand clutching a clump of shirt just over his chest. I crawled out slowly, thinking he must have slipped, or tripped. It couldn't have been anything more serious.

He had done it. He had taken as long as a tree to die, but the tree was dead now too. I grabbed his hand, and he grabbed it back, he wasn't a dead man, simply a dying man. He pulled me closer, trying to pull his head towards me but unable. He simply whispered to me where he lay, whispered his dying words, words I'd file away in my sub-conscious, unimportant and forgotten.

"Let me in."

-Shady