Gravedigger's Monologue

Gravedigger apprentice
Snow spilled from the sky like sugar and blanketed the ground, thick and sweet. Each headstone was a snow-covered mountain, and dark clouds bowed their heads as they shuffled past. As I stood by the open grave, eyes watering from the icy cold, I tried to avoid looking at the mother and her daughter as they stood shivering in tattered, frayed clothes, their backs curled into starving arches. It was easier that way, to distance yourself, my mentor had said; then you wouldn’t see the suffering in their eyes or the miserable curve of their lips. So I kept my eyes on the feathery snow beneath me as the priest continued his monotonous eulogy, the wind licking exposed skin like a thin blade. Funnily enough, I wanted nothing
One day, towards the end, he woke up, foggy and disoriented, and told me he saw Death at the end of his bed, grabbing at his calves. Two days later he couldn’t move his legs. Soon it was his fingers, his arms. He said they felt empty. I saw him tortuously slipping into the void, day by day, and eventually he disappeared completely. Watching him dying, I knew that death was not a light at the end of the tunnel. I saw it as the tunnel itself; no beginning and no end. My family, who had little to begin with, was left with the house, enough food to last us two days, and a lingering grief, poignant enough to taste. My mother was so despondent she couldn’t work, and so I was forced to find a job – and digging graves was the only option. For the past month I had dreamed of hard soil and rotting
My mentor had given it to me on my first day; a gravedigger’s handbook. I remember the black leather smelt like dirt and mourning. Pulling my hand out of my pocket, I began to move away from the grave when I heard the familiar crunch of condensing snow and a wail. I turned around, and my eyes focussed on the girl. She was on her knees, and her mother was silent. I went to turn away, leaving the grieving to their grief. But before I fully turned around, I saw the dark figure again, tall and grim. He seemed to be carrying small figures, gently tucked between his fingers or thrown lightly over his shoulders. I stood and watched him, and I knew who it was. His face was long and sad, and he looked both out of place and perfectly at home. His eyes were kind and sorrowful and longing, the kind you can trust, looking away from me, towards the girl. I was about to open my mouth, say something, when he