In her first nightmare, he is a mouse, skittering between the towering trunks of chairs and tables, while his death is a famished cat watching him through cruel, green eyes. She is not there in the dream, or she is so far away that even his wide mouse-ears can’t hear her screaming at him that it’s coming, it’s just around the corner, it’s almost there! The hunt rolls deafly forward towards the inevitable. In a flash of claw and blood, all of the lurking violence blooms into specificity. She shoots up in bed and sees him sleeping next to her, calm and untouched, wrapped up in himself.
            The next night, he is a fisher sailing on a deep stormy ocean, while his death is a dus tgray storm cloud thickening above him. There is a palpable charge of dying in the air, a crackling heaviness that he can’t, or won’t feel. Even as it steadily engulfs him, he simply stares, oblivious, into the ocean, searching for the glint of scales or turning fins. When it strikes, he doesn’t even have the time to cry out before he falls out of the boat into the churning depths below. She tries to catch his arm, but she can’t, and once again, there she is, in bed, gasping for the breath he draws in so calmly.
            She wants to tell him everything about what she’s just seen: that death is always near, that it comes slowly, then quickly, that it answers nothing. Most of all that she still loves him, that she will keep loving him no matter how many times she has to watch him die. But the words don’t come; they never have. This is the way she is used to loving: silently, fearfully, in the middle of the night.
            He is a merchant lost in the desert at midday, and his death is a vulture turning slow circles above him. He is a fish struggling up a waterfall, and his death is a bear which snatches him from the air. He is a tree, wind strewn on a cliffside, and his death is a worm eating its way into his heart. His death is no longer a sharp and piercing knife to the gut, but something dull and echoing, like an old bruise. Every night, she tells herself she can’t live through it again, and every night she does.
            One night, he asks her why she always watches him hungrily at night, and why she always looks afraid when he turns out the lights. She says she has a tender heart. She tells him not to worry about it too much. The lie scrapes against his ears like steel wool, but he doesn’t dare to name it.
            She tells herself her first story, which is that she is no passive observer. She is his death, and she is the one who tears him apart with sharp claws hidden beneath her fingers. Bloodthirsty presence is easier to her than distance, and it gives her the reason she needs to keep hiding it all away. If something in her were stronger, she thinks, she would still be a far-off spectator, but how can anyone be strong in silence?
            Why are you still tired in the mornings, he asks. Why do you look at me that way when you think I’m not looking back? Why is your love so full of sadness?
            Every one of his questions leaves the wrong kind of silence, one she can’t bear but also can’t find words to fill. She dreams he is a fire and she is a jar cutting away his air. He is a trickle of water and she is the burning sun. He is wishing her good night as he turns out the lights, and she can’t bring herself to answer.
            That night, she tells herself the one story she has left.
            My dreams are a net, she says, and his death is caught inside them. As long as I keep them closed, as long as I stay quiet, he will live.
            She doesn’t put the other half of it into words, but she knows, and that feels like love, or what she’s used to calling love. She is so full of grief and pain and resignation and mourning and all she wants is to wrap all of it up in paper and bows and hand it to someone else.
            He senses something fearful in her, and cannot face it. Things go slowly, then quickly. There is less silence, then far, far, more.
            The very last time she dreams of him, he is a mouse again, but the cat is too far away to reach him. Every time she jumps forward, her sharp paws slide against the smooth ground and he slips further away. He is the size of an ant now, a speck. He is gone and she is left, death-dealing and alone, to wake up to an empty pillow on an unused sheet.

Lillie E. Franks is a trans author and eccentric who lives in Chicago, Illinois with the best cats. You can read her work at places like Always Crashing, Alice and Atlas, and McSweeneys or follow her on Twitter at @onyxaminedlife. She loves anything that is not the way it should be.