The God Who Stayed - Part 4
Forgot where we began? That’s dangerous. Go back to part 1:
“You sure you don’t want to stay?” Malik asked.
“You’re not still thinking about that app, are you?”
“I know it’s dumb,” Malik said. “But I would just feel a lot better if you stayed.”
Katie softened. “Look, will it make you feel better if you walk me to Matt’s place? He lives about ten minutes away. I’ll be there for the rest of the night, safe and sound.”
“Yeah, but if I get serial killer vibes, I’m dragging you out by your ankles.”
“Hot,” Katie said. “Deal.”
As they stepped out, Katie made a show of cautiously edging down each step with the utmost care, arms out for balance like a tightrope walker. Malik reveled in that small chuckle, needed the exhale. The heaviness in his limbs didn’t vanish, but it loosened enough to keep going.
Outside, the sky was painted with the bruised haze of a city aglow. Streetlights hummed. And the night had calmed to that strange in-between quiet when everyone was already where they were meant to be, but before last call would empty them back into the streets.
Malik glanced down at the app while Katie wasn’t looking. The loading indicator hadn’t changed. But Malik could’ve sworn it was watching him. Spinning like breath, holding its place. What was it waiting for, he wondered.
At the corner, the pedestrian signal turned red before they reached it.
“You coming or what?” Katie called over her shoulder, already crossing the empty street.
Malik had lived in a city for too long to wait either. But the weight in his gut had returned. Thick. Low in his stomach.
He stepped into the crosswalk.
Then—
He saw it. A back sedan with headlights off, moving too fast. “Katie!” he shouted.
She turned. Only it was too late. Then, her world went sideways.
A phone ding. Screech. Thud.
Katie hit the pavement hard. Malik’s shove had almost flung her to the far curb. When she opened her eyes, the car was already veering around the corner. She scrambled to her feet and tried to clock the plates, but they were gone.
She turned.
Malik was crumpled. Still. Too still.
Her scream ripped from her throat like wet paper—shredded, uneven, barely holding shape. Another tried to claw its way out but retreated down her throat as her hands fumbled for her phone.
She dialed 911, voice wild and fractured, spilling out fragments to the dispatcher as her heart hammered against her ribs.
Then it all began to happen without her. The flashing lights, the boots on asphalt, the voices saying things she couldn’t comprehend.
The paramedics loaded Malik into the ambulance. At some point, there were hands on her shoulders, a police officer crouching to meet her eyes. He asked for her name, if she was okay, and if she knew the make of the car.
She could only point. Her mouth formed words she wasn’t sure she spoke.
The officer nodded gently. “We’ll get the rest at the hospital.”
Her phone vibrated. She didn’t want to look.
But she did.
A simple notification slid across the screen: Complete.
I watched as Malik’s blood cooled on the asphalt, watched as Katie stood frozen, blinking into the kind of silence that remakes people. The type of night that splits a life into before and after.
Not because I enjoyed it. Not exactly. But because I’ve always been drawn to the moments after the hinge points.
You probably want to know the truth, don’t you?
Well, I told you already: I am not Death. He comes swiftly, silently, his work brief while mine is not. And I am not one of the Fates. I do not spin the thread or snip it. Although I do know the moment when it starts to fray, when all the detours collapse into one road, and there’s no turning back.
When the choice is made.
I do not kill. I merely arrive too early…and sometimes stay too long. To be honest with you, I’m not meant to linger for the aftermath. But I do. I always do. Because not everyone dies on their completion date. Some live on. And that, I’ve found, is often the heavier sentence. They ask the same questions I do: Could it have gone differently? Was there another door? A softer turn? Like them, I can never stop obsessing about the almosts, the could-have-beens. It’s a sickness, really—the ache for what won’t be.
But still, I remain.
A witness to the flailing.
And god of the fall.
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