Transfixus sed non mortus (pierced but not dead)

This is a vignette but please read!

Have you ever watched something die? Watched as he crumples at your feet. Held up his head, looked into his eyes, and saw death staring back at you.  Death doesn’t come cloaked in shadows or at the end of a gun. It comes in the eyes of its prey. Looking through his eyes, laughing at you, taunting you with his gain. But there’s something worse than watching him die. Killing him. I’ve done that to. He didn’t know, oblivious to what was happening. And that’s even worse than knowing. I killed him. And I know he’s dead. Not going to some paradise or white city. He’s laying a hole somewhere, not thinking, not breathing, not feeling, dead. Heaven is a myth, made by fear. Of losing what we love, of death.  But you always wonder what if I didn’t kill him? It lingers in the back of your thoughts, a ghost of what could have happened. Your haunted by it, the eyes of death, the blank stare, the echo of laughter. For death knows that he has won. Swallowing him and infecting me. But death didn’t take him, I gave him away.