Shalik laid down on her bed, seeming exhausted to the bare bone. She curled up to the fetal position and said, "I'll be fine."

She won't be, but I can't make it better. Yet. So I left.

I wobbled down the hallway, reaching for my room. The shadows, the permanent denizens of this house, presented themselves as opportunities. They were windows to freedom, mine and Shalik's. They slid behind bronze pots and pasted themselves to the wallpaper, and the green painted wall beneath. They coiled behind the windows, tainted and far in between. Quivering at my footsteps, they were as ready to pounce as I.

I reached out to my door handle, and stopped short. The stairs to my right gaped and welcomed me with silent beckoning.

The old lady was an expert, but seeing to it myself would put me at ease. Father was entertaining his guests on the first floor, so chances of me getting caught should be thin.

Gingerly, I moved up the stairs, the shadows muffling my step. They danced the waltz on the gaurdrail, then leapt into the air and become an antiseptic smell. They played hide and go seek as the poison green wall became a hospital white.

And at the top, I stood on a electrically lit hallway.

There were no accessories on the walls. The carpet was stainless. Rows of doors ran the length of the hall on both sides. Nurses and doctors. The shadows draped down from the ceiling, freezing me.

Like they once froze a four year old boy.

But the four year old boy had taken a step forward, as I took a step now.

Only now I know exactly what to expect.

I walked down the hall, to the door at the end of the line.

Here be monsters.

I turned the knob and pushed. The door opened with a screeching creak.

And in that room, on a white cotton bed, with an IV stuck to her arm and monitors showing her vitals, laid the darkest and deepest shadow of the household.

She looked paler than I remembered. A long stream of ebony flowed out from behind a face that was smoothed like polished glass. Shalik was her split image. A thin white blanket covered her body. There were lines of tear on her cheek.

I hesitated in front of my mother. There wasn't really a way to know what I wanted to without consulting a doctor.

I did not know the signs of coming death.

Her breaths were low and irregular. The beep beep beep of the monitor sounded very much like a time bomb. There was a chair beside the bed, it's seat still sunken from weight.

I turned my attention back to the monitors. The lines on the heart rate was arrhythmic. The small dial of heart rate said 91. Blood pressure was 43.

Are those normal for a brain tumor patient?

I imagined mother move. Shalik once told me the mother always moved in quick, graceful steps. I don't remember that. I only remember her moving like an insect.

There was the sound of a door opening behind me. I swirled back, and saw a nurse coming out of a door. She spotted me, and lowered her head.

"Go away," she said, "please. She's dying."

It should've quickened my heart. It should've exhilarated me to hear that. But it didn't. I had known. I had somehow known even before I went to meet the old lady. And that made it sobering. So incredibly incredibly sobering.

"How long?" I asked yet.

"She'll..." The nurse but her lip, "about a week more. She's dying actively."

"Oh."

"Please, go now," the nurse was now pleading, "I don't want her to be upset in her last moments."

I nodded and exited the room. Brushing past her, I went down the stair.

And as I opened the door to my room, I looked up, through the roof and the floor, at the white washed hospital room where my mother lay.

And I awaited the death that'd take apart an empire.