Behind red curtains

She cracked open her eyelids, lifting her chin slightly. There was too much light but she did not draw the blinds. The lazy pleasures of the night were now gone, they had not even lingered long enough to greet Morpheus. In their wake were a stinging bitterness on the tongue and an urgency of things left undone. She closed her eyes, staring at the red curtain of her eyelids. There it was again, the shadow of Death, smiling at her, waiting at the corner of her mind for her surrender.  She swallowed hard, pushing the lump in her throat into the heaviness of her stomach. There was only one way she knew to keep Death at bay. She sat in front of the machine and she wrote the first word.