Life and Death --- By: Kate Kelsch

Life and Death

There are three states of after-death.

First, there is The Punishment. You sit in a cold cave, and every second is colder than the last. Except there is no frostbite, and there is no dying. You simply sit there and freeze for all eternity. This is reserved for the evil people, the ones who are rotten at their soul and do not want to change. You cannot die. You are already dead.

Second, there is The Sleep. Your soul floats around on earth, sleeping. Occasionally ones soul is sucked into a newborn child, and humans have named this 'reincarnation'. The child inherits your looks, your habits, and very occasionally your memories. The more restless souls are easier to be sucked in. The Sleep is made for those who were neither good nor bad, and never strove to be either. They are neutral.

Finally, there is The Reward. Heaven is what the humans seem to call it, but to us there isn't really a God. There is the Giver, who gives everything all it has, who gives the plants their green, animals their fur, feathers, or scales, who gives humans their skin. I guess he is a God, but he never sent a son. Nor do you need to worship him. He can simply read your soul and decipher whether it is good or bad.

The Reward has three choices. You can choose rebirth, where you are born again with nothing in common with your previous life, and you are beginning anew. There is Fantasy, where you are locked in a room where anything you want can happen. All you imaginations and thoughts come true, even faces, animals, adventures can happen or appear. Except none of it is real. With no way to tell it from reality, you wouldn't know if you were living a lie. But you are.

Then there is the third choice. It is where you are given wings. However, this choice is rarely chosen. Many choose fantasy, and many choose rebirth, but not many choose wings.

However, I chose wings.

My life was a good one. I did as I was told unless I felt it was wrong, in which case I would rebel. I was punished for going against peoples will, but I still did as I thought was right. Eventually, I fell in love. But the man I loved was not a good one.

He knew I loved him, yet he only took advantage of me. He was the very essence of evil, and he was not afraid of using me. But I knew this.

For a while I went along with him, but I couldn't go on. His horrible actions were slowly growing, as was his evil. So I had to. So I did. One day, I killed him, then myself, knowing it would be what he wanted.

More than anything else, that was why I was let into The Reward. Apparently the man I loved was destined to be a great evil, and if I had not killed him then he might have been the end of the human race. Usually people who commit suicide are not let into The Reward, but the Giver said I was of good soul.

Instead of choosing one of the three rewards, I tried to save the man I loved. I knew he was locked in The Punishment, slowly freezing, never dying, and as he grew colder I knew his rage would be fanned to an even greater flame. I tried to get him out, to at least be a drifting soul of The Sleep, but the Giver wouldn't let me. I tried to trade places, to be put in his place and his in mine, but it was not allowed.

I'm sure if I could have cried then rivers would flow from my eyes, but when you are dead, you don't eat, you don't drink, you don't need the bathroom, you don't sweat. And you don't cry.

The Giver saw my misery. I don't know why, but he decided to bestow me with an even greater gift. He gave me white, breathtaking wings, as well as a job and a name. My name is Life, as is my job. The Giver then introduced me to a man named Death, who instead of wearing white clothes like me, wore black. His wings were like the bleeding night.

He said he remembered my soul, since there were no others with a soul as indigo blue as mine. He told me that I was one of the lightest souls he had carried.

Death, I was told, was supposed to be my coworker. For the rest of eternity, we were supposed to decide who lived, and who died.

And so we did. We would find dying souls and decide their fate. If they were judged to be ready for death, then Death would reach out and touch them, and their souls would cling gently to his fingertips. If they were deemed worthy to keep on living, I would breath life into their lungs.

I learned that there were many colors of souls. The reddish ones belonged to shy, good people, and green ones were of the lively kind. The ones tinted with blue were undoubtedly headed for The Reward, and the purple ones were usually angry. I learned that the white souls meant that the goodness of their soul had been eaten away by evil.

When I asked about the man who had died next to me, Death said that that persons soul was the emptiest he had seen, and it was rimmed with black, which was unheard of.

We have breaks. This is when Death shows me everything. He leads me to the edge of the universe, where the wall of stars parts to let us and our wings fly through to the blackness beyond. There, no logic applies. Sometimes my breath is so hot it scalds my lips, while other times my very bones are frozen. Sometimes I am jerked one way then another, then all gravity ceases. Sometimes my limbs fall off, but they always reattach themselves. Eventually the universe spreads to the black and swallows us back in, to the realm of stars and galaxies.

Death shows me the galaxies which contain other Earths that smell of fresh cut grass, and others that reek of pollution and despair and resemble chunks of charred misery. He takes me skating on Saturns rings, and we go and build Marsmen out of the red dust on the surface of mars. Sometimes the satellites spot the little statues and call them aliens.

We dance on the sun, dipping out feet into the warm fire, and when we part, the fingers of light reach after us as if calling us back. These, I believe humans call 'solar flares'. After that, we like to go and fly through the arctic skies. My wings paint colors in the sky, while Death's leave a trail of stars hanging suspended in the light.

But sometimes Death and I are apart. It is at these times I simply fly among the clouds. I don't go anywhere else, since all the places I go I know will not be as wondrous as it would be if I was with Death. The colors I paint in the sky look the best when they twinkle with the stars Death leaves.

But when I am alone, I am lonely. It is then that I cry, my fearless sobs only causing me to cry more. But the clouds are kind, and they hug me with their misty tendrils and cry my tears for me. I sometimes flood cities with these tears.

Death often hears the rain, and so he drops one of his dark wing feathers on the peak of a mountain so that it overflows with sunlight. It is then that I go to his side, and the clouds send me off with a rainbow.

Sometimes, I am the one calling for him. I drop one of my bright feathers in the ocean and a large wave rises up to coat the land, and Death comes to me.

I am sure that many of the souls belonging to the three stages of after-death are because of my tears and calls.

But, you see, me and Death are in love. And we give each other many souls.