Author's Note: This is also very important. I just checked my notebook thingy, and I realize I have totally messed up my character's surnames. The surnames were meant to be as following:
Ivy Moore
Caleb Solaire
Cécile Spira
Aaron Talbyt
Sorry for any inconvenience caused!!!
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The first thing I noticed was pressure on my body, pressing against my skin. There was a weight on top of me, forcing me down. Like I was buried. I felt warm. Too warm, in fact. It was uncomfortable. My skin felt bare, but in this moment, that seemed insignificant to me. The second sense that returned to me was sound. A bird’s cheerful melody reached my ears, and I sighed, relaxing.
Eventually, when the haze that blurred my thoughts like a cloud had faded away, I opened my eyes and stared blankly above me, not really seeing. My sense of gravity flooded back along with the light, but it still took me a while to realize I was lying down.
I was comfortable. More comfortable than I’d been in a long time. My whole body had sunk deep into the material below me and the apathy that had soaked through my mind told me not to bother to move. My muscles lay slack, like immovable objects beside me. I was more peaceful than I’d been in a long time. It was like I was flying, floating free, without the heavy weight of feelings or my past that usually dragged me down.
But there was something in the back of my mind that distracted me and ruined the tranquillity. There was just one thing that ruined this moment.
It was a name.
What was that name again?
C…Ca –
“Caleb!” I gasped, sitting up. My bare skin brushed against the soft cotton of the bed sheets.
Suddenly, the force of everything slammed into me. Memories rushed back to me, colors blurring and forming in my mind. I’d been running away from Caleb and ended up on the Music Tower roof. Then the rail had snapped. I’d fallen. Then there’d been blackness. I rubbed my head. There was no lump, or lesions, or cuts. I was completely unharmed. My forehead creased. That was…weird.
My covers had fallen off my naked body and I pulled them back up again, flushing. I looked around me, making sure I was alone.
I was in a large room with cream walls and thick white, illuminated only by the light coming in from the wide, opened windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. Even from the angle I was in, I could just about sea outside. From the red and orange tones that streaked the sky, I would’ve made it out to be just dawn. The salty smell of the seawater, the crash of the tide against sand and sunlight reflecting off the water could only mean one thing.
I was near the ocean. I frowned. I lived nowhere near the ocean.
Maybe then…this place was Heaven. I was no longer alive. I was dead.
I froze, staring out at the sea with glassy eyes, waiting for the onslaught of emotion. It didn’t come. Why wasn’t I sad about this? Why wasn’t I angry, or regretful? Maybe apathy just came naturally to you, when you were dead.
I guess the truth that I was relieved.
I’ve never been religious. I suppose, like everyone else, there was a time when I went to church at Christmas, sang the hymns and kneeled on the cushions praying to a God that didn’t answer. But the worst part I’d always thought, while learning about various religions in School, was the fact that I would lose my memories when I died. They all promised my soul would be safe and well-looked after, but that had never consoled me. I’d always thought that my memories were the essence of who I was and not my soul, as it was something I could not see. I don’t know. Maybe I was just a narrow-minded child.
