Intersection

one.

"Two things are inevitable: one, thinking and two, death."

One

Arah had thought a million number of times how death would be like to her. She thought of a tonne of boulders falling on her. She thought of burning to ashes and then she'd wondered if hell hounds would take her to her abode, hell, scraping her skin all the way. But never had she wondered death would just be like sleeping. A long, deep sleep just without the promise of being alive again. That was it- that's how she'd died 'cause she did not remember - not a single bit. She did not feel any pain but she remembered waking up on a cold, hard ground.

She'd expected someone to take her, either to deliver her to the Hall of Judgment or maybe, just take her to Heaven or Hell. But never in hell did she imagine waking up to a sad melody of silence. A beautiful melancholy. Her throat was parched. She was famished. But weren't the dead supposed to not feel hungry or eat at all? Seemed like she was proved wrong.

She opened her eyes and then closed them again, her eyes not being able to adjust to the bright light. She'd always thought that the after life was a dark place but yet again, she was proved wrong.

This time, she tried to gently rub her eyes and then she opened them in an erratic pace, her eyes now used to the light. She saw brown. A lot of brown. She's woken up in the middle of nowhere. There she was on the brown, incessant lands. She looked around and started walking replaying a chant in her head.

"Wat-water," She'd managed to croak with her quenched lungs.

She kept on walking and a cold breeze hit her. She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn before she'd died - a thin black jacket with a white top and skinny jeans and sneakers.

Thank God, for these sneakers. She thought in her mind.

She kept on walking. Whether it seconds, or minutes, even hours, she'd not known.

She needed something to hold on to, some water to keep her alive but all she found was the extensive, never ending cold brown lands. She'd walked enough. Her body couldn't do it anymore and then, once again - she collapsed to the ground.

***

She twisted and turned and heard a melancholy again. But only this once, it wasn't the sound of silence but of emotions like someone was singing.

She opened her eyes not in the never ending cold hard grounds, but on a soft ground. Wait, it didn't seem like a ground. It was a thin sheet of leaves. Which Arah found more comfortable than the grounds she'd been on.

Someone from her left handed her a pail of something. She didn't bother to look what was in that pail. She drank it faster than the speed of light. Water - the pail was of water. Never in her life she'd been that grateful as she was right now. She looked to her left to see the person who gave her the water.

She was surprised to see a human - not a hellhound or an angel or even a reaper - but a human. He looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. His features were child like yet they had this manly aura accentuating his face.

"I am Xander," the guy with muddy blonde hair said with a said with a smile, he added while pointing to a black haired girl beautiful girl, "She's Judy."

The black haired girl winked her emrald eyes at her and took out her hand to shake. "Judy Bronze." She said in a porsh accent signifying she was indeed 'that' girl boys drooled over.

"Arah Lambert." Arah shook the black haired girl's hand. Her grip was firm.

Good. Arah liked confident people.

"Do you know how I woke up here?" Arah asked hesitantly but honestly she didn't want to know. Waking up again after dying was enough of a shock to take.

"Arah.. Why don't we take a walk yeah?" Xander asked.

Even though her body was aching and burning life it were on fire, Arah nodded. Better if she knows.

He started walking and she followed him. She was sleeping in a room, which looked like a hut seeing it's structure. As she walked through the opening or the small door she heard it again.. The sad melody. Someone was singing. She knew it. But instead of enquiring about it, Arah kept on following them.

They entered a big hall. The hall walls seemed incessant. They were all surprisingly white and not brown meaning, Arah was in a building or something. Arah saw people, in the rooms between the hall. There were many. They were sad, agonized. Arah could feel their pain. It was unpleasant, reproachful. It felt unbearable. Arah flinched and as Xander noticed, he gave a knowing look to Judy who was following them as well.

"It gets better." Judy said to Arah.

Oh, which denotes that they felt it too. She wasn't alone in a crowded room. The realization made her sigh in relief.

The people in the halls were now staring at her. Or more likely glaring at her. She ignored them and neared to a main door, but the room was shockingly black, dark. It was lit up with the help of candles. She saw faces of people mourning. And her emotions reached the tipping point.

"Where am I?" She asked them in a barely audible voice.

Xander and Judy realized it was time and they felt that they couldn't do it. But they were ordered. And they had to follow them or the consequences weren't the ones that they could bear, even in their wildest dreams.

So Xander started, "Arah. Are you ready to really know?"

Arah couldn't say anything so she just bowed her head.

Judy continued, "You died. All of us are dead but not here. Here we live again. It's .. Just .. You know? The afterlife."

Xander continued, "We don't grow up here. We eat, sleep, drink but we don't grow. We are stuck at this age. Forever."

"And after analyzing all of us, we've all died. But the similarity is, we all killed ourselves. We are the Suicidals and you are one of us now."

This fact shocked Arah not because she didn't believe in life after death.

But because she didn't kill herself.

She wasn't a Suicidal.

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