His Afterlife
Hello, everyone. I thought the boy in “His Shadow”, the short story I published almost two years ago, deserved a happy ending, so here it is. I don’t believe in the afterlife, but I feel that if it were to exist for him, it would be more like this.
Note: I recommend reading this while listening to “Where Spirits Sleep” by Eric Heitmann and Amy Wallace. Feel free to ignore this, by all means, but this is how I wrote it. You might need to have the song on loop.
Oh, and here’s “His Shadow” if you’ve never seen it.
An eleven year old boy wakes up laying in the middle of a dark, lush field. He looked up into the dark sky at each sparkling star, his head empty and his body numb to the sharp grass he was laying on, but open to the cool breeze coming by. It was blissful, and he didn’t want to do anything but lay there.
However, after a bit, he sat up and looked around. Confused, he hopped up.
Where am I? He thought.
He looked around. This wasn’t any place he recognized, and he had no idea how he got there.
Eventually, memories started to rush in. The bullies at his school, his neglectful parents at home, his abusive siblings, the nights he spent cutting lines into his… wait.
He checked his arms. The scars were gone.
This confused him, he remembers doing that. Were they just thoughts he had?
Then, he remembers looking into a book of different ways to tie rope. He remembers tying it, putting it around his neck, and jumping out the window.
And… now he’s here.
Wait… am I dead? He thinks.
He grabs his head.
Oh my God, I didn’t think that would actually work! He thought. I thought someone would catch me and — oh, there was a Robotics competition that morning! They’re screwed without me!
He sighs.
Oh, who am I kidding? I probably wouldn’t have done this if I really cared about that… He continues in his head. Was anything in my life worth sticking around for?
He mindlessly started walking and went through it all. No friends, no family who showed they cared, no teachers that cared about him, stuffed animals couldn’t help. Just pain, pain, and more pain.
He wonders what he would’ve done in his life. Maybe he would’ve gotten a degree in engineering. Maybe he would’ve gone on to invent a new car or helped work towards more cars in today’s society being used on hydrogen. Was there any hope for him at all? Would he have been something if he didn’t die?
All of these unanswered questions.
Does anyone know yet? He thinks. How long have I been dead?
As if by coincidence, he stumbles on a bunch of mirrors, which seemed out of place in this grassy field. He recognizes the one in his room. Can he see through these?
He puts his hand to it, and suddenly he can see his room… and…
He got there just in time to see someone zip him up in a body bag.
He grabbed his own throat and inhaled sharply, thinking that he couldn’t breathe. However, he remembered he was dead, and he doesn’t need oxygen anymore, anyway.
He kept looking into his room. His mother was sitting on his bed, bawling her eyes out. His father and siblings were not in the room.
As they take his body out of the room, he goes to follow them, but then his mother starts talking to herself.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry!” She wails. “It’s all my fault… it’s my fault. I was too caught up dealing with that asshole and now my baby is gone!”
Asshole? His father?
He touches the glass, staring at his mother. She continued to cry and scream. He didn’t know how to feel. He thought she didn’t care about him. He thought no one did.
Reluctantly, he leaves the mirror and goes to the next one over. This looked like his oldest brother’s bathroom mirror. He just hoped the door was open, so he could see them.
Sure enough, when he tapped it, the door was open. However, it wasn’t open all the way, so he could only see his second oldest brother and his older sister. They were talking… or arguing?
“This is all your damn fault, Caleb.” His second oldest brother says.
“How the hell is it my fault?” Caleb says.
“You didn’t know when to fuckin’ stop. You had to pick on Amir every single day! He was clearly strugglin’ at school and you was just an asshole about it every time he tried to come for help!”
“You picked on him too!”
“Maybe I did, but I stopped once I could tell he was upset! Maya stopped when she could tell he was upset! You were the only one who —”
“You a fuckin’ liar! Y’all didn’t stop for shit! Blame me all you want, but maybe you were the problem!”
“Oh, bullshit. You stay deflectin’ every time you get called out for shit! Who started pickin’ on him in the first place? Who called him a zebra for the cuts on his arms? Who ripped the head off his favorite stuffed animal? You!”
“Malik, please stop.” Maya says quietly.
“Oh, you backin’ him up? What ever happened to sticking up for your twin, huh?”
Then, Maya lost it.
“You both some fuckin’ assholes!” Maya screams. “Maybe Caleb did all them things, but you and I never stopped him! We never said anything! We never helped him out at school! We’re all the fuckin’ reason Amir is dead! You, me, Caleb, Mom, and Dad. Especially dad! That asshole would rather sleep with a bunch of other bitches then care for his children, and Mom spent all of her energy tryin’ to deal with him instead of kickin’ his ass to the curb and focusing on her children! We all might as well have broke his neck.” Her voice broke at the end.
Amir looks into that mirror one last time, and turns away from it. He thought he’d feel satisfied to hear them blame each other and realize they were all at fault, but he didn’t.
He stops at a mirror one final time, the one in his dad’s office. He wasn’t sure if he was here or not, so he tapped it.
And there he was. Sitting in his chair, drinking some beer. He wasn’t crying, just sitting there blankly. It was hard to tell whether or not he cared about Amir’s death or not.
Amir walked away from that mirror, too. He walked past the rest of the mirrors, uninterested in what he’d find in them. He saw all he needed to see.
He eventually got to the end of the mirrors and into a dark forest. Looking around, it was quiet. The cool breeze was back, or maybe it never left. He could hear the leaves rustling in the trees. There was nothing here.
He wondered if this was it. Just a purgatory of mirrors and empty greenery. His family always talked of Heaven and Hell and God and Jesus, but now that he’s on the other side of things, those didn't seem to exist. So, what’s left for him?
Suddenly, he saw a ball of light at the corner of his eye. However, when he turned, there was nothing there. He saw it again, but he turned around and saw nothing.
Then, the ball of light came up to his face. He realized it wasn’t just a light, and that it was moving on its own… but, what was it?
It looked a bit like a fairy. He also realized it had a face, and it smiled at him. He reached up to touch it in awe, his eyes sparkling with delight, but then he saw more of it coming from the trees.
They looked like suns flying around him. He spun around to look at them all, all of them sharing the same comforting smile the first one did.
They flew under his legs and lifted him up.
“Whoa, whoa!” Amir exclaims. “What if I fall?”
“Don’t worry.” One of them said. “You can’t feel pain here. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can hurt you ever again.”
“Oh…”
They carried him into the air, high above the trees, and moved forward. He watched the trees travel far beneath, and the sky above him glittering with stars. It was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
Eventually, they landed in a clearing in the middle of the forest. Amir landed on his bottom on the grass, and looked around again with a gasp.
There were beautiful creatures everywhere, glowing all sorts of different colors. Some looked like regular animals, like bunnies and owls. Others were harder to describe, and Amir couldn’t make out what they were. However, he stopped worrying about that as they came together in front of him.
It seemed as though they were dancing as a form of welcome. The lights flew around them, in the air and on the ground as they performed.
As he watched them, Amir realized that he was okay now. He may have not had the life he wanted, or that he deserved, but none of that mattered anymore. At first, he wished he could talk to his family knowing the information he knows now, but he can’t, and deep down he knew he didn’t want to. He knows that one day, they would find a way to mend themselves and each other in spite of what he did. However, he was free, and nothing can hurt him ever again.
When he realized that, Amir’s eyes lit up and his mouth formed a genuine smile for the first time in what felt like forever.
