Living in the Eras

I always wondered how it would have felt to live till you get old. To die a natural death. To hold the hands of your partner and the eyes of the people who lived with you all this while and say goodbye. I just wondered how it would have felt to live beyond the age of 22.

I am Macy and I died of leukaemia at the age people say you start living. In my defence, Taylor Swift did make a whole song on being 22! But here I am dead and gone, yet very much feeling 22.

While walking in the garden of my dreams I wondered how it would have felt to live in reality. Here in heaven, each soul has its own place to live and these places are the mix of all the dreams you saw as a living being.

We also have neighbours but we are not allowed to step out of our dreams or else we face severe consequences. Some of my neighbours are friendly and some are like humans. You know what humans are like, right. But these places are like a hotel to us and we live here till the order for rebirth comes to our doors.

Rebirth is a scary process. You come across all your fears and the bad deeds you did as a living being and you are marked on that basis. The people with the highest ranks take birth as a human, and others as good creatures. As a human, I thought heaven, hell and Earth are three different places, but let me tell you a secret hell is the earth. People become souls, come to heaven and go back to hell after rebirth. It depends on your deeds how much of the hell you get to taste.

It’s been a few days since I came up here and I received my date of a rebirth the very same day. It’s a year and fifty days from now. And my neighbour Mrs Mathew said I am lucky to live here for these many days. But I think differently. I have no memory of what wrong deeds I did to die such a painful death and that too this early. But I wanted to live. Be successful, fall in love and live my life till I was old and wise.

I was immersed in my thoughts when I heard a crash. There is a dark street outside every dream chamber and only higher authorities are allowed to travel on that road. We can’t even step on it before it’s the day of rebirth or else we will be summoned to the higher court. And trust me high court is more frightening than hell.

I don’t know if it was sheer bad luck for me that the sound came from the street outside my chamber. I ran towards the entrance and there was a fence around the chamber that kept the souls inside. I stood up at the rock and peeked outside to see where the sound came from.

I saw a golden white carriage that had Greek markings and it was upside down. There was a steed, a majestic beautiful white steed. I had never seen a creature like it ever before. But it had hurt its leg. I don’t know why I did what I did, but I jumped across the fence. No soul can do that and I also expected some power to push me back but nothing like that happened.

Pushing the thoughts away I ran towards the horse and saw its injured leg. The leg was broken, it must have fallen hard. I looked at it and caressed its head. I took out my handkerchief and tied it around its feet for temporary support. Looking around for some help I realised there must be something in the carriage. I stepped towards it and found at the very front there was a box hanging. It had potions written on it.

I had heard from the other souls that people use potions to get healed here. So, I took the box and started looking for the right one. There was one named ‘broken are the bones, use me to even the tones’, must say these people should hire a better poet. 

I took the bottle and went towards the horse. I read the instructions and poured five drops of the potion into the cap. 

“It won’t treat the animals, they are not souls”, a voice said and all the potion went down on the ground with a startled me.

I looked behind to see a beautiful young man with a lot of wounds standing there. He had arrogance written on his face but I saw one more thing, which said how could a soul be out on the street like this. And at that very moment, I knew I called trouble on myself.

“Who are you?”, I asked.

“How can you be so dumb”, he replied.

“Nice name but a bit long for my liking”, I smirked at my reply. And all I got was an angry look. Good comebacks are not appreciated here!

“What! You could have just answered my question without any stupid remarks.”, I have no idea from where this audacity came in me. His eyes were red and at that moment I knew he is from some higher order family who have no habit of listening to comebacks.

“It’s not tough to see how dumb you are to treat the animal before even looking for the rider.”, he said with so much arrogance that even the horse made a sound which clearly meant ‘I WANT TO PUNCH HIM’.

“If a rider doesn’t know how to ride without getting hurt, I guess it is more worth saving the horse. It can at least have a master who knows how to ride properly.”, I said with a smirk.

“You clearly don’t know who I am or else you would have not just saved me first but also would have shown some respect.”, he shouted at me. What an arrogant jerk.

“Be kind enough to introduce yourself, sire.” I mocked in a British accent. I could see him clenching his fists. I bet if I was a guy, he would have beaten me by now.

He opened his mouth to say something but a bunch of horses appeared from all sides. They were the royal soldiers. They bowed down to him and he just nodded showing authority. Suddenly their eyes were on me and I looked at them meekly. Their eyes showed a mix of ‘wow there will be drama after so long’ and ‘what will happen to this poor soul now’, and none of the expressions was soothing for me.