The AFterlife

Parth Vyas. 21. A Digital artist. You might wonder that’s an abnormal occupation, especially with the diversities in the job availability. But it wasn’t an easy path. I have seen people plead for lives and people die for it. But that depends on the situation they are in. People die and go to other world. They await their turn to be reborn. Atleast that was what I had heard. But I never believed it. Who would?

At one point of time, you have to fix a spot in the online job libraries, so that someone, somewhere notices you and calls you to join in his venture. I was doing the same, after finishing my B.Com. And at another point of time, you have your parents nagging at you to build up your social and economical lifestyle, if you want to succeed in life. They have their own way of convincing you, that after a certain age, you need to be a social hypocrite. I never paid any heed to them anyways.

But that was a grave mistake.

One day I came home, from my rendezvous with friends and it was dark in there. It seemed my family hadn’t returned from the big fat wedding. I sat down, switched on the T.V. and was watching a perfectly good program when my cell rang. It was my dad. I was thinking, he called for he will be late. But I was wrong.

Before I answered that call, I never knew that it would change my life forever. Someone on the other end said that the holder of that cell phone, along with 2 others were crushed under a truck and had died on the spot. I panicked and asked the facial structure of the crushed people, just to make sure that it wasn’t anything that I doubted. But doubts have their own ways of becoming reality. I realized after the phone was disconnected, that I was all alone in life from now on. There won’t be mother to cook meals, or father to give advice or brother to enjoy with me. There wont be my family anymore. Because they were gone. Some bloody truck driver crushed them inside the car. I had to go to the graveyard to burn the ashes of my family with my own hands. It was terrible sight. I returned late that night, for I had no one home to return to.

From now on, I was a speck of negligible dust.

There comes a time in your life, when you decide that everything around you have changed drastically and that you wont be able to cope up with the situation. That you will be left behind by the timeline. That you wont be able to survive. It came to me, I had no job, no responsibilities anymore, no one home, and no one to live for. This was the time, that any normal person will think that its all over. And I did the very same thing that every normal person will do at a time like this. I decided to end it all. So I drank up poison pills (Probably the best way to die painlessly). I wanted to die in sleep. But god had other plans for me, or someone else had.

I woke up next morning, bright eyed and thought the pills dint take their action. It was like I thought I would live for one more day and try to end it at night. I decided to get fresh, so I went into bathroom and thought of my family again. I was wondering when my father will call out, that I am late or something like that.
The house seemed unnaturally empty, and it seemed like it was eating me up. So I decided I will walk out of it and just as I came out the bathroom, I felt black shadows creeping over to the sides of my eyes. My eyes, they were closing. And I felt down dead.

Or I thought so.

I opened my eyes again and saw the most amazing sight anyone in their long life would never see. I saw my parents and my brother standing there. I saw I was on my bed, with my covers on.
I rubbed my eyes and opened them again, but the room was empty. There was no one there.

But I knew what I had seen. I had seen that, they were watching me. That they were still caring for me after death. That they always supported me and will continue to do so. I decided it was foolish to end one’s life in such a miserable way. I decided I will turn a new leaf. And thus I came to this occupation where one can show their emotions through the digital media.

I am just a simple and normal man, like thousands on the streets. But I had seen one thing that out of these thousands, none would have seen or will ever see. I had witnessed it and even started to believe in it. The Afterlife.