LOST SOUL

An eerie silence enveloped the girl's surroundings. She shifted her position, now sitting cross-legged, her gaze fixed on the far distance. For a long minute, the silence persisted, pressing heavily upon her as she waited, her patience tinged with anxiety. As the seconds ticked by, faint whispers began to emerge from the darkness. The scene was nerve-wracking, the obscurity promising questions she could neither ask nor answer. Outwardly, she maintained her composure, but inside, she was a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts, desperate to identify where she was and how she had ended up there.

"Ahem—so, as I was saying earlier, I present my deepest apologies for not arriving sooner. The matter at hand concerns the fate of 'Diana Macmillan,' lost soul number...002. This is quite unprecedented as her number should be much higher, but it appears to be an administrative error. Diana Macmillan may very well be lost in the void if her case is not resolved, your honor," the hedgehog spoke from her right, its voice unexpectedly formal and calm.

Turning her head back towards the hedgehog, the girl looked at him skeptically, processing his previous sentence. Her mind fixated on two words, "Who is Diana Macmillan? And what do you mean by lost soul?" She spoke with little regard to decorum or formality. Her tone was demanding and unappreciative of the lack of elaboration.

The hedgehog looked towards the eerie darkness, contemplating its next words. It looked back towards her. A deep sigh escaped its lips as it began, "You are Diana Macmillan and the lost soul 002."

Diana's expression masked with confusion and question lingering in her eyes. She turned her head sideways and replied, "Oh, Is that...a good thing or bad?"

A hesitant reply came towards her question, "I believe it is neither depending on how you perceive it."

The whispers grew louder, converging upon her. Diana's eyes darted around, but she could see nothing beyond the inky blackness. The hedgehog, with its unnervingly calm demeanor, seemed the only solid thing in this surreal nightmare.

"Um...Excuse me," Diana managed to croak out, her voice barely a whisper against the oppressive silence. "Where am I? What is this place?"

The hedgehog turned to her, "You are in the Interstice, the space between worlds. A place where unresolved fates are decided."

Diana's heart pounded against her chest. "Unresolved fates? What do you mean?"

"Every soul has a path, a journey from birth to beyond. Yours, however, has been...interrupted." The hedgehog's tone was matter-of-fact, yet there was a hint of sympathy.

"Then me being here means I lost my path?" Diana questioned as she started to make sense of the situation.

"Not you, my dear, you were made to lose your path. Some cases exist where the soul is not to blame but her circumstances are." Looking down at a rooster in its clawed paws, that was previously missing, the hedgehog continued, "Tell me can you remember what happened before you ended up here?" It began to question Diana like a professional psychiatrist on a quest to figure out her underlying mental disorder.

There was a short pause in the air, Diana was silent as she looked towards the darkness beyond the spotlight. "Remember?" She questioned herself as she could feel her heartbeat picking up the pace.

She could not remember anything."That's predictable, you most probably don't remember anything that happened in your life, and more precisely, how you died." Her thoughts were interrupted abruptly as she began to piece everything together.

It was true, she knew what a car was but not when she drove for the first time. She knew she used to go to school, to learn literature, science, economics and what not, but she failed to remember who she was there with. She knew she had a stable life and a family yet what their faces looked like was a mystery to her. She knew she loved to read books and explore but her memory of the person next to her was not there. It was as if everything she'd ever done in her life was centered around her and nobody else existed in her life.

Unaware of Diana's dilemma, the hedgehog continued, "Life is, as anyone would call it, a collection of memories during a soul's time in a certain dimension. Your case, my dear, is unlike many others. You have lost what makes your life. In other words, your memories have been lost. When a living being dies, it's memories determine it's fate, but yours are not there, therefore the chances of you being lost in the void are almost a hundred percent."

There was a short pause. Diana took a deep breath, processing the information, analyzing her next words. "What does that imply for me now?" She asked in a much calmer manner than she expected.

"There are two options. First, the obvious one, give in to the void. Second, get your memories back." Came a solemn reply. A short pause later, the hedgehog continued, "I believe the choice should be obvious."

Diana listened carefully but she was still at a loss for words. She decided to opt for the safer response to the subject. That is, she decided to dodge the topic."So, exactly what are you? I mean, normally I would find it quite weird if a hedgehog were to talk to me, much less tell me I'm already dead, with no memories and no way to possibly go to heaven?" Diana asked with an impatient smile covering her expression.

"Ahem—apologies for the late introduction. I am one of the curators of the middle realm, or as humans like to call it, the interstice. We manage the souls that have lost their path.

Most of the cases are similar to yours while some may vary, after all, humans are unpredictable. I am the second lowest in the ranks of the curators of the middle realm." The hedgehog said with a spark of pride in its eyes.

"And my name is Elion Seraphel. You can just call me Elion, Seraphel is my rank."

After the sudden bombardment of information, Elion silently waited for Diana to process everything. No matter how hard she tried to accept her new reality, she simply couldn't get used to the idea that she was already dead. Surprisingly, her surroundings no longer felt spooky, despite the occasional burst of whispers around her. It was as if she were surrounded by a group of age-worn, gossip-hungry elders, eagerly scanning for a suitable marriage prospect for their eldest grandchild—the one who had the audacity to defy family traditions by dating a delinquent.

The whispers rose and fell, punctuated by the occasional giggle, as if someone had just shared a particularly juicy piece of scandal. Diana half-expected to see an ethereal knitting circle materialize, needles clicking away as the ghostly grannies exchanged disapproving looks and delighted murmurs over the latest romantic rebellion.

"Yeah, you'll get used to that," Elion chimed in when he saw Diana bewildered and spaced out.

"I just hope they don't plan my afterlife wedding, it's not every day you die just to wake up to ghostly whispers in a deathly hollow makeup show." Diana whispered to herself and turned towards Elion. "So what do I have to do now?"

"In order for you to avoid spending centuries in the void you'll need your memories. It's not always that simple for a soul to get its memories back as they are lost in the unconscious. There are always some very important memories that make up a large percentage of a person's memories, and you, Diana, need to get back those memories." A detailed answer followed her question.

"Hold on, what if I don't want my memories back?" Diana replied.Her question evoked further whispers surrounding Diana, leaving her with a question she couldn't answer. A short commotion began surrounding Diana. She looked towards Elion who calmly flicked the paw with the rooster. The rooster in his small clawed paw disappeared in smoke as he addressed Diana.

"Diana, the reason why you don't have your memories is not because there was a mistake on our end, it's because you were not meant to die yet. Do you know what that implies?"

"No, I-I don't," Diana stuttered, the silence weighing down on her.

"It's because you were murdered." The whispers died down as the sentence resonated in the surrounding eerie darkness.