Wake Up

"It sucks. Everything fucking sucks."

A frail looking young man kicked a stone on the ground and said. He was walking back to his dorm while letting out curses. It was an everyday thing for him.

The teen wore a simple loose white shirt, black slacks and shoes, and had pretty much no other accessory on him. Coupled with his malnourished look, one could tell that he was definitely broke.

His handsome face that had black hair and purple eyes seemed sickly pale and his body was almost skinny to the bones. He seemed like someone who had come out of a hospital mid treatment.

"Why is nobody having any slots open for a part-time job? Even when I applied for doing the dishes they didn't hire me. Just why!?" The teen kicked another stone, this time a bit hard, and asked himself.

"Sigh. How long will I have to endure this? It's been almost a month and I have gotten no job. The savings I had exhausted a week ago and living on free food from malls and stalls around isn't working for me either. Not to men–"

The teen stopped his complaints mid way when he saw a little kid leave his mother's hand and run towards him from the opposite side of the zebra crossing.

"Oi, stop! Don't come here!"

"Nina, noooo!"

He and the kid's mother yelled, but the kid didn't listen and was happily running towards him.

The teen and the mother both ran towards the kid and right at this moment…

HONK! HONK!

A truck came speeding towards the three.

Noticing this, the teen's adrenaline spiked and he ran towards the kid with the maximum speed he was capable of.

He soon reached the kid but so did the kid's mother. The teen was about to push them both away when he heard a man's shout.

"Mamma mia! Waite fore me!"

Right at this moment, in front of the teen, a blonde-haired man wearing a red headband and blue shorts with his white polo t-shirt tucked in, dashed towards the mother-daughter pair and pushed them aside.

HONK! HONK!

BAM!

This was the last scene the teen saw before he heard the truck's noise again and everything around him turned dark.

Silence.

It was an absolute quietness all around the teen and everything was deathly silent.

The teen was feeling nothing at this point. He wasn't seeing anything nor was he hearing anything or doing anything. He was just silently drifting across the vast expanse of absolute darkness.

Soon…

'Hmm? Where am I? Why's everything so dark? Why's it so silent? This darkness… Hmm… I should feel creeped out by it but for some reason, it feels as if I am a part of it. Whatever… I wanna… I wan… na… sleep…'

The teen felt being in a dark environment and had a few thoughts. But he started feeling sleepy and it slowed down his thoughts as well. The teen was back to his previous state again.

Time slowly passed.

The teen's senses were back to him again as he felt 'awake' for some reason. He was starting to hear some mumbling of some sort. He didn't know what it was but it was just some few faint noises he was hearing.

"...wake… up… wake… up…"

The faint noises were getting louder and the teen was starting to make out what the noises were. Someone was asking him to wake up it seems.

"Wake up."

He soon heard a voice again, this time loud and clear but it was definitely not the same voice as the previous one he was hearing. But this loud noise jolted him awake and the darkness around him was faded away.

The lights in front of him were blinding and the teen had to close his eyes back due to that. He slowly opened them again and after his eyes adjusted to the light around, he finally saw the surrounding area he was in.

He was standing in the middle of a sea of clouds and everything below him was blue and white in color. Above him was a dark sky filled with bright stars and there were clusters of stars in various shapes and colors.

He was about to look for constellations to check whether he was on Earth or somewhere else but his plans were interrupted as he heard a gentle voice saying,

"Come here."

He turned back and saw a white pavilion. Inside the pavilion were two chairs around a round table and one of the chairs was occupied by a lady.

Looking at the lady from afar, his eyes opened wide in surprise.

'So beautiful…'

The lady's divine beauty mesmerized the teen and he stood still in his place and just stared at her.

The lady snapped her finger and brought the teen out of his daze as well as made him sit on the chair opposite to her.

The teen's thoughts were broken and he found himself to be suddenly in front of the divine beauty he was previously looking at.

Looking at her from close, he saw her silky smooth silver hair fluttering lightly with the breeze. Her amethyst-like purple eyes were staring at him and her rosy lips and unblemished face made her appear divine and like a Goddess.

"Stared enough?" The lady sitting opposite to him asked gently with a smile.

"No. Hold on for a few more minutes. Maybe hours, no, days… hmm… months or years would do too. Let me look more."

The teen stared at her and said in a flat tone.

Hearing this, the lady seemed a bit surprised. She cleared her throat and said, "do you know the place where you are currently?"

The teen's thoughts broke again. He looked around and felt this place to be a bit familiar. Why was it so, he did not know. He looked back at the lady but just as he did, he found her to be familiar too. This time, she seemed like someone he knew for a long long time.

"Why do you look so familiar? I also feel as if I am close to you for some reason and that we know each other for a long time." The teen voiced out his true thoughts without hesitation.

The lady chuckled lightly and said, "it could be because you have a few memories of yours intact. You've met me many times, you know?"

The teen raised an eyebrow in interest. "Oh? I have met you? A lot of times, you say? But I clearly don't remember anything about it."

"It's because your memories get erased the moment you die. This time however was an exception it seems." The lady said with a smile.

The teen read between the lines of what the lady said and soon realization dawned upon him. He was shocked and surprised at the same time but before he could ask her anything, she smiled and said in the same gentle tone,

"That's right, Lucas. This is the afterlife."