Title: How to survive Death?
Writer: Harshit Raj
Genre: Sci-fi, Psychological, Self-Help
Word Count: 1,307
Type: Short Story/Flash Fiction
Dear Reader,
Death is an inevitable phenomenon.
Well, that’s what you thought until now.
But today, you will find out how to escape this calamity.
You will learn how to escape death.
Let’s begin this lesson with a story.
A bright summer day in the middle of the may. The season is at its peak. Phenomena like Mirage is common even in the busiest cities. Ears are normalized towards the constant noise of crickets, grasshoppers, etc. And every time those little insects went silent, a person would start feeling uneasy and his ears would start hurting from the weirdly silent environment.
Anik was sitting in the living room devouring a large, bright red watermelon.
“Oh man. This torridity keeps getting worse.”
After feasting on a complete watermelon by himself, Anik lay down on the floor. Nothing else to do, he got bored very fast. The heat waves already had the whole area covered, so going outside was out of the question. Thus, Anik kept staring at the ceiling. After a while, his constantly roaming eyes stumbled across something. A small area on the ceiling was different from the rest. After another brief staring session, he realized it was an opening to enter the attic. He never knew one existed in his house. Now such a major discovery cannot be just left untouched by a young teenager like him, especially when he is bored. As a result, he brought the stairs from the store room as fast as he could. He climbed the stairs and reached beneath the hatch of the attic. However, opening it was not that easy. The hinge was jammed. After a few forceful attempts, when it opened, dust got all around and covered Anik’s face. He started coughing. When the dust got cleared, he climbed up the ceiling and entered the attic. Rats were running all over the place. Corners were all covered with cobwebs and there was just one old light bulb which also started to flicker after turning on the switch. Aside from these, the place waah filled with antiques, old video cassettes, beautiful wooden furniture and much more. They all were the gems of one time but today no one was even asking for them. However, not anymore. Anik was amazed to find such unique things and thus, he began to check every little object present there. During this operation, various cool discoveries were made, but what captured the most of Anik’s attention was a bookshelf. A plain old wooden bookshelf filled with a few books covered in dust. Anik had always been interested in literature. Reading different types of books, even the ones with ideologies and opinions he opposed, consuming stories in multiple forms, whether being written, narrated or shown, and much more. All of these were his leisure activities.
While looking at all the books and pulling out the ones that intrigued him, he came across a book with a rather unusual and different name. It was titled, ‘How to survive death?’
“Such a weird name.
These writers sure have a lot of freedom.
They can write whatever they want.
…
Judging from the title of this book, I guess this is a suspense and mystery story where the protagonist survives various near death moments while searching for and fighting with a psychopath antagonist.
Or maybe it is a sci-fi story where someone close to the protagonist dies and he feels guilty for that death. Thus, he goes on a mission to bring back That person by unfolding various mysteries of science..
Or maybe a story with self-improvement lessons hidden inside it.
Or maybe a story where the reader itself gets stuck in an infinite loop.
Huh.. Enough overthinking. But thinking literally, why survive death?
I think this is for those who just get by their lives. Only they can desire something like this. And maybe the writer wants to convey the beautiful ways to encourage living life instead of just getting by through a story.
Well, I'll never know until I read it.”
He brushed off the dust from the book and opened it. He then started reading it page by page.
Dear Reader,
Death is an inevitable phenomenon.
Well that's what you thought until now.
But today, you will find out how to escape this calamity.
You will learn how to survive death.
Let's begin this lesson with a story.
The sun was hiding behind large black clouds. The environment was chilly and full of cold breeze. Not long after, snow started to fall too. Anik was busy looking outside the window. The unhurried falling of snow made him space out to nothingness.
“ANIK!!!”
He was startled by the sudden sitting of his name. He looked around and regained his lost consciousness.
“Where are you lost at?
Do you know the answer to the question?”
The teacher yelled at him. He stood up without any idea of what the question was. He respectfully asked the teacher to repeat the question. The teacher was furious yet he repeated the question in extreme anger, with intentions to punish Anik. But nothing went as he planned. After hearing the question, Anik answered it in an instant. Teacher was disappointed. Neither on Anik nor on himself, but instead on the situation. Anik quietly sat down and started to focus on the history class. After a while, the class got over but he kept sitting on his bench. Lost in his thoughts, he heard a faint voice coming from behind. He turned around and found that some of his classmates were talking among themselves about fear. Upon asking the question what he fears the most, one of them replied with a single word, “death”. What he feared the most was death. All the others agreed with him and started to talk about how terrifying death is and other related stuff. Anik was right in front of them, listening to the whole conversation. Then he glanced at the clock, stood up and headed towards the library. He has always preferred to read books in free time rather than having small meaningless talks.
While on his way to the library, he started to think about the conversation he heard earlier in the classroom.
“Fear of death, huh?
But why? Why do humans fear death?
I mean, it is a necessary and inevitable part of their lives. It indicates that our journey in this place is completed and we need to move forward to another journey.
Well, I guess the ones who fear death are the ones who just get by through their lives. Instead of living it, they try to just survive. Instead of experiencing life to its fullest, they just find ways to escape it.
It is said that writers have a lot of freedom.
They can write whatever they want. Applying the same logic and visualising our lives as books and ourselves as its writers is somewhat the same. We have freedom to write whatever we want in our book of life.
Then why write pain, regrets, fear, suffering and despair instead of joy, happiness, achievement, love and care.”
He arrived at the library and started searching for an interesting book to read. And to find one, of course he judged books by their cover. Everyone does so. After a while, he stumbled across a somewhat unusual book on the fiction shelf. Just by reading the title of the book, he became interested and pulled it out to read it further. The name of the book was, ‘How to survive Death?’, and as he flipped through pages, he came across a rather interesting preface.
Dear Reader,
Death is an inevitable phenomenon.
Well that's what you thought until now.
But today, you will find out how to escape this calamity.
You will learn how to survive death.
Let's begin this lesson with a story.
All copyrights are reserved. The writer is the owner of this piece and 'The Narratives' doesn't take any responsibility for mistakes in writing.
){kind=link}
0 Comments