After They Die At The End

🕗 Part 2 - Chapter 1

(Photo credit to Pinterest https://pin.it/6xpKAOb)
Mateo
My room doesn't look much different than my room back in the apartment, maybe less books since I still gotta remember all the ones I still wanted to read. So waking up took me a second to realize that I had died. Dad was still in a coma the last I checked, so the smell of coffee coming from outside helped me remember. I guess mom likes both tea and coffee.

I sit up, yawn a little as I remember how the first day being dead was. It honestly wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Meeting my mom, having somewhere to stay, learning a bit about how being dead works, etc. Apparently, I can read here since it's like eternity, so you can do some things that you could when you were alive too. Though, like, there aren't phones or many things like that, but somehow telepathic signals to loved ones usually work! Still haven't exactly figured that out, but I've got time.

I asked mom if any other relatives of ours are here too, but she explained they wanted to live a new life and went to be reincarnated only some weeks after being dead. Her parents, so my grandparents, waited quite a long time so they could keep Mom company until they realized she would be relatively "okay" with being dead and not getting to raise me. They were quite surprised to see her, considering how young she was.

"Do you know who they became?" I asked, and she said that "no one is really informed," you might just have those 'I recognize you from somewhere' moments, but neither one of you will know why, and there's no guarantee that this'll actually happen when you return.

I stretch a bit, then walk out of my room, seeing my Mom making some breakfast: toast, jam, peanut butter, coffee, and some freshly cut fruit.

"Oh, good morning sweetheart," she says, seeing me walk into the same room she was in. She puts her mug down on the counter.

"Want anything? It's a Saturday so not many souls work, especially since there are the welcoming ceremonies," she adds.

"I'll get some fruit, thanks," I say. She goes ahead and gives me a bowl.

"You can ask for literally anything, and it'll basically create itself for you," she says, taking a bite of her toast with a nice coating of jam. I thought about what fruits i wanted, and a little later some cut strawberries and blueberries were there. Well, this is pretty neat.

"So when is that welcoming ceremony thing?" I ask, getting a fork to eat my berries with.

"This afternoon," she says.

I pause and take a deep breath in, zoning out a bit. Past me would probably start panicking all about this, and I learned with Rufus to just live in the moment, enjoy the time as it passes. Even so, it's still something I'm trying to adapt to, I'm tempted to let my thoughts go on and on. I didn't exactly have that much time to think this all through, and, well I'm going to see Rufus again, are we going to have time to talk? How is he? Am I supposed to say something there? What if he forgot about me? Or doesn't care anymore?

"Mateo? Are you alright?" I just hold my mom's hand tightly, I am not letting my anxiety take over me when I'm literally dead. I take a few breaths, honestly still don't understand how but it's the feeling of air coming into your lungs or whatever. She softly rubs her thumb across my hand, helping me feel more at ease.

"Just....thoughts," I say simply, trying not to crack. We take a few breaths in together, that helped.

She quickly distracts me for a bit, informing me more on how it will go, " A string of light will guide you to where it's going to be, and I can be with you if you'd like or just watch you from the audience, too. I'd be teleported there anyway, like we all are every Saturday," Mom says.

"Could you come with me, please?" I ask her, our hands still together. I think having her with me will make things a bit calmer for me. Being dead is still new to me, so to have her there as a guide will be nice.

"Of course kiddo," she says, smiling at me. I smile back. We continue breakfast calmly and talking about a couple other things. I still don't want to tell her too much about how my last day went. Instead, I ask her more things about her, even some hobbies we might have in common.

There's a sudden comfortable silence, to which she starts humming a tune to a song I recognize. I hum along with her and we complete the words at the end of the verse.

"I use to sing that with your dad all the time," she commented

"Yeah, he kinda let me in on that," I smiled, "We use to sing it and he would tell me some stories about you,"

"That's very nice," I nod lightly, "C'mon, I'll help you get ready"

We walk out of the kitchen. I take a deep breath, feeling a bit more assured that things will work out.

(898 words! A bit smaller than the others ;)
Hi! Sorry for abandoning this for so long, let's just say life was going on and I didn't have time to focus on this. I was overthinking how long I had to make each thing and thought this chapter was too small, but I see now that maybe that's ok and sometimes it's nice to have a shorter chapter in some books :) thank you all for reading thus far and I appreciate the support through the votes and comments <3 I'll try my best to keep updating now that I've managed a bit more downtime.
Kind regards, the author)