Story Book of Prompts

(1)Trapped

Oliver Morrison was a good man. A dying, old, and bedridden man, but a good one nonetheless. He had lived a happy yet simple life. Born into a loving family on March fifteenth, 1921 his childhood had been pleasant. As a child Oliver managed to fly through school known not as a smart or stupid person but stuck invisibly between.

'Stuck invisibly between' could sum up Oliver's entire life: he was a middle class man who spent most of his years working middle class jobs. His relationship status was shaky at best before he met his would be bride, but Oliver dealt with little heartbreak. His wife, Samantha Morrison, could be caring at times, but her love for Oliver had faded as their marriage progressed, the spark that had once lit her heart flickering out with time.

Truth be told, Oliver Morrison hadn't lived a happy life. He lived a life devoid of sadness and joy, unwilling to see the mediocrity of the mark he had left on the world.

Even Oliver's death or would be simple; he would die at the ripe age of ninety-four, with his wife by his side and his body slowly wearing out. His death would most likely happen in his sleep. He would drift off into whatever awaited him, whether it be the golden gates to heaven or the fiery pits of hell. Oliver hoped for the former, if either existed.

Oliver was prepared for both of those after death locations, hell; he was prepared to wake under an oak tree surrounded by worshipers of long forgotten gods, but this? No, he decided after he had faded away from the world of the living, this was not what he was prepared for at all.

Break

The weight of nothing crushed every nonexistent bone in Oliver's body. Or so he thought, as his soul, or whatever it was that made him coherent, was absorbed into the void, while somehow retaining its ability to think.

Being nothing did not come without a price. The pain was too much to bear for any mortal man. Oliver figured that the ache in his nonexistent body was similar to the having a phantom limb. His body felt twisted and distorted in way impossible for any human to survive.

As the minutes stretched into hours Oliver wondered what he had done to deserve the horror that wasn't even real. He had not been corrupted with evil while he was living nor had he been extremely happy or lucky. That ruled out the theory that whatever he had done in his life would be opposite to his punishment after his death. Perhaps he had made too small an impact on the world. Was he being punished for doing nothing in his life?

Oliver wished he had his watch. It felt as though three days had passed of this slow, agonizing torture. Perhaps it was mere minutes. Time had no power in this realm, unlike the realm if the living, where all chased the hands on a clock, dreading death, wishing away youth. Time was incredibly stupid, Oliver thought, yet he still sought out some way to tell how long he had writhed in this chasm of nothing.

Oliver heard something. Well, heard isn't quite the right word. Since he was the void itself he had no body or ears to have heard even the slightest sound. No, Oliver felt.

Oliver felt a feeling that could only be explained as a monster's friendly yet terrifying roar and the fear and excitement that came from looking down at the ground while finding yourself planted a few hundred feet higher. The feeling disappeared after a few moments. Oliver wondered if the feeling had been his imagination. Maybe the void had taxed his sanity so much that he was hearing-no, feeling- things. But Oliver was not willing to disregard the only sensation he had experienced since he died as a figment of his faulty mind.

Oliver waited for the feeling to come back, missing the sensation of anything at all.

A whisper.

The voice spoke again, louder this time, but Oliver still could hear no language amidst the sounds. The tone of the voice was almost like the ringing of bells, but too much like another type of ringing; that which you hear after you fire a gun, to be considered angelic. If anything heavenly produced that sound it would certainly be the angle of death.

Perhaps that was the sound, Oliver thought to himself. Maybe he was finally going to be taken away to either the land of angels or the pits of hell.

What was better, he asked himself, damnation or the phantom pains of the void. The crushing weight of nothing was worse, he decided, before opting for hell.

Oliver wondered if he was going crazy. Perhaps all of this was the hallucination of an old man. He somehow doubted that anyone could imagine how it felt to die. Oliver asked himself if it mattered at all.

The voice said something that Oliver could somehow comprehend, "This time your life won't be so boring."

Warmth spread through Oliver, and he was born anew.