Gwen: Stories of the Dead

Goodbye, World

I'm Gwendolyn. I'm probably a pretty normal girl, like you and me. I have a home, I go to work everyday and hang out with my friends. I own a small room, and my hobbies are writing and photography. I have long, curly orange hair and freckles all over my face.

Oh, and I am dead.

You may now think "Nice to know, but what's it like being dead?", and I am here to answer your question. But first things first.

When I was two years old, my mom and dad worked at the academy and were researching a new way of producing nuclear energy. The reactor exploded one day and killed both my mom and dad. I never got to know my parents, but I remember that my mom had the same long orange curly hair as me. I, at my age back then, never comprehended the loss of mom and dad. My brain just suppressed that train of thought and thus, I never mourned.

I was brought to an orphanage in Edinburgh. I lived twelve years there. I don't remember anything, but I remember every time the - we called them wardens - hit us. For anything, even something completely out of our control, they had gone totally mad about us and even locked us in our rooms for days.

As I depict it, the life in the orphanage was cruel. And it was, it really was. But I will not remember that one day I got adopted.

It was the day, the orphanage was checked by the prime minister himself. He wanted to personally ensure we were treated well. When he came to check my room, I gave him my diaries which contained all records of punishment and cruelty against us. Luckily, he immediately fired the warden and gave us all to families. 

But someone told the warden I was responsible. 

His brother, who also held a grudge against children, adopted me. As I found out the warden would adopt me, I tried to warn everybody around me. But who would believe a 15-year-old?

It was late in the evening. The warden and his brother locked me in the basement where I, for one, starved and, for two, was almost killed by the wardens. They punched, kicked, broke my bones.

Then the ambulance came.

I was fast asleep, trying to get some relief in my dreams from all the pain that the warden caused. As I woke up, I was in a hospital. I don't think anyone noticed that I woke up, but I heard two doctors debating over me. 

"Will she survive?"
"Look at her. Her entire skeleton is broken, she has liver and kidney failure and probably hasn't eaten anything since the moon landing in 1969"
"Can't we do something?"
"She's stable, but-"

Suddenly, the doctors and nurses rushed to my bed, trying everything to keep me alive. I had crashed. The last thing I ever heard while I was human was my heart rate meter come to an end.