Love after Death

She had begun pondering.

The air was cool, and the wind crisp, but not painful, against her reddening face.

She had wanted to think of anything but the day’s events.

So she had begun pondering.

First she pondered life and the afterlife, but soon tired of that and begun pondering time.

Was it discovered? Or was it created; a sad attempt to order a life’s events?

She had decided, after some pondering, that it had always been around, in some form or another, but that man had decided on its final form in minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years.

That was when the train hit her.

Afterwards, she began pondering the train.

She was standing on hard ground, something that seemed like laminate, but could have been anything. She could see walls far away, and surrounding her, were people.

This might have been paradise for someone as curious and discussion-fueled as she, but, she soon discovered, she could not talk. And no one could hear her.

Occasionally, they would hear laughing and talking and smell food, or she could at least, there was no way of knowing whether the others could without asking. In these instances, she would experience a brief period of hope that she was going to get out of here. That this was purgatory and heaven was coming for her.

She soon discovered that this was not the case, and she decided that this was punishment for the wrongdoings she had committed. Once, she experienced a particularly good episode of the laughing and talking and smells of food, and truly believed again that she would be taken to heaven.

She was not.

She decided that this episode was punishment for breaking someone’s heart, something that she had always considered a principally punishable offense.

Once, she looked up and scanned the faces of those around her.

It would change her forever.

When she looked up, she saw the face of a boy, someone who was almost a man, but had been deprived of those last few crucial years he needed.

He had looked up too.

Their eyes had met.

Eyes can be a powerful tool. They can convey love, anger, hatred, longing, lust, sorrow, happiness, and a million other emotions for which there is not name.

Their eyes conveyed longing.

In that instant, they knew they had fallen in love.

Something cold and broken inside of both of them had been melted by that longing gaze they shared, but something sad and completely alone had taken its place.

They knew they could not be together as they could have been in life.

This was death, and the rules were different.

They shared many more of those longing gazes over their eternity; their solitary forevers.

Then, one day, tired of the chains that had been cast on her for a reason she did not understand or even believed existed, she defied the rules of death.

 She moved her jaw, something she had formerly believed impossible, but now found infuriatingly easy. First, she smiled.

Then, finding herself emboldened, she whispered. She whispered to him, “I love you.”

Even across thousands of miles, or perhaps just a few inches, he heard her.

He loved her too, deeply and completely. He loved her with all of his heart or soul or whatever it was that had been trapped in this forsaken empty plane.

He knew now that the rules could be broken, had, perhaps, been made to be broken.

He knew now that it must be possible for him, too, to whisper. Maybe even to move, to run to this beautiful girl and hold her for a thousand eternities.

He was filled with an immense hope, and she saw it in his eyes.

He was not as strong as her, though, and he could not whisper.

She never looked up again.