Falling Back #wattys2017

Chapter Two

One second, I was riding my bike peacefully on a dirt road. The next second, I rode my bike into a man hole.

The moment I fell, fear rolled into my stomach. I wasn't even wearing a helmet. Anything could happen. I could get a concussion, I could break my arm, or worst of all, I could die. All these thoughts were racing through my head within one second of me falling in.

As I was preparing for my doom, I realized that I was still falling. Everything in the man hole was pitch black and I felt gravity pulling me down, with no ground under my feet. I was even more scared. Because now, I was falling down an endless pit as the sunlight from the top was slowly fading and I could see nothing.

If I would have just instantly fell, I would have known right away how I got injured. But falling down an endless pit, it was even scarier. I had way more time to think of even worse scenarios.

Like for example, what if I fall so deep underground that no one ever finds me and I starve to death. What if I have a hard fall and I die instantly. Either way, my life is about to come to an end.

I was only seventeen. I wasn't ready to die yet. I wanted to live. Go to Yale, be a lawyer, maybe even get married some time down the road. But because of my early death, I'm never going to do any of those things. At least I get to see my mother and Mike. But still, I needed to live.

What I didn't get was that I didn't even land yet. Manholes are usually only five or six feet deep. But this man hole had to be thousands of feet deep. Why was I still falling thousands of feet underground? Then, everything stopped.

When I woke up, I was in front of our local 24-7 (which is a mini mart and some people also call it 7-11. It has two names, not weird at all) and across the street from my school. It was odd falling down a manhole one second and being dead the next

So I guess this is what it feels like to be dead. I looked down on my body and saw that I still had a body. I had the same legs, arms, and hands as I did on earth. I thought that when you die, you become only a spirit and go to heaven but I guess maybe that was all just a myth.

Then, I look around and see that my bike wasn't near me. I also noticed that I was in the local town I lived in on earth. Wow, heaven looked a lot like Rhode Island. There was a shoe store next to 24-7, just like in my hometown. My high school was across the street, just like in my hometown. Why does heaven look exactly like Rhode Island?

Come to think about it, I didn't even feel dead. I looked up into the partly cloudy sky and the clouds were still in the sky like they always were. My body didn't feel sore or light. Part of me was starting to think that maybe I didn't die.

I should have died. I fell so many feet down that pitch black man hole. No one would ever survive that fall. However, I did survive that fall. I expected that if I would have survived by any chance, I would be in a hospital room, slowly losing contact with reality. But instead, I was in my hometown, in front of 24-7, not injured. Something strange happened. I know it did.

When I looked down my body again, I realized that I wasn't even wearing the same outfit. I was wearing jeans and a pink shirt that said "Smile" on it. When I fell down the hole, I was wearing a blue shirt with a bird on it and white jeans.

At that point, I went crazy, having no idea what happened to me. Whether I was dead or alive. In reality or a dream. It all felt so real, and yet, so shocking. I didn't even know what to think.

I needed to know where I was and how I got here. So I went into 24-7, still more confused than I've ever been in my whole life. The inside of 24-7 still looked exactly the same. There were shelves with food, shelves with candy, and even a coffee station. The only thing that was different was that Mike was at the counter.