Helium | ↠ Peter Parker

02 | Veritas

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EPS. 02

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀v e r i t a s

veritas (Latin) ↠ a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

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THERE IS ONLY void here.

Nothing more, nothing less. Just void that keeps swallowing me. But my mind can't rest in peace. It keeps thinking and there are some flashes of memories sometimes. Those flashes are so vivid that sometimes I cry over the saddest memory of my life. It's like I'm really there, experiencing them all over again.

Is this how heaven looks like? Void, dark, quiet, and sometimes full of pain. No one's here. It's like I'm here all alone. I guess alone is how I describe myself. It's always been right word to describe myself. Alone, loner, lone, lonely. Even in death, I'm all alone.

I can't even sleep. And where's the restaurants? Dude, I need food! I'm starving to death! Oh yeah, right. I am dead.

Shouldn't when we die, our life stops? Because there's no life after death, right? Or so I believed.

My mind can't keep quiet. It keeps thinking about all wrongs I have done and all apologies I haven't got a chance to say.

Sometimes I can hear mumbled voices all around me. It really sounds like Michelle's. And all I can think about is my misbehavior. And how much I would do anything just to go back there and fix everything, treat her better. Treat her like... a sister.

How long have I been here? In this void? A month? A year? How's dad? Did he cry at my funeral?

Why is everything so heavy?

Wait. Hold on. Is that what I think it is? A light that will guide me to wherever my last shore will be. A light that will put my mind at ease.

I walk towards the light. Nearer, the light shines brighter that it blinds me. But I force myself to walk forward. No matter how bright it is, I have to get through it to achieve peace.

With one last fight that I have left in my heart, I close my eyes and run through the one and only blinding light.

• ◉ •

I jerk my eyes open as soon as it's much darker. And... I regret it as soon as I do that. Dim light attacks me.

After a moment of adjusting, I can see the room where I am now normally. Is this heaven?

Well, what I see right now is that I'm in some kind of hospital room. Em, more to an ICCU room. Machines hum all around me. No one is on the other side of the window. It's just me here. All alone again. I sigh. Why do I always have to be alone?

I look down and realize that I'm wearing a patient suit. Infusion on my right hand. Small hose in my nostrils that lead to an oxygen tube. And the cables attached to my chest come from... an electrocardiogram next to me.

Okay, now I'm a hundred percent sure that I'm not in heaven and I'm not... dead. I'm alive. I'm somehow alive. But how?