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Sophie didn't wake up.
Just like that, she stopped existing.
The days succeeding her death was a blur. I couldn't recall what I ate during those days or whether I even ate at all. I know nothing.
Finn gave me ten minutes with the cadaver before the service men took it outside for the funeral. The casket was filled with tiny diamonds, sparkling prettily with the light directed on it. Sophie's grin as she wrote her funeral wishes flashed in my mind, the memory of it making me smile.
I do not know what I was supposed to do with a corpse for ten minutes, so I stared at it. I stared at the ghostly paleness of her face down to the tips of her fingers, the nails of which were painted plain red, too boring for Sophie. I leaned in closer, a foolish thought crossed my mind, daring the corpse to twitch or make any movement.
"You're not Sophie," I whispered, reaching my hand to touch the silky dark-blonde hair, but abruptly stopped when my chest ached. It had been coming and going since this morning. I jotted down on a notepad a reminder to book an appointment with a new doctor- not the incompetent ones who dismissed my clear signs of heart problems.
"Sabine, are you done?"
"Yes." Without waiting for Finn, I walked out the room, heading to the clinic I passed by just around the corner to ask for a painkiller.
When I walked back to the plot where Sophie's corpse was to be placed, the ceremony had already begun. I stood behind the crowd, tuning in to the verse the priest was reading. "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live'..."
It seems to me that the greatest leverage of this religion is the promise of life after death. A smart move considering most people are afraid to face mortality.
Though I wonder, if we did have a soul, it could open the possibility of life after death. However, there's no guarantee that the soul survives the death of the body. It could be that the soul dies with it. If it survives, though, how long does it continue to exist? Forever? Does that makes us immortal in a sense?
The squeaking of the iron wheel caught my attention. The casket have been closed and was prepared to fall into its place, six feet below the ground. My chest still ached as the casket was brought down. The painkillers were useless. It became too uncomfortable that I had to leave for a couple of minutes.
My legs wobbled as I walked behind the nearest tree. I leaned on it for support, eventually needing to crouch when my legs threatened to give up. I found it harder to breathe. Sweat started forming on my forehead and my hands felt cold.
For a moment, I debated to call an ambulance but decided against it when I successfully got into a rhythm of breathing.
If this isn't a heart attack, my whole existence is nothing but a joke.
