Dying doesn't scares me ,living a life of wasted potential does....
"No"
"No, no, no..."
"Please..."
"Please, please... help me..."
"I don't want to die."
"Mom..."
"I'm scared. So scared. Please..."
The denial starts as a thought, a cold stone in the swirling dark of my own mind. Then it claws its way up my throat, a sour, metallic taste.
"I am dying."
My eyes, wide with a primal understanding no creature should possess, dart across the ceiling tiles. I'm counting them, fixing on a tiny crack, anything to anchor a self that is dissolving. My fingers, pale and weak, clutch at the knife— to pull it up. A jolt of excruciating pain fires through my nerves.
It's a prayer to the universe, to physics, to time itself. Stop this. Reverse this. Make it not-true.
A wave of cold, deeper than ice, washes from my core to my extremities. It's not the cold of a room. It's the cold of absence. I can feel it spreading. Just me in a pool of my own blood, lying in the dark. I hate the dark. Why do I have to die in the cruelest way possible?
I don't want to die.
The sentence hangs in the air I can no longer breathe, the most honest and devastating thing I have ever spoken. It's not a statement of philosophy. It's the raw, animal terror of cessation.
Tears, hot and shamefully childish, track through the grime on my temples. The facade of the adult, the brave face, is gone. In its place is the fundamental child. A very, very stupid child.
"Mom..."
The word is a whimper, a prayer ,a hope. It doesn't matter that she was the one holding the knife. In my dying breath, I still long for her. The first face I ever loved is the last face I will ever see. I chuckle bitterly. How cruel for my fate to be to die by the hands of the person I love the most.
"I'm scared. So scared. Please..."
The darkness at the edges of my vision isn't sleep. It's a hungry, silent tide, creeping inward, swallowing the tiles, the lights, the wet, shuddering sound of my own breath. The last spark of conscious is anything but a final, desperate, and utterly human cry.
"...help me."
"...to any god listening to me, help me."
Then, the silence is total.
And everything is still.
Thump-thump-thump.
The sound, a thick and rhythmic pulse, pulls me into consciousness. It takes a moment to understand it is my own heart, hammering against my ribs as if trying to escape. It doesn't sound like life, it sounds like fear.
My eyes peel open, and a searing white light feels like a physical blow. I wince, a soft groan escaping me. As the blindness recedes, the world comes into focus, piece by piece. There's another sound, gentle and domestic: the steady, bubbling murmur of a kettle, tea brewing somewhere just out of sight.
A cold, sickening confusion floods me, swift and absolute.
What... am I? Not dead?
The thought is a jolt. It's not a relief. It's a terrifying, impossible question. I can feel the rough nap of a sofa beneath my hand, the weight of my body. My last memory is the searing cold of the knife, the spreading darkness... and her face. This... this is wrong.
What happened to me?
My gaze darts, frantic. Am I in heaven? The thought is laughable. I can almost taste it. I know my ledger, know the darkness I've carried. No. If anything, I am destined for hell, not for light and the quiet sound of tea.
The room resolves slowly, as I wander around.
But then, my breath catches. This is a condo unit. It's my room. Nondescript. Beige walls. A low, muted hum of nothingness. Not a picture of it. The actual space, fully realized.
It's my room.
A wave of vertigo sweeps over me. Every detail is a surgical replica, a perfect, cruel echo. The dent in the wood of the nightstand from where he once dropped a book. The specific, slight tear in the lampshade. The arrangement of pens on the desk. The lamp itself... I stare, a chill deeper than death crawling up my spine.
It's placed exactly where it stood in his home. Not similar. Identical. The angle, the distance from the bed, the faint, familiar pattern of dust on the base. It's a carbon copy, a flawless, soulless echo.
This isn't heaven. This isn't hell. This is something else entirely.
This is a place built from my memories, from the most intimate corners of a life. And they have started with his. The air doesn't smell of tea anymore. It smells of ozone and dread, and the terrifying, uncanny silence of a stage waiting for a play to begin.
"You are up earlier than the others."
The voice was calm, melodic. I turned my head. A figure stood nearby, holding out a steaming cup of tea toward me. He was sharp-featured and imposingly handsome, with a stillness that felt like a command.
"Who are you?"
"Wow. Straight to business, it seems." A faint, knowing smile touched his lips. "Let's sit down first."
It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order. And yet, I found myself moving, sitting up on the stiff sofa, as if of my own free will. His dominance was a quiet force in the room, as natural as gravity.
This isn't the point, I thought, the panic tightening my chest. The point is: Where am I? And a thousand other questions.
"Well, it seems you have many questions," he said, settling into the armchair opposite me.
Can he read minds? The thought flashed, hysterical. But then, I should be dead. Reading minds probably didn't even make the top ten strangest things happening to me right now.
"Well, true," he muttered.
I glared, and he held up a placating hand, his smile not fading.
"Okay. Now you can ask your questions. One at a time."
I took a shaky breath. The steam from the untouched tea in my hands was the only warmth I could feel. "For the start... where am I? Am I not dead?"
"That's two questions."
Another quick glare from me. He chuckled softly.
"Alright, alright. You are in a limbo. The borderland between life and death. So, you are not dead. But you are dying. At this very moment." He tapped a finger on the armrest. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Dread, cold and heavy, washed over me, worse than any physical pain .It sounded like a countdown.
"A borderland," I repeated, the phrase tasting like ash. "What does that even mean?"
The stranger leaned back, steepling his fingers. He regarded me not with pity, but with a calm, analytical curiosity, as if I were a fascinating equation. "It means exactly what it sounds like. A place of transition. But it is not empty. It is... furnished."
"Furnished?"
"By you. By everyone who comes here." He gestured vaguely at the walls, at the replica of his room that sat, so uncannily perfect, to our side. "This limbo is a construct. A waiting room built from the most beautiful, peaceful memories of the soul transitioning through it. A final comfort. A taste of paradise, however one defines it, to soothe the passage."
A bitter laugh escaped me, harsh and broken. "Comfort? This is comfort?" I glared at the replica. "That's not my beautiful memory."
For the first time, the stranger's perfect composure flickered. Not with surprise, but with a dawning, quiet understanding. His sharp eyes softened, just a degree. "Isn't it?"
He didn't wait for my protest. "Look around, vanya . Look at this room. The space you woke in."
I forced my gaze away from the haunting condo. I looked at the sofa I sat on, worn but soft. At the low table holding my untouched tea. At the warm light from the brass lamp—not the one from his room, but an older, simpler one. The air itself... it no longer smelled just of bergamot. Beneath it was a fainter scent. Old books. Lemon polish. The particular, dusty warmth of a house heated by the sun.
My breath hitched.
My eyes traced the pattern on the rug. I knew that pattern. I had traced it with my small fingers while lying on my stomach, listening to the quiet murmur of voices. The thump-thump in my chest began to slow, syncing with a deeper, older rhythm—the remembered sound of a slow, steady heartbeat under my ear, and another, lighter one close by.
"It is not his home you are seeing," the stranger said, the truth settling in the space between us like dust. "It is the home you shared with him. From before. From when you were very young. This..." He gestured to the entire, quiet space—the waiting room, the adjacent condo— "This is your beautiful memory, Aran. The only one. Your soul is clinging to a single, fragile point in time. A place where your parents were just... your parents. And you were just... their child. Safe."
The revelation didn't bring warmth. It brought a devastating, hollow ache. My entire life's worth of peace, distilled into a single, rented snapshot from a time I could barely remember.
"So I'm stuck here," I whispered, the fight gone from my voice, replaced by a crushing exhaustion. "In a waiting room built from a ghost."
"Hey. I am not a ghost."
The stranger's voice cut through my self-pity, sharp with something like disgust. He straightened in his chair, his earlier calm replaced by a mild, officious irritation. "I am the Keeper of this place. There's a significant difference. I don't haunt; I administer."
The absurd formality of it, here in this echo of my childhood, almost made me laugh. Almost.
"So... what?" I asked, my voice flat. "You're a cosmic clerk?"
"In a manner of speaking," he said, his composure returning, though his nose was still slightly crinkled. "And as the Keeper, I am here to present your options. Now that you understand your... surroundings."
He leaned forward, his sharp eyes capturing mine. The domestic scent of tea and old polish seemed to recede, replaced by a sterile, decision-making air.
"Option one," he stated, holding up a single, elegant finger. "You stay. You inhabit this memory. You can walk through that door," he nodded toward the replica of the old condo, "and live within that moment. You can replay it, explore its corners, linger in its feeling of safety for what subjectively could feel like a lifetime. You will remain here, in stasis, until your physical body's thread finally snaps. Then, you will move on to your final destination—heaven, hell, or whatever awaits—judged for the life you actually lived, crimes and all."
The word crimes hung between us. I saw the flash of a knife, a look of terrible resolution.
"And option two?" The question was a dry rasp.
"Option two," he said, a new, heavier gravity entering his tone. He raised a second finger. "You do not stay in the past. You go back to the point of your ending. Not to relive the death, but to restart from it. A true return. You wake up in your own life, in your own body, at the moment you departed it. You get to continue. To change what comes next."
He let the choices settle, his gaze unwavering.
"So," the Keeper concluded, folding his hands neatly in his lap. "Do you wish to dwell forever in the only beautiful memory you have? Or do you choose to go back and try, perhaps futilely, to make another?"