Where Do We Go After Death?
"Heaven—eternal paradise for the righteous and hellfire for the wicked!" That's what Grandma's pastor shouted one Sunday afternoon, sweat dripping down his forehead as his voice trembled and echoed through the church.
"No, no, no! You are not safe, and you are not safe—nobody is safe! Everyone's spirit will become part of the universal consciousness!" ranted the homeless woman the neighborhood dismissed as mad. She pushed her rattling shopping cart down the cracked sidewalk, her prophetic warnings echoing
"The body dies: the heart stops, cells break down, energy is recycled. There's no definitive proof of awareness continuing beyond the body," said my old science teacher in his boring lecture, casting a spell of boredom over the classroom, where eyelids grew heavy and minds wandered.
Three voices. Three answers. And yet, no one truly knows—not even the science that claims to unravel the universe's mysteries.
As I fell from the school roof, these words whispered through my mind.
Have you ever borne a name that was the very opposite of the life you were destined to lead? They named me Luck as if mocking fate itself—I was the accident that trapped two sixteen-year-olds in a life they never chose, when they could've broken up and just had bittersweet memories of their first love. Their peers were worrying about prom dates and college applications, while they worried about midnight feedings and diaper changes. Becoming children raising a child, clinging to each other because I was the only thing they had left of their stolen youth.
My father's parents disowned him the day I was born. My mother dropped out of high school three months before graduation. They worked double shifts at minimum wage jobs, their dreams dissolved. But somehow—impossibly—we were happy. By the time I turned five, my sister Maeve arrived.
Miraculously, things began to improve. Dad got promoted to floor supervisor at the factory. Mom was managing the local diner. We'd moved from the studio apartment to a two-bedroom place. A happily ever after, right? Wrong.
I was eight, at school, and Maeve was in daycare when a drunk driver plowed into my parents' car, stealing three lives in an instant: theirs and his own. That's when Maeve and I moved in with Grandma. An event that split our lives into before and after.
Grandma wasn't supposed to raise children at seventy-two. Her retirement fund was meant for doctor visits and maybe a small vacation. Instead, she got two traumatized kids and a monthly check that barely covered rent, let alone food or school fees.
Her burdens multiplied, she emerged from retirement to take whatever cleaning jobs she could find. I watched her skip meals so Maeve and I wouldn't go to bed hungry. I watched her hands crack and bleed from the industrial cleaners she used in office buildings after midnight. She'd come home at dawn, hum softly as she made us breakfast with fingers wrapped in bandages, then walk us to school before collapsing into three hours of sleep. Every morning, she'd press warm coins into our palms—money that should have bought her medication instead of our school lunch.
"For food," she'd whisper.
It was never enough for a real meal. At the school's snack bar, we'd buy bread on the verge of expiration, sold cheap to salvage a few pennies. We'd wash it down with tap water and pretend we weren't still hungry.
Our school uniforms grew thinner each year, using a needle and thread, she patched over and over the new holes with her aging hands. The shoes we wore were too small, then too large, as we inherited them from sympathetic neighbors who had outgrown them.
While classmates spoke about the latest TV shows and soccer triumphs, I stayed silent perfecting the art of invisibility. Our ancient CRT television at home flickered with only free-to-air channels, ghosts of entertainment we couldn't afford. Other kids forged friendships in playgrounds until dusk, but I had no such freedoms. My evenings were spent tutoring Maeve, studying by dim candlelight when electricity was cut off, or listening to Grandma weave tales of her youth as if they were unfolding anew, the flame dancing shadows across our cramped one-room home.
At the age of 10, I was forced into adulthood one night that changed everything.
I'd gotten up to use the bathroom when I heard it—a sound I'd never heard before but recognized instantly. Crying. Real crying, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and broken.
Grandma sat at our kitchen table surrounded by unpaid bills, staring at a photograph of my mother. Her work uniform was stained with bleach. Her fingers wrapped in cheap bandages over cracks that wept blood from endless scrubbing traced Mom's face in the faded picture like she could bring her back through touch alone.
When she saw me, she wiped her tears and smiled. "Go back to bed, sweetheart. School tomorrow."
It was the first time I'd seen her cry—the woman who'd held strong at her daughter's funeral, who'd dried our endless tears when Maeve wailed for our parents in the dead of night. No one had been there to comfort her. That moment forged me into a man before my time.
To rewrite our fate, I threw myself into studies—a ladder out of the pit, a future where Grandma could rest, free from labor and worry, and Maeve could remain a child, unburdened by grown-up shadows. I'd sacrifice sleep, joy, anything. It took years, but fortune finally glanced my way—fitting, given my name. I discovered my freakish ability to remember everything I read—every word, every page, every punctuation mark.
This gift secured a scholarship to one of the nation's elite schools.
Grandma had one less mouth to feed; the academy covered tuition, books, and meals. She cried when the letter arrived, but for once, they were happy tears. Still insisted on pressing a few coins into my hand every morning. "For emergencies," she said. I tried to refuse, but she wouldn't hear of it.
Suddenly, neighbors who'd once shunned us as burdens drew near. I kept my distance—I understood the game: people flock to usefulness like moths to flame.
Then, one morning, our homeroom teacher announced, "We have a transfer student joining us today."
I looked up and there she was, Natalie, she had walked back into my life, into my classroom as a transfer student — a ghost from a time when life had been kinder. Back before we moved in with Grandma. Back when scraped knees and pinky promises were the biggest problems we had.
She'd been my childhood friend.
Now, she'd grown into the kind of beauty people whispered about — the talk-of-the-class kind — but her eyes still held the same spark of mischief I remembered from our sandbox days. I could still hear her little voice from years ago: "One day, we'll get married. Pinky promise."
And then, like no time had passed, Her gaze found mine in an instant. And then came the smile as she waved at me in front of the entire class. She still remembered.
Without hesitation, she claimed the empty desk beside mine and, before the first period was even over, when the teacher wasn't looking we were passing notes under the table — like we were still eight years old and laughed at things only we remembered, questions about my life, updates on hers, bridging the years apart.
Natalie hailed from a realm of privilege I could only glimpse: wealthy parents, a secured destiny. Our classmates were offspring of politicians, conglomerate tycoons, and legendary celebrities—souls who'd never skipped a meal, never patched their clothes, never stood in a convenience store counting coins to see if they had enough for bread or the bus.
And yet she chose me. As our bond deepened, something dangerous bloomed in my chest. I had once told myself I couldn't afford to love her. Love doesn't pay bills, doesn't fill stomachs, I thought I was old enough to know that love wasn't enough to change our circumstances but the same love, I'd once dismissed pierced my heart like Cupid's arrow. I couldn't shove it aside anymore and I fell. I learnt that love drives people crazy, as something came to me, hope, maybe. Or just the desperate need to create something beautiful in a world that had shown me mostly ugliness. That very night, I began writing.
The story poured out of me— a fantasy web novel: a commoner girl, heaven-chosen, battling darkness in a noble-ruled world with injustice. She mirrored Natalie—fierce, luminous. The commoner? A shadow of myself. I posted chapters weekly, stolen from school hours, under a pseudonym no one would trace.
At first, silence. My writing was raw, unpolished. Then, a single comment: "Keep going. I want the heroine to kick the demon lord's behind!"
One reader. One spark. It fueled me. Nights blurred as I wrote, and they returned, comments evolving into messages. For the first time, I felt truly seen.
Then came the afternoon everything changed, it started like any other. Natalie and I were walking to the library when we heard the laughter—sharp and predatory. In an empty classroom, five boys had cornered another. They'd stripped him to his underwear, documenting his humiliation with their phones.
I could have turned away—should have. But upbringing won. "Leave him alone," I demanded, stepping forward.
They turned to me with eyes that glittered like broken glass, predatory. Rich kids bored with their easy lives, hungry for new games to play.
I fished out Grandma's coins—pathetic offering, barely enough for the bus fare—and held them out like a peace treaty.
"If it's money you need, then take this," I said.
They snorted, but the leader snatched them
"Thanks for the donation," he said, then tossed them to the humiliated boy. "Get dressed and run to the store. Buy us lunch with your hero's charity money. I'd like Banana milk, egg sandwich and cup ramen. What about you?" He turned to his friends which also mocked orders. "And make sure you bow to your savior first."
The money wouldn't cover what they'd ordered. That was the point. They didn't want money—they wanted control. They wanted to watch me realize that I'd just purchased my own destruction with loose change and good intentions.
As the boy bowed to me with tears in his eyes, I understood the trap I'd walked into. I'd crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed, marked myself as someone willing to pay for others' pain.
The bullying didn't stop. It just found a new target.
I should have averted my gaze, like everyone else. Should have learned the first rule of survival: you can't save everyone, and trying will only get you killed. Minding my business would have preserved me. Instead, I'd invited the end.