The beautiful story of a man who died in his sleep

A simple night’s rest.

Thats all he wanted. It begins as a funny sensation all over his body. Then his limbs and eyelids, heavy as lead.

From beneath his feet, it feels like every nerve in his body is being pulled out, whole. Slowly and excruciatingly.

He screams. He screams so loudly it can wake the dead. But even though he can feel the body heat of his wife beside him, she doesn’t flinch. Then he realises. His lips didn’t move. He wonders if he even heard the scream or he had imagined it.

Darkness follows. A darkness so dark it could eat up light.

Then light. Not light per se, but the absence of darkness.

“Long time no see,” someone says. He can’t see the speaker but the voice is familiar.

“Where am I?”

“Here.”

“This is a dream,” he tries to convince himself.

The voice laughs.

“You are dead,” the voice says, drawing closer with each word. The speaker is one he knows well. His dead uncle of fourteen years. How he hated his uncle.

“Its just a dream,” he says as he pinches himself. Nothing happens. His uncle watches, bored from seeing this routine severally.

He wanders, looking for a sharp object in the Here that seemed like nothingness and everythingness at once

He finds the edge of a cliff.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Its a dream,” he says again before he leaps headlong.

At the bottom, his skull shatters into rock, his neck into his skull, his legs into his torso.

At this moment, he forgets every good he has ever felt.

The next day, his obituary reads:

WE ANNOUNCE THE PASSING TO GLORY

OF OUR  HUSBAND, FATHER….

HE PASSED AWAY PEACEFULLY IN HIS SLEEP.

Fuad Lawalis a poet and copy writer. He blogs at rebelliousflash300.wordpress.com. Follow him on Instagram/Twitter @rebelliousXIV

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