A gargantuan pandemonium transpired in front of my moist pupils and I was in thorough ambiguity. I was completely panic-stricken and so also, were the most valiant of people around me. Perplexity and anxiety together outpaced my senses as destruction like a mystery novel, unraveled and imposed itself onto us. Every being on this planet was utterly clueless as to why everything was demolishing and we, the best of the creatures being dispatched. There was so much more to life than forcibly sighting a scenario as piteous as this.

Mountains descending, glaciers melting, buildings collapsing; one could only hear cries and spot welled up eyes. Everything seemed labyrinthine to me.

I sprinted out of what I once called my ‘home’, towards a Cathedral that was half-destroyed already. I entered anyway and observed the priest offering a prayer to the Almighty. Although, being an agnostic throughout my life, I dreaded a painful death; and so I gathered the leftover fragments of my slaughtered courage and offered the most sincere prayer I was capable of, to the God I once almost refused to believe in.

The prayer ignited a flame of hope in my very being and I ran out to face my fears, fearlessly. My irrational decision led to something extremely awful, yet inevitable. Something very common, yet horrendous enough to traumatize one for lifetime: a vehicle pushed my rear causing me to collapse on my face on the cobblestoned pathway. The gigantic and expensive car, with its crude driver, however, drove over and past me, thereby worsening my vertigo. My sight got dreary, eyelids heavy and pain unconditional. My consciousness was now voyaging with my soul; the journey of an anatomy transforming into a corpse. The journey of death approaching life, the struggle of whether I truly deserved to live or not.

As my soul abandoned my crushed body, I felt a quaint sense of relief rush up my back, and make headway all the way to my chest. Pangs of bliss bombarded my otherwise aching head, even though a slight tinge of disappointment crawled underneath my skin. It was an eccentric, mixed feeling. I was not entirely pessimistic about this, in fact, I was pretty ecstatic; I felt free. Completely free from all worldly apprehensions. I penetrated through the hymen of stereotypes and overcame all barricades whatsoever. All the insecurities that once rooted from my core, my beeline; all the tentacles of fright that once outstretched from my torso; all the times that I cringed with uneasiness, yet gave in anyway; all my fragments of vicissitudes, all my smithereens of solitudes, everything, vanished like a mirage. Nothing mattered anymore, because I didn’t exist anymore, only my soul did. They say even God doesn’t have the right to judge your soul, I say who is God in front of a pure soul at all?

I don’t know if death is so beautiful and ethereal to all. All I know is that I felt absolutely free.

Kriti Mehra is a sixteen-year old student from India. She has won several literary competitions and is an attendee of  journalism and creative writing workshops. She strives to achieving a stance in the literary world through her online blog which can be found here.