The Next Life

I wrote this one on my way to work one morning. I heard a song on the radio and for some reason this story came into my brain fully written. I pulled to the side of the road and spent 22 minutes writing it and have changed it hardly at all from that first writing.

It wasn’t so bad.

She’d cried at first, not knowing what the next life would be like. She’d been scared and didn’t want to leave the only life she’d known. The transition from one life to next had been experienced by everyone who had ever lived, but she didn’t know that, nor did she care. She wanted to live her life forever and didn’t want to go to the next.

But God had ordained that she would move from one life to the next, and thus it had been done.

She had been so scared.

She’d loved the life she’d been living. It had been a simple life for more time than she could remember. Not that she really knew how much time she’d been given to enjoy that life, but she did know that she was comfortable, loved and had plenty to eat.

Emily, the only name she’d ever known, was content with the life she’d been given.

There was nothing she could comprehend that she’d want more, than the life she was living.

As she slowly grew, she felt the love and affection of her mother and father around her. She explored where she could and enjoyed what she had, not knowing there was a greater world around her, with experiences and knowledge that would take another lifetime to learn.

All she had was her own little world and she loved it.

And then the time came and she knew her life here was at an end.

The joy of waking and sleeping at her whim had come to an end.

She didn’t know what the next life would bring and it scared her deep into her soul. It was a primal fear of losing everything that was loved; a fear deeper than any Emily had ever experienced.

She’d never had to leave life before, and she didn’t want to leave the only home, the only place, she could remember.

She also didn’t know how many others come to the door of the next life and were afeared of what was beyond. She was one unto herself in her world and was not ready for the next life.

Like all things however, the time came when Emily was taken into the next life.

As her mother held her close to her breast to feed little Emily, the baby girl, the apple of her daddy’s eye, fresh into her new life, decided it wasn’t so bad after all.