I hope you like it.

 

The other side

One day a man came to me and asked for my help to find a special item that would save my wife and not yet born child in the future. He told me to find this item I would have to cross over to the other side where I would be given special powers I required to help me fine this special mystical thing. While on the other side I would have to pretend to belong there and never revel my true secret of actually being alive from the living world. I would live in this parallel world of pasted away people doing normal things as if I was alive and having no family at all.

In time I believed this man for some strange reason and took on this challenge since it was my wife and future child at stake. So with a blink of my eye I was on the other side and off on the quest to find this special item that would save my family.

In this world I could do anything and have any special powers I wanted, this included being younger and reliving the past. Following the man’s advice no one knew I was from the land of the living and I blended in right from the start. Day after day I played this role and it seemed like week or maybe months had passed.

In time I had forgotten that I was looking for a special object as I was told before I first arrived. My life was being relived as I made myself young again and played games all day long with the other kids there. We could fly and some of us had wings and some did not. Some could walk through solid objects while still others did other amazing things only their imaginations could come up with. We all could do anything and anything we wanted just by the shear though and life was so wonderful.

Time passed and it seemed like years had gone by and I soon forgot that I was there because I was looking for something special to save my family. I even forgot over time that I was married and had a child in another living world on the way and all that I was doing now was not for real.

One day I was playing a game of baseball as a younger me in this alternate world just as I have now done many times before when I saw a new set of people playing a game of volleyball. It looked so fun but they were older and to play with them I would have to make myself older and a team to challenge them. I called out to some of my friends asking them to become older so we could create a team to play with the new arrivals. They did but we needed a few more and two of my friends were missing which we needed to complete the team.

We decided to look for them to talk them into becoming older so we could play against the new arrivals. We looked everywhere by flying around and walking through walls since we could be and do anything in this alternate world.

We spent all day looking every place for our missing friends and it seemed that no one cared they were missing at all. Soon I was the only one franticly looking for them as one by one my friends gave up as if they forgot. It seemed that after a few hours no matter what was wrong, people in the world forgot what they needing to do and would go back to doing whatever they liked to do.

This made me look for the missing friend even harder and to the point of an obsession. Days would pass and all I would do is spend days looking for the missing friends I have made while being here. By this time I had completely forgotten that I had a wife and child back in the Living world and I was sent here in the first place to find a special object to help save them in the future.

I would ask people to help me and they would tell me to forget the lost ones and to have fun and play and be happy. Everyone I met would say this to me and completely ignore the fact that I was worried for the missing people. These people in this world seemed to be completely clueless of the fact they were all dead and in an alternate world just existing for eternity in a world made up in their mind. Doing and being whatever they wanted day after day with no real purpose what so ever.

While searching for the missing I came across a monument in the town and I thought I saw one of the boys I was looking for sitting and staring at it. I flew down to investigate since I could fly in this world with my majestic wings conjured up from my mind.

I was glad to see him but he was crying and distraught over something he had seen on the monument. I asked him what was wrong and he did not respond with words but with a gesture to look at the words inscribed on the monument. I went to look at it and just then a man that I seemed to remember called out to me. “Darnell”, come here he said. I asked who are you and what do you want? He said have you forgotten who I am and why you are here? He had a soothing voice and it made you feel real calm for some reason. Just then all my memories flooded back to me and I remembered that I was there in this world of the dead to find a special item to save the life of my wife and unborn child in the future back in the world of the living.

This man was the man that helped me cross over to this world and who also told me that I needed to find this special item in the first place.

In the mean time I had to find out why my sobbing friend was so upset over something he saw written on the monument. I went over to see what it was and the man called out to me again to try to distract me it seemed on purpose. This time I had to see for myself what caused so much grief.

I get closer to the writings and I see names of many people as if put there to remind us of them. There were many names all over it with saying above each one. Some were simply like “we will miss you” and “a good man in life and death”. It dawned on me that this was a monument to people that had passed away and people must have put this here for people that did a great thing in life.

I keep reading and suddenly feel just as devastated as my now found friend that way sitting in sorry on the ground beside me.

I read “a great man who sacrificed himself to save his wife and unborn son” and under this was the name “Darnell Smith 1962 - 2009”. Just then I realized that all this time in this other world I thought I was looking for something to save my family but in reality I had already saved them and died in the process. When I died I crossed over and my life after death slowly changed from what I was doing in life to a new life after death allowing me to slowly forget what my purpose was in life to a new purpose in death.

As I sat there in sorrow just like my friend beside me now, the man who I saw before my death explained to me that he was my guardian angel from the living world. He was there to help me cross over smoothly by giving me a purpose which all men need to survive in the living world and after life. He also explained that my wife and child lived on and I saved them from certain death right before I died myself looking for a way out of a burning building. I had already helped my pregnant wife out and went back in to find my friends who were trapped inside where I myself collapsed. The friend that was now sitting next to me was one that did not make it and die with me in the fire from smoke inhalation.

Later that day after feeling sorry for myself I was fine and soon forgot my sorrow knowing now that someday my wife and I would be together again with my son in this world, a world of anything I wanted to do and become,  a world on the other side of life.

By Darnell Smith (a dream I once had 10/21/09)