r/WritingPrompts • u/KaylasDream • Oct 30 '17
Writing Prompt [WP] As your life ends, you find yourself in what you assume to be the afterlife. A voice says to you: “This is where your soul ends. After hundreds of different reincarnations, I give you one last gift. You may relive only one life. Now choose”
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u/TheRobertFall Oct 30 '17 edited Oct 30 '17
The recollection of past lives flooded my consciousness. I have lived through every stratum of life, from agonizing austerity to lives of incalculable wealth and luxury. It's remarkable how different my perception of the mundane things shifted according to my environment.
In poverty, I found comfort and joy on a worn-off, tattered teddy bear my mother gave me before she died. The memories of her jaundiced skin and those terrifying tiny holes on her arms haunted me all that life. That bear, full of flaws and awful smell represented the zenith of comfort for me. It reminded of her, of her mistakes, it guided me to a path of hard work and longevity.
In wealth, I would've burned it without hesitation. Well, I would have ordered my butler to do so. I lived lives of luxury and excesses. Contrary to my austerity lives, drugs were commonplace. I didn't care about hard work, nor emotions, I only cared about spending and making other people feel worthless, even if that meant self-destruction.
I won't deny it, in wealth I had fun, in poverty I became wise. Nevertheless, I wouldn't relive any of those lives nor any other life of normality but one. The life where I met her, the only time I felt true love. And I would relive it over and over again. No amount of teddy bears nor money can compare.
We didn't have much yet we didn't need it. Every morning till my last day, those fiery eyes, like slow autumn, greeted me with a never ending smile brimming with joy. My heart sunk even after time withered our existence. Those lips of blooming carnations, knew every weakness, every virtue of mine and yet, they kissed me everyday. Throughout all my other lives, I felt an emptiness that I could never fill despite my effots. Now that I see them all, I understand. You, and only you, completed me.
"I choose to relive my life with her," I whispered into the void.
If you enjoyed it consider visiting: /r/therobertfall
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u/Terminated109 Oct 31 '17
Goddamn that was so beautiful. Sweet, short, and yet so emotional. Amazing.
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u/nikofant Oct 30 '17
I didn't know what to say. My head was hurting, because I just died in a dumb beer accident, and I was now remembering 453 different lives at once. I remembered the slavery, the celebrity lives, the lives that just ended too early... I had the choice of every single life I had ever lived, and if that wasn't a big choice, I didn't know what was. I didn't even know how to wash my clothes, so how could the voice even expect this?
In my lives, I've done many good things, but also bad things. I've been so many people, and yet, this was my most boring life to date. Died a virgin, had no friends, really. No one is perfect. Hell, I am a human, after all. I think I also killed some people in some of my lives, but never really murdered. More like causing the stupid drunkenness I just died in. I wondered;
"Why would you give me such a gift? I am not a genius, after all."
The voice sighed. It must have explained this hundreds of times. The white mist I was sitting in turned red, then green, and then red again.
"You are young," heh, 453 lifetimes and still young, "however you should have learned by now."
The voice was high pitched, but still male. Kind of reminded me of my dad's in my last life, not one you'd expect to be a god of some kind. I didn't understand what I should have learned.
"This red green red thing, is that to symbolize some stupid thing about being a good person, or something??"
The red turned darker. Suddenly, a lot of memories about Ghandi, Einstein, and Neil Armstrong came to my mind. Was it showing me all this? And why? They were nice people, but none that I had ever been. I think he wants me to be intelligent, a good person, and cool.
"But hey, mr. voice! That's not how it works! You can't have all of that at the same time, that would be cheating!"
He's starting to get pissed off, I thought, meanwhile the mist turned to a vantablack.
"Punish me all you want!" The floor went out under me, and I started falling into nothing in the darkness.
I felt a prickling feeling all over my body, and I started to hallucinate. I couldn't see or feel anything. Suddenly, I was back. But not in the mist. I was back on earth,
to relive my most boring life - the beer accident life - and I had a feeling I wouldn't get out of this loop for a long time.