Shining Flight

It's been some time since I've hosted or even attended a good Blog Party, so when I found out Lorna had cooked up another virtual shindig, I knew I was so there. It's the return of a familiar game as well: she provides 20 random words and we compose a tale around them. My storytelling is rusty, but I'll see what I come up with....

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He never expected to die at twenty-five.

Forget all the things not yet done; there were practical considerations in dire need of address. He didn't have a will prepared. Did enough space remain on the blank tape in his VCR should he pull through? Was the oven turned off? Would the people he cared about ever know how he felt? In the span of a blur, answers eluded him.

The nurses who shaved him for surgery politely refrained from mocking his shaggy exterior. Hospitals didn't follow the same rules of the outside world. Shame, humility, mockery, pride, judgment and more resided beyond those walls. Both literally and figuratively, in his case it was now what was inside that counted. How fragile did he feel? Porcelain beneath the blade of a skilled surgeon might still shatter. Reservations arose too late as oblivion claimed him.

The crimson dragon soared through an azure nebula. He inhaled purple and exhaled stars. Each breath produced embers. Each ember blossomed. Worlds formed, flourished, and expired. Darkness stretched in his wake, a distance too great to approximate. The light shone before him, summoning him.

“How will they explain?” asked a forgotten, fading voice, a cryptic inquiry. The cone of light grew narrower as he descended, landing beside a fountain of sparkling rubies. Reality continued to gyrate as he was exhaling, his returning human form leaving him off-balance.

What happens when we die? Do angels greet us before grand, pearly gates? Is there reward for sacrifice, or punishment for sin? Is there a void, bitter nonexistence as some cynics profess? Was it really over? If beyond the darkness, someone were to pronounce his departure, would they exaggerate a vicious rumor in doing so?

Cotton enveloped his feet as he sank gently into the ground. Desperately, he struggled to remember that other world beyond the darkness, both tangible and mundane. Doctors. His doctors were the ones who would have to explain, lest they incriminate themselves. The procedure was routine. Risks reign where chance falters. He never expected to die at twenty-five, but when the cotton claimed his eyes, he let go and fell.

Afterward, when the moon filled his room with a pale glow, his eyelids unstuck, fluttering. The terror gripping him throughout his subconscious journey faded. Minutes, hours, days, or a lifetime ago something inside had ruptured. Sickly, he sought help, his perceptions fluid through the ordeal. He was sore now, but alive.

What happens when we die? What is real? He closed his eyes, sleep his only refuge from pain while healing. When a shadow crossed the moonlight, he saw it not. When the beating of mighty wings sent a gentle breeze in, he heard nor felt it. At twenty-five, he would remain in this world, even as other dragons crossed into another. Someday, he'd be ready to complete his own shining flight, but not this day...