Chapter 41

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It was nothingness, Gunnar had been right about that

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

It was nothingness, Gunnar had been right about that. The darkness beyond the bars had swallowed her whole, but it felt no worse than falling into her bed after a long day and drifting into a dreamless sleep.

No. She tried to pull herself up, but her head felt heavy, drooping down. It had been so stressful, out there in the world where everyone hated her. Loud. Painful. In here, it was peaceful. Calm. Her arms weakened then gave out and she dropped down into the darkness again. She let herself sink into the quiet dark...

This isn't what Penelope hoped the afterlife would be. There were so many options, all hotly debated, and for it to be this? She would've been disappointed if she could muster the urge to care. A hundred thousand different arguments of what it'd be like in the so-called 'beyond' flitted through her emptying head. A final judgement, or a final choice, or ascending to a higher plane, or moving onto the next life, or—the worst of all, in Penelope's opinion—just nothing... A void, like this.

Now that she was in it, however, it didn't seem so bad.

Penelope had never been sure on what she wanted it to be. She never had a clear idea of what exactly her idea of eternal paradise looked like. But whenever she did imagine it, there were no winged beings or fluffy clouds, no harp music or golden sunlight... There had just been a person. The one person she wanted to see again more than anything...

She hoped that, at the end of it all, she might get to see her mom again.

Maybe she would. Maybe this was some in between step while her brain finished shutting down. Then, maybe, she'd see her again...

She could almost feel her mother's arms wrap around her... She could feel her fingers curling around her wrist, pulling her through the darkness to the other side...

The grip on her wrist tightened sharply.

Pain shot through her arm and she was yanked from the verge of sleep. She was still in the void, but no longer drifting. She was anchored by the hand holding her wrist. She couldn't see it in the darkness, but she could feel that its long, slender fingers were thin and bony. Something about them seemed familiar...

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