City of the Fallen

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Juliet

My body jerks awake when I hear the loud knocking at the door. I groan and bury my face into my pillow. I do not want to wake up from the peaceful sleep I was having.

Stacy could at least quietly open my door and calmly wake me up, even with that cold tone she has in her voice. She knocks a few times more after I give her no response.

"Come in, Stacy." I tell her in a raspy voice. I roll out of bed, my white gown dropping to my knees.

She opens the door with the same clipboard leaning against her forearm and the same high ponytail. Her hair is as slick and straight as a glass wall, and just as shiny too. Her eyes are dark brown, but still manage to sparkle.

"How are you feeling, Juliet?" She questions, taking a small pencil out from behind her ear and positioning it between her fingers, ready to write.

"I don't know, fine I guess? My entire body still aches." I sigh. I don't know why she's asking me how I feel when my entire body was on fire a few weeks ago. I give her the same answers every time, what does she expect?

I shut my eyes at the thought of the fire, I can't bear it.

"Your voice sounds better. It's not nearly as raspy as the first day I met you." She says with a smile, and then she sees my discomfort. "It still bothers you, doesn't it?" Her normal cold voice changes into a soft one. She actually sounds like she cared, not like she's only here to report my status and nothing else.

"What does?"

Her eyes narrow. "Dying."

Tears well up in my eyes and I escape her eye contact by looking at the marble floors below me. I don't think I'd ever forget the horrifying heat against my body, the smell of my flesh burning, or even the look on Brooke's face when she knew she wouldn't make it.

I don't even know why I died, why those boys set the church on fire. If I made one different move, or remembered my phone, I would still be with my family.

"Are these scars always going to be here?" I ask her as I'm looking down at my hands, my voice cracking a little.

A small smile spreads across her lips. "They probably won't. Most scars fade fairly quickly after death, but your accident was pretty bad. The worst deaths always have the most permanent scars in the Afterworld."

I sigh and rotate my wrist so it's facing upward, revealing the patches of burn scars all over my arms. I'm lucky I didn't get them on my face. I have a small patch on my neck, but my wrists and arms are the most obvious.

"I know it's hard to deal with, Juliet, but you're in a good place now. For most, horrible events like this stick with people forever, even in the Afterworld. Don't think of it as death. Think of it as a world separate from your family and friends. You aren't stuck here, people can visit Earth. Now training starts in thirty minutes, it's best that you start to get ready." Stacy brushes my shoulder and then leaves.

It's refreshing for her to finally be nice to me. Stage two's like her are always focused on their tasks— which are to check on stage one's every morning and report their improvement— so they can move on to stage three of the Afterworld. Or so I hear.

Stage one is the earliest stage, the one that I am in. It is the shortest one and lasts about a month, which is full of training—training to become a stage two— that we are required to attend pretty much every day. Although I am not yet aware of what a stage two does, Stacy told me that they initially learn how to be a Guardian Angel, who guards the dreams of pure souls and also protects them. She said there's other jobs, but she didn't go into detail because stage two's aren't allowed to say much to us.