City of the Fallen

| two

The entire auditorium stands up from their seats and so do Brooke and I. It's our lunch break, which means that training is almost over for the day.

I watch each unique face beam with excitement as they make their way outside. Everybody seems to have a radiant glow to them.

Everyone in the Afterworld for the most part is equally beautiful and equally aged, meaning that personality is the only thing that divides us, at least the stage ones. There's the quiet ones and the outgoing ones. Brooke is incredibly outgoing, which makes it somewhat easy for the two of us to make friends. I'm not even close to being as talkative as she is, but since I'm her best friend we stick together.

"Do you want to head to the lounge?" Brooke questions as we follow the crowd of people outside the auditorium.

I shake my head, watching a few people walk through the second set of doors, which leads outside. We never go outside for lunch, and I want to explore as much as possible before going to stage two, which is in an entirely different place. Stage one is isolated from every other stage.

"We should follow them." I say.

A group of about ten people are headed to the forest of clouds outside, where anyone can lie around on them like they're beds.

Everyone hops onto a cloud, and most of them float about three feet from the ground. Some are higher than others. I don't think these are actual clouds, they look like decorations.

"Why are there even clouds this low?" I question as I lie down onto one of them, my body sinking deeper into it. I'm surprised that Brooke and I never explored this part of stage one, it's the only interesting thing to do here.

There's a dorm building and a training center and that's about it. There's a few shops for food but nobody goes there. For the most part, stage ones stay in their rooms with their friends and wait for the day they get to leave.

The clouds are like cotton against my skin, except way softer. They're cold and fluffy, at least the cumulus clouds are. Cumulonimbus clouds look the most comfortable to jump on, but they're dangerous. One strike of lightning could send you down to Earth in an instant, and it's pretty much impossible to come back up. I've never heard of anyone who fell down to Earth.

"Because stage one is just one big cloud." A male voice answers. It came from a tall blonde, who lies not too far from us.

I smile in response.

"I've never been to the edge of it. I bet you can see stage two from there." I imagine myself leaving this place.

The boy shakes his head. "You can't see it. They purposely put stage one far away from all of the other ones. You know stage ones aren't even permanently in the Afterworld yet, so they're not allowed to enter any of the stages beyond."

I sit up a little and look at the man sitting on the cloud next to us. His hair is blonde and smooth. I know his name, I think everybody does. It's Tanner.

"That's weird. You can get kicked out already?" I ask him, to which he nods, but doesn't say anything. I assume he knows as much as I do in terms of the Afterworld. All of us are stage ones after all, we're not supposed to know anything. Is he right?

"Is this all you can do outside?" Brook inquires.

"I guess so." I remark, looking around. This place really is incredibly empty. "Lame."

She nods. "You'd think they'd give us more to do here, don't you agree? We're here for a month, which doesn't sound long, but it is."

I can hear the man chuckle. "Stage one is supposed to be dedicated to recovery from your death; training is useless. But they expect us to get over a traumatic experience while locking us in our rooms and forcing us to go to training every single day."

He must pay attention in class. Maybe I'd know that if I cared to listen to what Mr. Conner is saying. "Training definitely feels useless. That's why I don't like going." I add on, though I trust that it will have some sort of impact on our knowledge in the future.

"It is." He says. How would he know?

I'm not entirely sure why he's talking to us, but I don't mind. It's interesting to hear other people's perspectives besides Brooke, because she is the only person I talk to.

Other than him, nobody really knows each other here. There's too many of us. You can mingle with whoever you want but people never really develop relationships further than just acquaintances. Stage one consists of all different types of people who died at around the same time as each other, which seems to bring us closer. It's like we all died together.

Brooke and I lie on a large cloud, looking up at the high cirrus clouds above us. They're wispy and thin, swirls of white circling us. I find myself getting bored incredibly quickly. It's way less entertaining than what I thought it would be. At least it's relaxing.

At first, laying on clouds was so absurd for me because they're clouds; they're just water droplets. But somehow it's just like laying on a really soft bed.

Everything after death is hard to explain, even emotions. I thought that when I died I would understand everything about the world and beyond, but there are things here that nobody can explain. I've only been dead a few weeks and not many of my questions have been answered. The only one that has been satisfied with an answer is what happens after death.

But it doesn't feel like death is permanent. It feels like I'm just living a separate life, a new life with knowledge of my previous one.

At this point, nothing can surprise me because I never understood how I can feel alive and seem alive even after I'm dead. I thought it was all over for me, that my subconscious wouldn't exist after I die, but it does.

I guess it's true that your soul lives past your death.

For some reason, the cirrus clouds above us start to get lower and lower as if they're sinking. I squint to make sure I'm perceiving them correctly.

"Why are they coming down?" Brooke asks, apparently reading my mind.

"I don't know, cirrus clouds are supposed to be high in the air." I think out loud. I examine them further, narrowing my eyebrows to deepen my thoughts.

"Unless..." My voice trails off as I sit up, looking over the edge of the cloud. Brooke peers over next to me.

"We're going up." Brooke says, "Why?"

I stand up, peering at Tanner and his friends looking up at us from the ground.

"When cumulus clouds rise..." I begin to say as gray clouds surround us, "They turn into cumulonimbus clouds." Brooke looks at me in horror as gray clouds circle around us, one of them rising above ours. A storm is brewing. And we're in the center of it.

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Author's Note:

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Much love <3

- scarlett