THE AFTER LIFE

Chapter one

All through the night, James couldn't sleep. The preacher's sermon about heaven and hell kept creeping through his mind.The tittle of the sermon was "WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY"?,in Heaven or in Hell?."Heaven is a place of glory and great rejoicing, while Hell is a place of pains and great torment", the preacher shouted as he gestured to emphasize the 'rejoicing in Heaven' and the pains in Hell,as if the two destinations were right in front of him. It was one of those sermons that could melt the heart of even the most hard hearted. James sat in-between his father and step-mother,he could notice his father's face had gone red and his eyes were noticeably full of guilt. "Sinners will never make heaven", the preacher kept on giving his warning.
That same night, the thought of visiting Heaven to also share in the rejoicing there made him give a narrow grin which was nothing different from a mad man smiling to himself. But he also thought of Hell and imagined the suffering going on there, and as these thoughts went through his mind, he began to wonder where his late mother would have been, whether in Heaven or Hell.

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James 17,was born on 23rd Febuary 1920, in the small city of Venus.His father Mr Owen Parker was a prominent Christian sailor, who travelled from Venus to Paris, taking passengers across the Mediterranean Sea and also the east west coast of the Atlantic ocean. He had survived several tempests and ship wrecks including the sinking of the popular Titanic, which sank on April 15th 1912,in which 1,635 lives were lost. His mother Mrs Angelina Parker died a week after his birth,as a result of excessive bleeding.
His father remarried two years after the death of his mother to Nancy Plowman, a lady he met on voyage on his way to California. She was sitting quietly by the window, observing the ocean tides, her eyes were blue and her face was as beautiful as the river lily. Mr Parker noticed her beauty and he couldn't help but fall in love. He approached her with a little trembling. "Hi, i'm Captain Parker,from Venus",he greeted her with a smile, although one could easily noticed the trembling in his voice. "Oh, I'm Nancy Plowman from California, nice meeting you", she greeted with a smile,a smile that almost sent Mr Parker to the Marylands. After that day, they didn't meet again but were constantly writing to each other, until Mr Parker invited her to Venus City.