what happens after this?

Where to Now?

At loss of what to say next, I grimaced and clamped my mouth shut until the booming voice decided to boom again after around 10 minutes.

"Attention deceased children, you've now arrived at your temporary home."

"Temporary?" muttered Jude and I shrugged.

The fluffy, glowing, slowly-drifting cloud we were still on drifted to a stop. A soft, shimmering rain began to fall from the non-existent clouds. Where was it coming from?

Then, I realised why our cloud stopped moving.

It had hesitated almost a foot away from the edge of a floating sidewalk. The sidewalk opened onto a mostly-white and strangely-aesthetically-pleasing city-thing. It started off with small, symmetrical, white, concrete homes with terracotta tile roofs and then gradually sloped upwards towards towering some absolutely HUGE mega skyscrapers.

"Woah..." I breathed.

"That's an understatement," whispered Jude in awe. I sneaked a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He was staring with wonder at one of the mega skyscrapers, his mouth hanging open. The skyscraper he was looking at had a word displayed on top of it that even from here I could read. It read: Utopia Centre. What could that mean? I don't about you, but I wouldn't mind finding out.

A tiny little girl with blonde hair in a bob and a messy fringe, wearing a short, white, lacy dress wandered over to us once we had hopped off our cloud onto the pristine sidewalk. My stomach flipped with pity and sadness. She was so small, what was she doing here? She couldn't be older than 7.

"Hello," she said, politely to Jude," My name's Amelia, what's yours?"

She spoke with a British accent and her voice was high and velvet. Soothing.

I looked over at Jude and I thought his eyes were wet. My own widened. Then, I blinked and his eye-wetness was gone, so I decided I had imagined it.

"Jude," he replied.

"That's a lovely name," she smiled showing us a set of perfect little teeth. She turned to me. "What's your name?"

"I'm bailey," I said, softly, patting her gently on the head.

She giggled. "That's a pretty name too."

"Do you guys want to be my friends?" she asked angelically, looking up at us with big crystal blue eyes and of course, white pupils.

"Of course, Amelia," Jude assured her, and Amelia beamed.

"Attention expired youth, make your away over to the white carriages. Only four per carriage, please," Mr Booming-Voice boomed.

We all made our way over to the sleek white carriages that I swear weren't there a few moments ago. I somehow managed to trip on the curb, and Jude caught me by the elbows, causing Amelia to giggle and me to blush. He set me upright and we got into the carriage.

There was another boy inside the carriage, with long black hair and thick eyeliner. He looked around 18 or 19. Classic goth. I snorted and everyone looked at me. Oops.

"What?" I shrugged. Jude sat next to the goth and I sat next to him and Amelia who sat down next, and by the looks of it, was scared of the guy with the black hair. She gripped my elbow, lightly.

Jude asked the goth what his name was, but the goth just rolled his grey eyes at us. I gave him a look that was like 'dude, what the fuck..' and he sighed in annoyance. "I'm axel. And you are?" His voice was nasally and kind of annoying.

I didn't respond, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. He rolled his eyes again.

I laughed, "I'm bailey and these are my friends, Amelia and Jude."

"That's so cool!" he said, extremely sarcastically.

"Oooookay, then," I said, giving a pointed look to Jude when the carriage started moving.

Jude turned to Axel. "Hey, uh.. do you know where we're going?"

Axel rolled his eyes, yet again and gave Jude an 'are-you-serious' look.

"The Utopia Centre, obviously."
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(edited 14/8/2022)