Interim

Written By Radhika Soni (Grade 9)

The room is dark when I awake. I look around, observing my surroundings. I am on a bed, in a room, with one large window. It is dark outside, the black night sky bleeding into the bright hues of dawn. The moon is a solitary white crescent among the twinkling stars. My bedsheets are soft, comforting, yet a foreign, unwelcome sensation on my body. I look down on my arms and do not recognize the shell my soul, my essence has taken abode in. My arms, legs, face, hair, it’s all white and translucent. Ghost, I think. I am a ghost. I think back to how I recall that word, but no memories surface. I begin to panic, and if I had a heartbeat, it would accelerate, faster and faster and faster. I jump from my cot, wanting to get out of this unfamiliar place. Wanting to go home. Home, I think. Where do I know that word, that emotion from? And then they hit me.

Memories, of a girl, with a family, growing up. I see the girl-child that was me, blossoming into a young woman. They shoot across my mind, behind my eyes, till one particular memory slows, for me to turn my full attention to. This girl is angry, she storms off and enters her car. She begins to weep angrily while driving to her destination that is nowhere. The tears fill her vision. She doesn’t see the large truck speeding across until it’s too late. She crashes. She sees a blinding light, and then everything goes black.

That was me, I realize. The room is suddenly very suffocating, and I hastily escape it. Outside, the sun is rising, the dark inky sky fading into a glorious canvas of red, blue, purple, orange and everything in between. I have never seen anything so glorious. 

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” says a voice from behind me. I startle and it is an old woman, with white hair and white robes but dark, brown skin. She is suddenly next to me, and we begin to walk. “We are the only ones here, to appreciate such beauty,” she says. There is something about the presence of this woman, no this being that renders me speechless. Who are you? I wonder. She chuckles, and says simply, “I am everything.”

We walk for a while. I am told, that I am on a journey, that I will understand it all later. I am at the interim, the gap between two stages. Soon, I will embark on my journey, on the journey beyond. It is a concept so magnificent and complicated my mind has yet to grasp its meaning. We stop walking at a rushing stream. The sun is nearly at its zenith, the skies are blue, the trees are green, and its beauty is everything that my old world was not. “It’s time,” he said. “You are ready, my child.” Child? Is she my mother? I think, confused. Everything about my circumstances was bizarre. “Yes, I am the Mother of all. I rear, nurture, nourish and care for all life. I am of many forms; I am everything and everything is me. I am the good, I am the evil, I am the love, I am the fear, I am the bliss, I am the pain. I am the dark, but I am also the light.”

She begins to glow. In all her brilliance, I am speechless.

Suddenly, my vision clouds and fogs up. I look around and see that everything is evaporating and glowing, heating up. No, it is me who is fading away, in wisps of white smoke. I reach out to Her, for help, but She only smiles. Whiter, hotter, brighter, whiter, hotter, brighter.  I am moving up, up, up, and everything turns whiter and hotter and brighter than it ever could be, until I am drowned by the light. It is everywhere, and I know the feeling of true bliss. It engulfs me, and I relish it. The light is me and I am the light.

Then, like a candle blown out, everything goes black.

Featured Image Courtesy – Art with Flo