Story
"Pandora. As your punishment, you will be sent back to Earth. What you did was unacceptable. You may suffer for your entire life from the same pain again and again."
And that's how I came back. You see, I died 5 months ago in a school shooting. After I got shot, I woke up in the afterlife. Life after death is not as I imagined. There isn't always light and peace. You don't turn into an angel. It's just like life on Earth, you just can't be with your loved ones. Death is a lot different too from what I imagined. It came fast, I barely felt pain.
And now here I am again, back to my old life. I'm not complaining though, I missed my family.
Being sent back didn't sound like a punishment at all. I loved being alive. But waking up to my alarm clock wasn't my favourite part of the day. I quickly rushed to my sisters room. How will she experience this? Can she even see me?
"Good morning, Pandora."
Yes, she can.
"Morning, sis."
"Why are you in such a rush?" she laughed.
"Just wanted to see your stupid face."
"Hey now, be a little nicer. Also, are you done with your chemistry project?"
"The what?"
"We have to bring it to school today."
The chemistry project. It was on the exact same day...
"Hold up! What's the date?"
"15th of May. Don't tell me you forgot."
But afterwards I didn't hear what she said. My head was full of racing thoughts. I only focused on one thing.
They sent me back so I can experience death again.
We went to school. Just like any other day. But I knew that the shooting will start soon. And I was right. We heard the first gunshot. At that moment I decided that this time I will do everything differently. Maybe go in a different direction and hide.
As I was running down the hall with some other students, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my side, then everything went black.
I died once again.
But instead of reincarnating in the afterlife, when I opened my eyes I was in my bedroom again. I grabbed my phone and checked the date.
15th of may. It started all over again. And again. And again. No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to escape, in the end I always got shot and I had to do it again the next day. After some time I didn't even try. I waited until the shooter got to me.
Death wasn't the worst thing of all. It was the terror on the other students faces, the chaos they caused as they tried to run away, and the sound of the gunshots and the screams.
I couldn't take it anymore. I figured that if I die in some other way, maybe I won't have to do it all again.
So, I decided to end it for myself.
And that's when it clicked why I had to go through this. In the afterlife I did the impossible. I still remember feeling the blood on my hands. I helped someone commit suicide. They were begging me to pull the trigger. And I did. I killed someone who was supposed to be immortal. And I was the one who got punished because the other person disappeared forever. I wanna do that too. Maybe it will hurt less.
