The Tuesday
I'm Zara, and I've just failed the most important test of my life - staying alive.
Twenty three years. That's all I got. Some people get seventy, eighty, even ninety years to figure life out.
Me?
I got two decades and some spare change. Not that I'm complaining. Well, actually, I would complain, but I'm currently too busy being dead to file a proper grievance.
It happened on a Tuesday. Tuesdays are terrible for dying. Tuesday is just... Tuesday. The day nothing happens. Except, apparently, my death.
One moment I was crossing the street, mentally rehearsing an argument I'd have with my mother about my "lack of ambition" (her words, not mine. I have plenty of ambition, just not the kind that fits on a corporate resume).
The next moment, a truck decided to have an existential crisis about lane discipline.
But the collision didn't hurt. That's the funny thing about death.
Death is surprisingly painless when it's instant. No time for pain, no time for regret, no time for those supposedly life-changing final thoughts.
My last thought was literally: "Did I turn off the stove?"
I didn't, for the record. But that seems less important now.
Now I'm floating above my body like a rejected balloon at a birthday party. My body looks smaller than I remember - crumpled, broken, leaking.
There's a crowd gathering. Someone's screaming. Someone else is filming. Because of course they are.
In the age of smartphones, tragedy is just content waiting to be uploaded.
My mother arrives before the ambulance. I watch her face crumbles like paper in fire.
My father stands behind her, his hands hovering uselessly in the air, as if he's trying to hold something that's already gone. He's not crying, not yet. He's in that strange space between denial and acceptance, where the mind refuses to process what the eyes are seeing.
I want to tell them I'm fine.
I want to tell them that death isn't as scary as we made it out to be.
But I have no mouth, no voice, no way to bridge the distance between the dead and the living.
We're separated by the thinnest membrane. My parents are right there, mere feet away, but we might as well be in different universes.
Neighbors start gathering at our house. Within an hour, the living room is full of people. I can hear their conversations.
"Such a good girl. Always so quiet."
"What a tragedy. So young."
"I saw her just last week. She smiled at me."
They're constructing a version of me that never existed.
Saint Zara; the quiet, good, obedient girl who smiled at neighbors and never caused trouble.
They've forgotten the time I screamed at Mrs. Khan for spreading gossip about my mother.
They've forgotten the time I got suspended for calling my teacher a "government-certified idiot."
But death has a funny way of editing memories.
The dead become automatically better people. We're smoothed out, our rough edges filed away, our flaws conveniently forgotten.
My uncle is already discussing my funeral arrangements, "We should have the ceremony at the big community hall. Invite everyone. Make it memorable."
As if my death is a networking opportunity.
I want to laugh, but I have no body to laugh with.
I want to scream, but I have no lungs.
I'm trapped in this strange limbo, watching a performance of grief that feels less like mourning and more like social theater.
And then, they arrive.
Two figures appear out of thin air.
They're neither male nor female, neither young nor old. They're dressed in something that looks like light having a birthday party.
"Zara," one of them says with a hollow voice.
"Yes. Who....What are you actually?"
They don't respond.
They simply take my hands, one on each side and suddenly we're moving. Not walking, not flying, just... going.
The world drops away beneath me. My house shrinks. The neighbourhood becomes a circuit board. The city becomes a map. The planet becomes a marble.
And then we're through something I can't describe; a layer or a membrane and everything changes.
Heaven is not what I expected.
I expected clouds. Harps. Angels with wings doing angel things. Maybe some bureaucratic processing, where I'd wait in line for eternity like I had watched in Tom & Jerry.
Instead, Heaven looks like... everything. And nothing.
An angel approaches. At least, I think it's an angel. It has wings, but they look more decorative than functional, like a middle manager who got wings as part of a corporate benefits package.
"Zara," the angel says, consulting a glowing tablet.
"Age: Twenty three. Cause of death: Vehicular collision. Assessment: Generally decent person.
Minor infractions, but nothing major.
Overall score: sufficient for Paradise accommodation."
"Score?" I ask. "There's a score?"
"Of course. How else would we determine placement?"
The angel smiles, a professional smile, the kind customer service representatives give when they're explaining company policy.
"You achieved a 7.2 out of 10. Quite respectable."
"What would I need for a 10?"
"Perfection. We've only had two of those in all of human history. Most people land between 6 and 8. You're comfortably above average."
Above average. I died and became above average!
Somehow, this feels like the story of my entire life.
"So... what now?"
"Now?" The angel gestures broadly. "Now you enjoy eternity. No pain, no suffering, no limitation."
"Forever?"
"Forever."
The angel says it like it's a good thing.
The first hundred years are incredible.
I read everything.
I read books that were never published, manuscripts that were lost, stories that existed only in the minds of their authors before they died.
I watch films that never got made - director’s cuts of dreams, unfinished masterpieces, alternate versions of movies I loved where different choices led to different endings.
I explore simulations of places that no longer exist. Ancient libraries.
Lost cities.
Forests before they were cut down.
And Hogwarts. My dream place!
I sit in the library with Hermione Granger, discussing magical theory until my brain hurts in the best way!
She’s brilliant and relentless and exactly as right as everyone refused to admit.
I walk the castle grounds with Luna Lovegood, listening to her talk about creatures that don’t exist, or maybe they do here, in this place where imagination becomes real.
She points at invisible Nargles in the trees, and I find myself believing her. She has a way of making the impossible feel obvious.
“People dismiss what they don’t understand,” she says, feeding the Thestrals. “It’s easier than questioning.”
And Voldemort.
I meet him as Lord Voldemort - red eyes, split soul, the whole terrifying package.
We sit in the Chamber of Secrets, just the two of us and the massive stone serpent coiled overhead, and we talk.
About power.
About fear.
About refusing to accept death as the final answer.
“They call you evil,” I say.
“They call anyone who refuses to die quietly ‘evil,’” he replies.
“Tell me, Zara, is it evil to want more than the mediocre life they assign you? Is it evil to refuse to bow to their arbitrary rules?”
I don’t agree with everything he did.
I don’t agree with most of it.
But I understand the anger beneath it.
The refusal to accept limits just because everyone else does.
I stand in Van Gogh’s studio while he paints a starry night that no one on Earth ever saw.
His hands shake slightly - they always do, but the stars on his canvas swirl with a violence that feels true.
“They said I was mad,” he tells me quietly. “Maybe I was.
But madness sees things sanity refuses to look at.”
The painting is heartbreaking and beautiful and I understand why he couldn’t survive a world that didn’t want what he saw.
I meet other souls. They’re all here, all young again (or old again, depending on their preference), all perfectly content.
We share stories of our lives. Our deaths. Our adjustments to this strange eternal existence.
And for a while - a long, long while - it’s wonderful.
But somewhere around year two hundred, something shifts.
