By Juno Oddly
I sit on the cliff as I hear the choir approach. Haunting voices swim their way through the trees from which I came.
I don’t want to run anymore. But I can’t join them either, not when I’ve lost so much to them already.
I stare down the cliff upon which I sit.
It’s funny, at this moment, after years of running, knowing what I’d rather do.
I’ve never felt so calm.
I climb to my feet as I smile.
I know what comes next.
So I spread my arms, already feeling gravity beckoning me down, and jump.
I am free.
“Haunting voices swim their way through the trees from which I came….” great imagery.
Death would be freedom if it led to a high-quality eternal life or (perhaps) to absolute nothingness; but what if it brought a self-centered person into an eternal bondage of suffering? The idea of suffering after death is prevalent throughout much of the world. I read of a Buddhist cave near Tibet that depicts the terrible torments of the damned in hell, not unlike Dante’s Inferno. The inhabitants of the Wiru Valley, Southern Highlands District, Papua New Guinea, where I lived, dreaded death, believing it would be for them a place of torment. And the Quran has a number of descriptions of a fiery afterlife for non-believers. In India, a common assumption is that the dead are reborn to face again the wheel of suffering.
Given the consequences of being “free” in such a manner, how was the narrator able to write the story?