Daniel tried to tell his legs to run, but the overwhelming fear drowned out those instructions. Oxymoronically, he was frozen as he could feel the ferocity of his heartbeat, like his organ was trying to escape his chest. Before Daniel’s brain could even begin to gain full control of his body, it was too late. The white-hooded figure darted towards him, with the samurai sword in tow, and struck him, boring through his flesh several times……
“Yo, let’s bounce before feds come!” said leader of the crew as he spat towards Daniel, and the group fled the scene in an instant. Daniel didn’t feel any pain, but he had fallen to the ground. There was blood everywhere, and his eyes were full of tears, but he didn’t feel anything. His mind was going into overdrive.
“My mum said not to get in trouble. Who’s gonna look after her and my sister? How are they gonna cope if I die? Do they know I love them?” All these thoughts circled through Daniel’s mind, he was starting to feel nausea, then a fainting sensation.
“Well, I guess this is what dying feels like…” and slowly his eyes began to close. He felt his body being lifted, initially thinking someone was picking him up. But, strangely, he kept rising and rising, still in a lying position. He opened his eyes again, looked over his shoulder, and his view was astonishing.
First, he could see a view of his area, he could see his school, the park, the block he lived on, as he was elevating more and more. Then he was rising above London, seeing landmarks like the Shard, Canary Wharf and Tower Bridge. Levitating ever faster, he could see a home in the distance, what looked like outside the city, in the distance. He had a wry smile, then a pang of emotional pain hit him, stronger than the stabbing he’d just received.
Now his views were being obstructed as he had reached the clouds, slowly encapsulating Daniel’s viewpoint into an endless white.
“Is…is this heaven?” Daniel thought, while still paining from the house he could see in the distance. He came to an abrupt stop. He’d reached the top of the clouds, where there was an intersection between the air and the clouds. He looked around on the horizon and tried to take in what he was seeing. The Sun in the background with a white blanketed ground, as if it had just snowed. He then noticed something. The clouds were moving in various directions, at least what he thought were the clouds…in actual fact, when he looked closely, he spotted that they were clouds in the form of people. The first figure he noticed was of the white-hooded boy who’d stabbed him, he then noticed his mum and sister, then Jerome. He shed tears at one figure, wearing suit and tie and walking very boldly into the distance…
Then suddenly, Daniel was dropped out of the clouds. As he was falling, the sky had changed to black, dark skies and it was raining profusely, as his head was being covered. The speed at which he was plummeting was increasing rapidly. He was losing his breath, barely able to orient himself.
“What the fuck is going on?” Daniel thought, and in that instant, he hit the ground…