Lost Records

STORY EXCERPT 

If you find me, you are worthy of saving a life. My body is cold; my heart is blackened by the rocky crust of the earth. The world around me falls apart and the people amongst it break away as well. Body, mind, and soul, all of which I do not obtain. My name will rest as so does the body I was pulled from. 
I will no longer see the beauty of nature, and its constituents, human or animal. The way my heart and eyes opened up to a beautiful creature, nonetheless, which I had fallen in love with. The way my dogs looked me in the eyes, giving me a feeling that they too can feel sensitivity and emotion at a human level. 
The objects that touched my life in some way, I cannot touch again. 
I cannot be sure where I am going, but it is not like the world I left at all. I crusade to find a way back to the world I found the love of my life in. 
 
It has been three hours after my death. I remember being thrown somewhere, or off of something, I cannot recall. 
My body lies cold, in the ground behind the old house where my mother loved me. 
"Follow me." A voice spoke to me. 
I turned, and saw nothing but what appeared only as air. 
I looked up, and wished I had seen a few clouds, or the moon, but there was nothing. Around me, there was nothing, only blackness forever and ever. 
The sight was confusing but yet understandable, as I believe anything is possible in the afterlife. 

There was no warmth, no feeling of actually existing and being a part of anything. I know I am dead, but where I am now remains a mystery.

“Follow.” A voice whispered again.

I had no idea where to go, or what to follow for that matter.

I stepped forward, and stood in place. I reached my foot out again, and there was a strange feeling in my head. My head hurt, and it almost made me shut my eyes, but I rubbed the side of my skull, but did very little.

“Follow me,” it said again.

Each step forced my head to hurt, like as if there was a supernatural force trying to keep me away and at the same time urge me on.

I continued to take a few steps forward and the painful feeling grew to my stomach. My head started to buzz and felt extremely heavy and I knelt down and used my arm on the hard—

My hand felt a leather texture lying on whatever was beneath me. I rubbed the leather figure and it had an outline of a book of some sort. I picked it up, still kneeling down, and I felt over the book, and on the back there was an engraving. I still couldn’t see anything, and I tried to feel the outlining of the text and I dropped the book as soon as I felt the words:

          Jackson Bender

My own name was the on this…book.

“What the hell is this?” I muttered to the darkness. I stood up; remaining still as there was a soft whistling sound in the distance…like the sound of wind.

I knelt back down and felt for the book and picked it up again. I can’t even try to ask myself what could be in this book. Hell, it could be all my sins and I am in the middle between heaven and the fire of hell. Who knows?

Then the wind brushed up against my body from the side, it was blowing from the right of me. “Follow me,” the whisper spoke again but from my left.

I am not sure if I trust this whisper, or follow the wind to hopefully find some source of life.

My head hurt again, and I took a step towards the whisper and the pain lightened.

Several steps later the pain was comfortable and the wind had died off, leaving nothing but a whisper to follow.

“Close your eyes,” the soft whisper spoke again, sounding as if the source was in my ear.

I closed my eyes—

There was a bright glow thirty feet in front of me, looked like a ball levitating off the ground—the ground, I looked behind me and there was a smooth brown pathway that was very wide. Everything was blurry from about thirty yards and beyond, I couldn’t adjust my sight…because…well my eyes are closed.

“Where am I?”

There was no answer.