Ingenuity was taking over him whole as he looked around. Contentment had never been stronger inside him. If only he had a pen and a paper to, once again, betray the moment. He stood bemused on the concrete road that seemed to have no end.

On either side of the abandoned road were red and pink dogwood trees. He was certain he had met with the terrible accident in the unrelenting heat of June. Here, in the hereafter, it looked as if spring had announced its reign. He tried to recall what the man at the giant entry gate had told him.

The seemingly hundred or more years old nude man at the gate had strictly told him to walk straight on the assigned road. He was not to deviate from the journey at any point of time, come what may. The old man had countless wrinkles on his jagged cheeks, and a huge mole below his right nostril. The man was far from the last person he could wish to see before ceasing to exist anywhere.

He looked down at his black, printed shirt, black, rugged demins, complimented by his black combat boots. He exhaled in relief to gather he didn't go with anything else from his closet before leaving the house on that fateful morning. If the entire setting of this beyond was signifying something ethereal, he was sure his attire was doing a good job in contrasting all that.

Something, perhaps someone, appeared in his peripheral vision that broke his reverie. He turned to his right to see a girl in orange sweater and blue denims lurking behind a tree. She disappeared the next instant, leaving him perplexed. Hesitant at first, he reminded himself he was already dead, so what more could there be to it. He started walking towards the tree with hushed steps. His heart, dead now, was somehow beating out of his chest as he neared the pink dogwood tree. A few inches away, he was about to run to the front of the tree, when the girl jumped in front of him, holding a dead branch in her hands.

The girl, prettier than she looked from afar, was in a distinct posture as if she was going to hit him with the dead branch until his bones broke or it did.
He threw his arms in the air, taking a step back. "I mean no harm,"

She held her stance for a moment before dropping the stick on the ground. Her eyes spoke of faraway places. Places she had never been to.

Nevertheless, it wasn't her hair, or her eyes, but something of her whole that was making him anxious. It felt to him like he knew her from before.

"How, I mean, who..." she crossed her arms around her waist. "How did you..."

"Hi," he let a chuckle slip out. He was obstinate on not looking into her eyes, afraid of what might happen to the leftovers of his self.

"Hi," she puckered her lips. "Who are... No, no, how did you get here?"

"I, uh, I died from this road accident. They, um, told me I had to walk to this path before reaching the end of beyond. So, uh, here I am."

"Oh," she said, and turned her head to the other side, gawking at nothing in particular. "It's just I'm surprised. I, um, I'm here for months, if I'm not wrong. And no one has ever been here before... since I'm here, you know." She started walking towards the denseness of the forest, where the flowers on the trees were more, and the branches were thicker.

He, having found a beautiful distraction to soothe his rebellious soul, followed her. For now, he had a reason to disobey the preordained rules. He kept glaring at the side of her face to be surer about her being the same girl he thought she was.

"It got kind of lonely here for some time. But, then, this place, you know, sucks you in. You get addicted. At least, I did. Sorry if I'm talking too much..." Her lips, lusciously, pressed against each other as mundane words came out of her mouth.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

"Should I?"

"We went to the same school. I always sat on the bench next to yours," it was when the words had spilled all over the beguiling place, had he come to senses how creepy it sounded.

She swung around on her white sneakers. "Hey! I remember now!" A genuine, undiluted smile formed on her face. "God, who could have thought? After, what, thirteen years? We meet in the beyond."

"Yeah, who could have thought!?"

"How've you been? What do you... I mean, what did you do back there?" She took a good look at the wrinkles on his old friend's forehead. She smiled at the fact that they had aged, and that it didn't matter now.

"Well, I, uh, I tried back there,"

"What do you mean by that?" She resumed walking. "Oh, wait! Didn't you want to become a writer or something? Now, I get it. That smell of cigarettes, and booze. You ought to be a writer. And, um, you always took part in those short story or poetry competitions in school. If I remember correctly, you even won a few of them, right?"

"Huh," a life away from it, but right there looking at the back of this thirty something lady who he once wanted to know so much, it felt to him as if he was falling back to the world. "I did," he reminded himself to keep walking, to be beside her.

"So, what happened Mr. Writer? I mean, after school? What's your story?" The vagaries of the surroundings were next to nothing as they went along into the unknown. "I know, um, we didn't talk much back then. But I lost all connections with you a year or two after school. I mean, um, you weren't on facebook, you changed your contact number, and you also stopped writing your blogs."

"Yeah, uh, I don't know. I tried, as I said. I wrote five... and a half novels. None of them got published. Everytime there was a new reason for it. One novel was too cynical. Another was not marketable. Another was too offending for a certain class of people. I should have stopped writing a long time ago." Smoke of unreached dreams came out of his lungs with every breath. "What about you? What's..."

"I got married. As it goes. He, um, was a good husband." She glanced at him, her eyes devoid of any expression, any life. "But, I don't miss him. I know I should. But I just don't,"

A loud, excruciating even, silence followed. Their footsteps, too, were muted. She could feel his dead eyes on her. He could hear the loud sighs that left her. It was now, while sinking deeper in the pool of silence and lost thoughts, did he notice the lack of any sign of wind. He wondered what his lungs were working on.

"Did you ever think you'd come here after you were dead?" He, unable to bear the weight of silence anymore, spoke.

"No. Actually, I never gave it much of a thought, to be honest." She let out a cracked laugh. "How funny is this, that all the connections that we made, all our relations, all our dreams and ambitions, all our likes and dislikes, the things we loved, and the things we hated, amounted to nothing in the end. We're here and..."

"That's not true," he couldn't stop himself from cutting her in between. "Ah, I mean, every connection that we had. Every life that touched us, and the experiences we had, have somehow shaped us into who we are. Our dreams and our thoughts. The way you talk, the way you walk, the way you present yourself, and whatever is it that you think is because of what had happened. Someone had to teach you how to speak, how to walk, some experiences changed you. And some made you more of yourself."

"That must be cool, huh?" She hit him on his shoulder. "To contradict the only person you're around of,"

"Coolest,"

"You know, I've been thinking about this a lot." Harshness had subtly crawled up in her throat. "What was your best day back there? Don't think about it too much. Tell me about the day that comes to your mind first,"

"The best day? Uh, okay. So... Yeah. It was thirtieth of December. We were in third year of college, and had gone to a trip to this hillstation. I, and my three best friends. The unrelenting winter were prickling our harsh skin. We smoked two large joints as soon as we woke up, in the hotel room. After freshening up, we smoked up a huge ass bong made out of a plastic bottle. Eyes blood red, and skin fuming from inside, we decided to take a walk around the small hillstation. A vast mountain on our right and an uproarious river on the left, we kept walking silently on the lonely road. We, then, sat down beside the river on huge rocks, talking about the inevitability of the future, about the unpredictability of girls. After playing tag by the river for an hour, we walked to the next village, and smoked local weed there." He let the polaroid of lost memories resonate for a moment. "Okay. Now, you go,"

"As I already said, I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm still confused between two days. Anyhow, I'll go with the one when I was younger. Okay. So, I and my parents went to this annual fest to the neighboring town. The place was crammed with people of all forms of age groups. It had been only five minutes since we had entered the tiny gate for the fest, and I got lost. At first, I looked around for my dad's hand, then his face. Then my mom's. I sat down on the pavement nearest to me, next to a candy shop, and started to cry. The guy at the candy shop kept asking me what had happened, if I had lost my parents, what they looked like. I kept ignoring him, and went on about crying. After what felt like ages, my father appeared in the plethora of unknown faces. He picked me up in his arms, and bought me lots of candies."

"That's... Beautiful," Being on a substantial distance away from overall hesitation of what life had to offer, he was certain almost every day would look beautiful now.

"I wonder if these... Memories or, um, days make us who we are?"

"Yeah. Among other things they do too."

"What other things?"

"The things we tell ourselves everyday. The way we think, and what we think. What words we use when we talk to ourselves. And then it's our memories and experiences that has shaped us, as I already said." He scratched his wavy beard.

"That's... Right,"

"You know, we always talk... I mean, we always talked about what we did, how we were, what we ate, what was cool and what was uncool. When we should have talked about the best day we've had by that point in time. The worst day. And about possible life after death, possible life out of the world. You know, like aliens and all. About parallel worlds. About ghosts, other dimensions. About moon, and stars. About the places we wanted to see. About the things we wanted to be. And, uh, we always ended up talking about the things that didn't matter." Now it was him whose gaze was fixed at nothing ahead.

"We're talking now,"

"Yeah," a blend of sigh and chuckle left him. "Ironically, we are."

"Yeah, yeah. We should talk about what's in our mind, rather than what should be said, right?"

"Right,"

"Um," she faced her sneakers, with a hint of smile on her face. "Oh, fuck it! We're already dead. What's the point of... I, um, shit! I had a huge crush on you when we were in school!"

He gaped at her vivid smile, deciphering whether it was a joke or not. "What!?"

"I think you heard me. Do you want me to elaborate?"

Not at all ready to get broken down into a thousand pieces, he shook his head.

"Um, I looked at you every day. You were, fuck, so cool back then. And kind of mysterious. Looking out of the window all the time. Not talking to anyone. Do you remember that girl with the specs, after whom every guy of our class was? Remember her? Even she had a little bit of crush on you,"

"Every guy of our class wasn't after her. They were after you. Including me," his footsteps felt lighter to him. "You were SO hot! You still are," he was indignant at the way his half metamorphosed brain was treating this moment. And also at words. The only companions he had throughout, the words, were betraying him now.

"Thank you," she glanced at the boy she once knew, and couldn't stop looking at. She empathized with the worn down man the boy had turned into.

He was bewildered to see the same road ahead of them, a few feet away. She was not stopping or changing her route, walking towards the road. He, rather dubious about it at first, followed her anyway.

"Okay. Tell me about your last regret," she asked, after all stopping in the middle of the road, and turned to face him.

"My last regret?" A lump grew in his throat as he peered into her dark eyes. "Um, let me think... Well, uh, on the day the accident took place, I was supposed to go to meet my family. My mom had told me the night before that it had been long since she had seen me. Uh," he was about to well up only thinking about it. Stunned to know that he still had his feelings intact after ceasing to exist in the world, he looked up at the clouded sky. He wondered if it was clouded when he had arrived at the place. He shook his head before meeting eyes with her again. "It was my last regret. And I want it to be my last," he said, and grabbed her elbow with his left hand, and glided his right around her back, pulling her closer. So close as if they had transformed into one person. Before another thought could have sucked him back, he closed his eyes, and kissed her.

His parched lips against her tenderness. He was in midst of rekindling senses, when he felt that the ground was moving away from his feet. He opened his eyes to see that he was up in the air. He was lavitating, getting further away from the ground, from the road, from her. And she was looking up at him, with a smile on her face.

#WritcoAnthology