Abyss

BY JANYA BHASKAR

I open my eyes. My breath mists as I exhale. I sit up, and look around. I’m in the middle of a
vast snowfield, white and unending.

I stand up and my feet sink into the snow. For some odd reason I’m not cold even though I’m
only wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

“Hello?” I call out, hoping that someone answers. No one does. I turn around and see the sun on
the horizon. Perhaps it will lead me somewhere.

I start walking toward the sun. Eventually I have to end up somewhere, right?

---

So far I’ve been walking for almost a day, and there has been absolutely no change in the bleak
landscape.

The sun has not changed position at all, which should be impossible.

Then again, I’m pretty sure that nearly everything in this place should be impossible, yet it isn’t. I
wonder why.

---

I have no idea how long I have been walking, but I’m not getting tired at all, strange as it may be.

As I walk, countless thoughts run through my mind.

Where am I? What am I doing here? Is this a dream? Let me wake up.

Please. To whomever is listening, please, just let me wake up. I’m desperate. And I’m begging.
Please.

---

The girl sighs, and looks back at the hospital bed. Her best friend is still lying there, in a coma.
Nothing has changed since the incident.

Her best friend’s mother walks in, a worried look on her face. “Anything?” she asks. The girl
shakes her head “No change. They still haven’t found a way to wake them up” the girl replies.

The mother sighs, and sits at the foot of the bed, and holds her child’s hand. “I love you and I
will never forget you” she says as tears run down her face.

The girl approaches the distraught mother “So, are we…? Are they…?” her voice catches. She’s
afraid to ask the question. She knows what the answer is but is hoping in vain that she is wrong.

The mother stands up, still silently crying tears of sadness “It’s been over 5 years. There has
been no change in their condition and it doesn’t seem like the doctors will find a way to rouse
them anytime soon, and I can’t live like this…in constant hope for them to wake up, and constant
pain at seeing them like this every day. We really have no other choice”

The girl is now weeping. She hugs the mother and the mother hugs her back. They are clinging
to each other in fear that they will lose themselves in the pain.

“Goodbye my dear friend” the girl whispers, kissing her best friend’s forehead as the medical
team comes in sometime later to take the comatose patient off life support. The heart monitor
starts beeping faster and faster as their heart beat drops drastically, and eventually the beeping
stops and becomes constant. The two women hug each other for comfort, shivering and sobbing,
despairing that they have just lost someone dearly beloved to both of them.

---

I fall down, suddenly weak. I look up at the sky, as it darkens rapidly. I am growing weaker
and weaker by the second, and I wail and cry as I plunge into the abyss, into the nothingness
that is death.

About the Author

Janya Bhaskar is a high school student in California and loves to write dark adventure and fantasy fiction. She has published in her school magazine and has independently published (via Chakli Daisy Press) a dystopian fiction novel for teenagers. She enjoys reading about advances in biological research and space.