The Origins of Life is Inevitable
Some people may scoff at this, but I truly believe that online relationships are just as real as the bonds we create in person. During my senior year of high school I met a woman on the game "Counter Strike Global Offensive". At first we got off on the wrong foot, but after a long conversation, I found out that she was just having a rough day. Probably the worst day of her life. Her father and grandfather died just five minutes apart from each other. At first I only spent time with her purely out of pity. However, I eventually began to see her as a real friend. Someone I could talk to and someone I was willing to listen to. As the days went by, we grew closer until we found ourselves opening up more in conversations. These were conversations we only felt comfortable having with each other. It was perfect. We were miles away, so our confessions felt anonymous, but at the same time, we knew each other so there was plenty of trust. Everything went great, but one day we had a big argument. It started off with her venting to me about how terribly her mother was treating her. I was too busy giving advice instead of listening, and she told me, "I guess talking to people doesn't help. You're not helping me." After that there was only silence, and our private messages remained vacant.
On the first Sunday of May 2019, I logged on to play a game when I suddenly got a message from her. All the message said was "call me". I started a voice chat on the computer only to hear a stranger's voice. It was a woman. She sounded very distant like she was trying to suppress tears. She said "are you the one who goes by 'Helping Hands'?" "Helping Hands" is my username, so to hear a stranger call me that caught me off guard. I asked her who she was, and she told me that she was my friend's mom. I immediately began questioning her. I wanted to know if my friend was well, and why she hadn't been talking to me, and that's when her mother hit me with a bomb.
"She's dead," she said. All I remember was feeling shocked. When I pressed her with more questions, I found out that she died by her own hand. She overdosed on sleeping pills. I spent the rest of my senior year wondering what it would be like if she could come back. If in the afterlife souls were given the option to return to earth to live their lives, but of course that didn't come true. As far as we know, death is the end. It sounds obvious but sometimes we just forget that once you're dead, you're just dead. There's no going back, you're just dead. So my novel was created as a way to cope, and explore the fantasy I had that she could one day come back to me. The afterlife depicted in the story spawned from my own view of what the afterlife could be like, and the idea of being resurrected was brought by my desire to speak to her again.