Return

It was 12:00 on a Tuesday morning when I climbed out of my bedroom window and marched across the lawn towards the front iron gate. I lived in a mansion, I dream to some but surprise surprise, I couldn't stand it. My father was a billionaire and so was my mother, they were also both snobs. It was amazing they met each other and had me, the small child who didn't like suits, wouldn't eat anything but bananas, and hated, I repeat, hated boarding school.

So here I was sneaking away in hopes I could get to the railroad station before five, the time my father woke up and the time everyone else had to be awake too. I have a good plan though or so I think, I didn't know it would end up killing me.

I did the math, I was gifted in math and it was my favorite subject, it would take me about fifteen minutes to walk a mile and the train station was twenty miles away, which meant it would take me three hundred minutes to get there. Approximately five hours, I would be there by the time my father woke up. I had bought a ticket yesterday and planned to arrive ten minutes before the train left the station. Leaving zero time for my father to find me. I only had to get past the front gait with a high of twelve feet, and iron fences ranging eight feet on all sides.

I made it to the front gate safely, no one in sight. The gate was locked from the inside and I had my lock picks with me, or for more literate people, a hair clip stolen from my moms dresser. I started to pick the lock and was just about there when a light turned on in my fathers room and the window opened... There was a yell and a scream that must have been my mothers. A shot gun sounded. I realized I was only a dark human shape at the gate, and the way my father had glass after glass of wine last night, I was probably a monstrous looking shape none the less.

In the rush of noise I dropped the lockpick into the grass, I dropped to my knees and searched but I had no luck, I started scrambling at the dirt under the fence, just as the front door to the house opened. The dirt was weak and to my luck the fence didn't extend into it, I made a whole my small shape could fit through and wiggled to the other side. I turned back to look as I climbed to my feet. It was a mistake. The gun was staring directly at my chest.

I swayed to the side like my eldest sister had taught me, she was a bookworm and claimed to have learned fighting from heroes themselves. Percy Jackson, Greybeard Halt and Will treaty, Magnus Chase, the Hardy boys and so on. Now back to my regularly scheduled death. I swayed but I wasn't fast enough.

I felt a searing pain in my left arm, my vision seemed to narrow to a long tunnel, and my breathing slowed, Holy sugar plums, I'M DYING. Then I epicly died.

P.S. DRUM ROLL PLEASE, I will now let you in on a very important secret. I...am...not...

"Welcome to Hell, I'm Hell, It is nice to have you in Hell!"

My eyes opened to darkness and I could feel my lips move. Could it be? I'm not-! Nope Hell lady ruined it. I frowned at the human like shape in front of me, which was jabbering on, the word Hell popping up at least once in every sentence.

"Ms. Hell lady, Where am I?"

"Why your In hell. Hell is awesome don't you think? Now you shall be punished in Hell for killing yourself."

"But I didn't, my da-"

"Quite in Hell! Put this on." She snapped and a very, very bright pink dress was in her hands.

"Excuse me?" I asked not listening, I was wondering why she was able to say a sentence without Hell in it, I mean shouldn't that be required? That she was supposed to say Hell? I mean she is Hell in Hell? My brain focused quite suddenly and I brightly said "Why? It goes against my gender and It is pink, a very bright ugly pink. If you hadn't noticed."

"Of course I didn't notice, I'm color blind." She snapped again and an even uglier pink dress was in her hands. "You can wear this instead." She thrust it at me.

"Not happening." I turned around and started to walk off into the darkness, but Hell lady didn't seem to like that and suddenly I was staring into her beady black eyes, the wind rushing past my body much closer than it needed to be. I looked around for something to cover up with, there was nothing. My cheeks turned as red as my mom's plum colored lipstick.

"You have twenty seconds to put this on or you will spend the rest of your time like this." She waved a wormy hand at me, then turned around and started to count. I climbed into that dress as fast as I could.

She turned back around and smiled cruelly at me. "Good. Welcome to Hell!" She threw her arms open wide and I was suddenly sitting on a wooden chair, my arms hooked to the sides.

I wiggled but couldn't move anything but my feet, which hung an inch off the ground, that was a good thing, there was bubbling lava underneath of me,

A bright light flashed and I was suddenly staring at a tv, only it wasn't animal kingdom or even Sofia the first. It was me kissing Susan Anne of the school bus last year. I hadn't realized the school bus cameras had picked up on it. The image changed suddenly and now it was my nemesis, Bill Grad kissing her while kids pointed and laughed at me all beat up behind them.

The scene changed again to me throwing a dull pencil at Grad and the teacher yelling at him instead. Then it changed to him throwing a pencil at me and the teacher smacking my hand with a ruler, I could feel the pain.

The tv flickered on and on until I was on the verge of panic and tears, then Hell appeared, she was standing on the lava, it had to be giving her hot feet.

"There are many illusions in life, you are either right or right, yet you pick and don't give." A remote appeared in her hand and she changed the channel on the tv. "Now watch the news. You will want to see the truth."

She disappeared again and this time the tv came with noise.

"Fifteen year old boy killed at the hands of his father, we are told that the father did not recognize the boy standing on the other side of the mansion's front gate after squeezing out through a hole underneath it. Police state that the boy's father was drunk at the time and vision was affected."

"We were also told," Stated a second reporter, "that the boy was clearly trying to escape when shot at close range in the arm, barely missing his heart. He was rushed to the hospital and was found dead on arrival, it has hardly been fifteen minutes but a crowd is gathering and we will be closing out. Stay tuned for more news with station 58!"

So that was it, I thought. I was dead and would have to stay in Hell forever, it already seemed like I had been here for half a year but I don't know how that is possible.

A stack of newspaper appeared in my lap and my hands were freed, I picked up the paper and started to read, but the words blurred together.

"Found dead.... Drunk father guilty, Mother dying of heart ace...Funeral to take place on sunday...Shot in arm...Escapee..."

I hadn't realized my death had affected my mother so much, she was a soft woman but I knew she had loved me. Still it shouldn't have hurt her so badly. If she was dying I had to find a way back to earth, back to life, back from Hell.

I climbed out of the chair, wincing as my feet touched the lava floor but it didn't burn, it was just warm. Another illusion, I thought, I wonder what else is illusions here. The tv changed again and I saw myself lying on a bed, my hair parted neatly, my eyes closed. I gasped as an idea hit me.

I ran towards the Tv and slammed through it, there was a door on the other side but unlike the lava illusione, breaking the Tv hurt. I groaned and clenched my stomach then I continued onward, through the doorway.

The doorway led to a tunnel of course and that tunnel led to getting smaller and smaller until it was scratching my sides and I had to bend over to half my height. Just as I thought I would be stuck in the tunnel forever it widened again until I was standing in what seemed to be a large room, staring into blinding light.

"Do thou wish to return to terrible world of living?" Asked a heavenly voice.

"Um yes, thou do wish to return to the awesome world of living." I said.

"Terrible world."

"Awesome world."

"TERRIBLE WORLD."

I was slammed into a wall as the voice boomed powerfully, I wasn't going to mess any more with a decapitated voice.

"Do you surrender?"

"Yes I do."

"Name for return to the world?"

"Zachurias." I said then I thought, I never liked my name, could I turn it into anything I wanted?

"It is done."

I sighed, I missed my chance, but in a flare of light even more blinding I woke up screaming in my normal clothes and body. It was a relief, but it was also scary how there were two nurses laying on the floor like they had been knocked out and a doctor was staring at me like I was dead. Which I clearly wasn't.

"But... But... But..." The doctor fainted too.

I climbed off of the bed and shook my hair back to its regular position and then snatched my shoes from a table, "Thank you very much." Then I walked out of the room, I could plan my epic escape for a day when dying wasn't highly predictable.