This was among the nine stories selected globally (and the only one from Asia) for the Wordrunner eChapbooks Micro Prose Issue of  October, 2024

A strong antiseptic smell hits my nostrils, while the whitewashed walls blind my sight.

Do our senses get heightened after death?

Right now, I feel like a housefly, hovering over the hospital bed where my body lies still. Multiple wires connect it to various life-support devices. An LED monitor shows a green flickering line – clinical evidence that I’m still alive. But that’s enough hope to inure my mother, my only family. After a week of non-stop bedside vigil, she looks paler than my intubated form.

She had fared better when Dad passed, although she was too young for such a loss.

I feel light…free…relieved. Especially after the excruciating pain that assaulted every fibre of my body last week. My prized motorbike, flung to the kerbside, resembled a mangled mess of metal and glass.

The mechanical beeps, alternating with Mom’s stifled sobs, help break the deathly silence pervading the room. I hate myself for doing this to her. But how do I tell her that it was Dad on the highway that morning, with his sunshine smile and dependable arms, beckoning me towards him. I revved up and vroomed ahead, my moist eyes missing the minivan right ahead of me.