The Nothingness Of Astrid

• Charlotte Reimer, Grade 9, Loreto Kirribilli
• Short Story
• 2013

Excellence Award in the 'Dream Big 2013' competition

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
Before
Astrid jolted upright in her bed; there was something outside, something at the window. She nearly gave herself a mild concussion as she ironically rolled like a dead body out of her bed. She kept telling herself to stop being so scared of things, because what are we ultimately afraid of? Death and Death was ready to grab a hold of Astrid like some sick abductor at a playground, creepily and unnecessarily. She eventually looked out the window and was confronted with a hideous sight, Tom, her brother, clearly drunk and singing Whitney Houston whilst excessively petting the dog. Poor Daisy.
After letting him inside, it was clear not only that Tom was drunk but the type of drunk where he cried a lot and told her not to die. A little morbid, but she had no choice but to give him a hug. Tom was really looking for any reason to get drunk these days and it was just convenient that his baby sister had cancer. Astrid was extremely weary, the doctors told her family that there was nothing they could do and it would be best if she were at home. Astrid thought that, that was a lie, they just couldn’t be bothered and besides, they needed her bed for some other cancerous kid. But for all the honesty of Gandhi, she knew that some problems couldn’t be fixed and she was one of them.
After
Astrid hadn’t known what to expect of being dead even though she had, had so long to think about it. Even when it happened she still kept trying to run away from the ‘light’ when in actual fact all that happened was that she woke up above her body, like Freaky Friday, except she was the only one that got the body-switching memo. It was all very confusing. Was she a ghost? Was she going to go to heaven/hell? Did she have to do something to be at peace? Astrid felt that religion, film and the ‘better place’ stories that every five-year-old is told when ‘Great-Auntie May’ kicks the bucket, should have prepared her better. She hadn’t even seen any other dead people. What was the point of being dead if you couldn’t lunch with Picasso or kick Hitler where it hurt most?
Astrid was a state of nothing. There had been nothing to her life and nothing to her death. After a while people stopped caring, they moved on. She watched them from above, in her state of nothingness. Sometimes she thought people looked at her, but they weren’t people she knew. Everything had changed. Astrid was tired from trying to find meaning and purpose when it didn’t want to be found, so, like all good quitters, she decided to sleep, not knowing that in her nothingness she made the iridescent sky that little bit brighter each night.