A Cup Of Tea

• Hetvi Bhatt, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2017

It was a wonderful morning and I was just having my cup of tea with the newspaper. The birds were making a lovely sound, the sun was shining brightly it was a spectacular sight, that actually makes you believe that God is a beautiful creator. As I lifted my cup of tea to take my first sip, I saw my name on the funeral notice section in the newspaper. I hurried to get my man made eyes that show me that I am getting old.

I put on my glasses to make sure that was my name or a printing mistake. I suddenly realised that there many people in the world that have the same name as me. So I rolled my eyes down to check the address. Surprisingly the address was mine too. I got up to ring the news agency but nobody could hear me, I kept trying but in the end, I had to give up.

I turned to my lounge area to look for my family members. I got shocked because I saw my best friend and both my kids that lived interstate. They all were sitting on the couch with an off mood. I saw all of them but my eyes were searching for my wife.

I heard a noise coming from the kitchen, ignoring the people sitting on the couch I went straight into the kitchen. To inform my wife about the newspaper mistake. While I was talking to her it felt like she was ignoring me the whole time. So furiously I turned back to the lounge hoping the other people would listen to me.

Unfortunately, the same drama was repeated. Everyone was communicating with each other but I couldn't hear them either. The dilemma was that there was wrong news on the newspaper, my family and friends were ignoring me and the most annoying thing was I couldn't hear them. It made me feel like I was a headless chicken walking around without any purpose.

I went back to my chair and sat in front of my cup of tea, trying to figure out what was happening. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but I unexpectedly noticed that I could not hear the sound of my breath. To check if I was still alive, I went back to my past trying to recall my memory of what had happened. At that moment I realised that I had a very disturbing chest pain last night.

That is the breaking point for me to make me believe the newspaper is correct. That means I am dead, so this made all the scenarios clear. I completely broke and fell to my knees. Mainly because I felt like I wasted all my life behind unnecessary things like name and fame.

At this, I started crying, yelling and shouting at the God to please give me a second chance. But I felt like even the God wasn't listening to me. This made me shout intensively louder.
Dramatically my wife woke me up asking me why are yelling in my ear?

Did you have a bad dream or something? I jolted up and hugged my wife. Thank God that it was a dream. We got up and had a cup of tea together. That was the best cup of tea I have ever had.