Please note: This is fiction! Inspired by this post.

Do you know of anyone who’s had a near-death experience? Have you heard someone talk about their near-death experience with you? Did they tell you they saw a white light? Did they tell you coming back was like somebody yanking a bungie cord, yanking them back to reality?

I am confident to say I saw a yellow light, not a white light and before you go saying, “you were dreaming, la di da,” I can assure you I was not. I really had a near-death experience and let me just preface to say coming back was a surreal experience on its own.

I was a sickly child. I suffered from a myriad of illnesses. Even after seeing more than a dozen specialists, no one could find what was wrong with me. One December, I fell very ill. For four days and three nights, I was trapped in my bed as a fire raged inside my body. My skin and bones ached as the flame slowly burned through every fiber of my being. Meanwhile, no medicine worked. If anything, it made the fire rage even hotter.

On the fourth night, the fire finally died, allowing me to at last drift off to sleep. When I opened my eyes again, I was ankle-deep in water. Before me were trees, standing like when the sea parted for Moses. I couldn’t see where the path led. The light was simply too bright.

I took a step forward just as a figure appeared beside me. There was no mistaking who it was. It was my dad, who I haven’t seen since I was six. “Dad, is that really you?” He smiled. I threw my arms around him. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he said in a soft whisper. Is that really what my dad sounded like? I wondered. I couldn’t ever remember hearing his voice. “But you must go back. You don’t belong here. Not yet.”

“But…” I tried to protest. Why can’t I stay? Deep down though, I knew the answer.

“No buts,” Dad said, “you must go back.”

Suddenly, I felt this tug at my chest and before I knew what was happening, I was being pulled backward, back to reality. “She’s coming to.” A gruff voice said.

“Thank God,” Mom’s voice followed by a sniffle.

“What happened?” I asked in a whisper, staring up at my mom and a paramedic. Where am I? I wondered as I wished everything would stop spinning.

The two of them helped me up to my bed. I was on my bedroom floor. Did I fall or was I placed there? “You had a very bad seizure. The paramedics had to do CPR on you. You weren’t breathing.”

So I died? I wanted to ask but held my tongue. “I would recommend to go get an emergency check-up, to make sure everything is all right,” the gruff voice paramedic suggested.

On the ride to the emergency room, I kept thinking about what had happened. I died. The words repeated in my head. I really saw my dad. The trees, the water, the bright yellow light, that was real. I thought in that moment about telling my mom but kept it to myself instead. I don’t think she would’ve believed me anyway.

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