Stories are silly. They attempt to, in about 250 words for the good ones, relate a story. Stories don’t need 250 words. Poetry is much better at conveying narrative. But poetry isn’t taken seriously (hence this is in short story form).
I wrote a story, not that long ago, about someone who had died recently and their experiences in the afterlife. Here’s the basic run down.
You die and you have a sleep debt. There’s an amount of sleep you need. There’s an amount of sleep you get. The delta is the debt. You don’t get to wake up until you pay back the debt. Insomniacs, I’m sorry. At least you don’t have to attend your funeral.
When you first awake as a dead person, you can only hang around your grave. This doesn’t have to be anything formal. But you can’t get passed it until time passes. How long? Not sure, wasn’t really explored in the story. Except for the fact that by 100 years you had full run of the world. Pretty much by the time you wouldn’t care. Coincidence?
So, I’ll post the story tomorrow, or soon. It’s not quite 250 words, probably closer to 1,000 or 1,500. I like cutting stories. But cutting 750 or more words is a real ordeal. Of course on this story the last paragraph is superfulous- I added it just to reach 250. And then I added a few more words to get there. Followed by a couple more.