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THE UNDERWATER ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

By: Mervena Adly

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What happens after I die? Will I be reincarnated into another life? Is the

afterlife real? Will I remember anything from this life? Well, I was about to find

out soon enough. It was the dark, rainy evening of February 3rd. My name is Luna.

I’m 16 years old and I’ve been diagnosed with terminal cancer for about 3 years

now, but the end is nearing. The pain has become unbearable; it would be so much

easier for me to just end it now than to continue enduring this unimaginable pain.

It’s almost time for me to go. I have only seven more hours to treasure with all my

loved ones.

It’s finally time for me to go. Time for me to leave all of my friends, family,

pets. Everything. Forever. I was in my death bed, watching my loved ones crying

through the glass window. I smiled at them one last time before I closed my eyes

and was finally put to rest. I could hear the cries slowly drowning out, until

suddenly I couldn’t hear anything.

Hours later, I opened my eyes to see myself in the same hospital bed, but

underwater. Instead of just dying, it seemed like I was just born. It’s as if I was in

the body of a baby but still had my own mind and soul. I looked to my right to see

my new mom in a hospital bed. She had a mermaid tail. I looked down to see that I
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had one as well. Does that mean I’ll never have to use the bathroom again? How did

my mom give birth to me then? I had many questions, but I couldn’t let anyone

know I still had the memory from my past life. On the bright side, school should be

very easy. The nurse saw that I was awake, swam over to me, and put me in my

mother’s arms. She looked at me in a very loving, motherly way. I chuckled back at

her. “She just laughed!”, she exclaimed with a voice of excitement.

A few hours later, we were released from the hospital and went back to our

underwater home. I was still shocked by the fact that I can breathe and live

underwater, that I was reborn into a new dimension, that mermaids exist, that I

AM a mermaid. I overheard my mom talking to her friend about how this is the

time that the fishers and scuba divers come down, so we have to stay out of sight.

I picked up the fact that humans see us as other sea animals. My mom took me, and

we hid behind a big rock. We were waiting there for a while when my mom set me

down, hidden in between the bushes, so she could go grab some food for us. I

observed the beauty of the underwater world for a little. Well, at least I thought

it was beautiful. However, when you observe closely, all the underwater life is

dying. There was plastic floating everywhere and a bunch of trash just getting

thrown down as if there was no life that mattered here. The sea creatures would
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always be getting caught in the plastic and trash without any way to get out. I

never realized how dangerous life was under the ocean when I still lived up on

earth. All the thinking and observing made me a little tired, so I closed my eyes

and fell asleep. Suddenly, before I knew it, I was grabbed by a bunch of humans

and they swam away with me in a net, along with a bunch of other sea creatures. I

opened my eyes to see that it was my own family, scuba diving around and exploring

the sea creatures. In that moment, I wished nothing more than being able to yell

out to them that it was me, their own daughter.

They looked older, more aged. I then realized that time most likely goes

faster up on Earth than it does underwater. They just kept swimming away with

me, collecting more fish we passed by. I was wondering what they were planning to

do with all these fish. As time went by, they caught my mom as well. We were

sitting in the net, no way out. My family was always the type who loved fishing and

scuba diving. Even though I couldn’t always go with them, they always brought back

big nice fish for us to all enjoy together at the dinner table. However, it didn’t

seem too fun anymore now that my mom and I were the fish getting cooked. I was

hoping that they were just collecting us to observe or something, and then release

us, but as they started swimming up to the surface, I started to panic. I realized

that I can no longer breathe actual air on the surface anymore, now that I’m a
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mermaid. My mermaid mom was holding me in her arms, while my human mom was

carrying me in a net, pretty ironic if you ask me. They kept swimming up, but it

didn’t seem like they had any intention of letting the couple of fish in the net free.

I tried to look around for any hole that was big enough to get through. Lucky for

me, I was still a baby so I could wiggle my way through any hole in the net easily.

We kept getting closer, so I had to think fast. Just at the last minute, I saw a hole

to my right that I could squeeze through, and swam for it. I kept picking at the

hole until a piece of thread broke and my mom and I quickly swam through and

didn’t stop till we got to the comfort of my own home. I guess I could get used to

life down here, as long as I’m just very careful. I always wanted to be a mermaid

when I was little, so I guess this wasn’t too bad, now it was real instead of just a

slip-on mermaid tail in my bathtub. I wonder what other universes I’ll live in next, I

guess I’ll just have to wait and see.