The Omniscrolls

As a child, I would often lose time thinking about death and what I wanted my last rites to be. I could never explain why my mind lingered on the topic, and whenever I brought the topic up with my parents, they would immediately ask me to stop. “You shouldn’t talk about such things,” they’d say; “We’ll be long gone before, and you have a long life ahead of you.” I replied with “You never know what’s in store for you,” and left the topic there. I understood where my parents were coming from, but it was just a topic my mind would often circle back to, though I didn’t know why. My two elder sisters were more open to hearing me out, but even they grew tired of the topic as my mind delved deeper into questions on death: what it would be like in those final moments, or just after? What lay in wait once our bodies were nothing but a memory? The young me had so many questions on her mind… When I was in middle school, one of my friends introduced me to a fantasy game that had me hooked from the...

Nobody expected to face a third world war, but the reckless decisions of a few led to the destruction of many. My parents and I were among the few who found ourselves in bunkers, hiding in fear as the shockwaves rippled the earth above us. We watched the news in horror as cities were reduced to ashes and civilisations were wiped out in mere seconds. I wondered how the world could go back to some form of normalcy years later. It seemed impossible. Even with others like us surviving in bunkers around the world, we all would most likely be confined to concrete coffins for the rest of our days… A decade passed before I could re-enter the outside world, or at least what was left of it. My parents, however, didn’t live to see that day arrive; they remained buried in that concrete coffin. I wondered just how many others like me watched their families fade in such quiet confines—how many were left alone in deafening silence, not knowing if they’d ever feel the warmth of the sun again. When I r...

I struggled to maintain friendships as a child since we were constantly moving from city to city and town to town. Some years, it would be only a couple of times, but in others, it would be even four to five times. I was still in middle school when I started to suspect that something was wrong with my parents; I wondered if they were on the run from the law, and even asked them about it. Mom and Dad said they were shocked that I even suspected such a thing, but I could see in their faces that they were hiding something from me. As the years passed, I became numb to the routine, but once I met someone who became a close friend more than anyone else ever had, and I had to leave her behind as well, I decided it was time for me to investigate my parents. Whenever they were occupied, I went through their phones and laptops, but I found nothing outside work documents and other general topics. Neither of them had social media, and they had strict rules about my having social media as well. I ...