The Night You Died

Title: The Night You Died
Author: spacejunkie
Type: True Story
Genre: Tragedy
Rating: PG

Stories typed under 'True Story' hold little appeal to me. As a reader, I log on to mibba not to remind myself of the world, but to escape from it. Give me a mermaid infused fantasy story any day, and I'd be happy. A one shot about a death - so real and raw? No, thanks.

This is why my fascination with spacejunkie's The Night You Died puzzles me. It contains all the ingredients to warrant it an immediate dismissal and yet, I cannot help but find it so compelling.

Written in first person narration, The Night You Died, a four hundred and fifty eight word long one shot describes that one inevitable event in a person's life - the death of a loved one.

You would think then, that a story as such would be full of extremities of both ends of the emotion spectrum. Usually, there would be pain, loss and spontaneous interjections. The Night You Died has very little of that, if any at all.

In fact, in a nutshell, it is a story of nostalgia and of an akin yearning for a time long gone. The sense of loss is held between simply worded sentences and appropriate metaphors. There are moments where you will feel your breath in your throat and your tears threaten to overwhelm you, and other times where a simple smile is all you can actually manage.

spacejunkie's writing style, unique only to him, adds flourish and body to this wonderfully phrased one shot. It is sad - teetering on just the right side of overwhelmingly so, and, for the lack of a better word, as real as can ever be.

They say that when someone dies, a bomb hits. I think the night you died was more like Chernobyl.