I wrote Necroleptic during
February and March of 2013. It was, and still is, my personal favourite of all
my short stories so far, and I’m not quite sure why.
It is a tale of a young girl with
very special medical condition; necrolepsy. Instead of falling asleep and waking
up like most narcoleptics, young Emily dies momentarily...and quite frequently.
I tried not to make her journey into the afterlife too clichéd, and wanted to
avoid any real physical resemblance of the afterlife with real life, something I also tried to do in The Spirit Broker. In fact, Necroleptic and When Leaves Fall both contain references to The Spirit Broker in one way or another, and some of these links are
quite subtle.
Necroleptic is a different kind of story to the "New Eden" tales,
such as The Jeweller and the Witch, Lady of the Snow, and the Hallow series;
there is something a bit more serious in its tone.
I think the main message I take
from Necroleptic is that we don’t know what comes after we die, it could be
something magnificent, something terrifying, something beyond our
comprehension, a mixture of the above, or simply nothing.
The only truth is that we are
alive right now. Every person walking the planet today is a descendant of the oldest
of our Race. We are all royalty to some extent; princes, princesses, kings and
queens of our own line. We have made it thus far, through the brutal storm of
time and chance. Therefore, if we are alive, and if our lives are somewhat
liveable, we should enjoy the experience to its fullest. Because life doesn’t
last forever, whereas death most likely does.
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