Letters To Heaven – Riley Beeson

My body felt exhausted, limbs tangled in the sheets, warmth still lingering in the air around me. I blinked slowly, turning my head to squint at the glowing red numbers on my digital clock. Ugh. Way too early. Technically I still had five minutes—five whole minutes—before my alarm would go off and force me to exist. Five minutes is sacred. Five minutes is everything. Still, my hand reached for my phone anyway, more out of habit than anything. My fingers brushed over my Bible, the rim of my water glass, a chapstick with no lid, until finally they wrapped around my phone.

The light stabbed at my eyes, and I groaned, shielding my face with the blanket as I unlocked it. Notifications slowly sharpened through my blur of half-sleep. Eli (not a stalker). Even like that, just his name on the screen, my lips formed into the kind of sleepy smile I couldn’t fight if I tried. It was ridiculous, honestly. But also kind of wonderful.

I tapped the message, my pulse doing that annoying little flutter thing. Hey Just that. One word. My thumbs didn’t even hesitate before typing back: Hi I stared at the screen, watching, waiting for the little bubble to appear. The one that meant he was still there, on the other side, typing. But nothing came. Just stillness. The room seemed to fall quiet all over again, like it was holding its breath with me.

My covers were wrapped too tightly around my legs, suddenly too warm, and I shifted, the fan in the corner clicking with each slow turn. A faint line of gold peeked through the curtains, sneaking across the wall. Morning was here, whether I wanted it or not. I let the phone slip onto my chest, the screen going dim. I exhaled slowly, a little sigh that felt too big for the moment but also not big enough. All of a sudden, a sharp, jarring noise ripped through the stillness.

My alarm. It wasn’t just loud, it was obnoxious, like it had been lying in wait all night, ready to ruin the tiny shred of peace I’d finally found.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Book Cover by Riley Beeson Book Illustration by Riley Beeson OceanofPDF.com For those who hope when hope seems small OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com Chapter 1 It’s been eleven days. Eleven mornings of waking up and, for a few seconds, forgetting she’s gone. My eyes blink open, my body stretches, and I’m already halfway to swinging my legs out of bed when the remembering hits.

It’s a physical thing, the remembering. Like getting shoved in the chest. I used to think grief would feel soft—like the movies, where you sit quietly with a blanket around your shoulders and cry pretty tears into a mug of tea. But this isn’t soft. This is jagged, relentless. It’s the kind of thing that wakes you up at three a.m. with your heart pounding like you’ve just run up a hill, even though you’re lying still.

Today is her funeral. Which feels insane to say out loud. I’ve never been to one before. Not for someone this close. Funerals are supposed to be old-people things— great-aunts you only met twice, neighbors you didn’t really know, someone’s grandfather who always smelled like cigars.

Not… her. Everyone keeps handing me tissues like I’m a broken soda machine and they’re just jamming quarters in, hoping something useful comes out. They pile in my lap until I’ve basically built a mountain of Kleenex, and honestly, I don’t even know which ones are new anymore. They all look the same. Damp, crumpled, useless.

A tissue doesn’t fix this. A tissue is like giving someone a fire extinguisher after their house burned down. The church smells like too much. Too much perfume, too much lemon polish, too many roses sweating in the heat of their vases. It’s an aggressive sweetness, cloying and sharp, like someone sprayed Febreze in your mouth. Underneath it all is dust, old hymn books that haven’t been opened in decades. My black dress sticks to me like shrink wrap.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: b98a8e2fbbf4a89e
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,520,993 bytes (3.358 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 227
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 329.77 minutes
• Total Words: 65,954
• Total Characters: 358,606
• Average Words per Page: 290.55
• Average Characters per Page: 1579.76

Most Frequent Words

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