Nothing
by Hana Marie Gamelin
Photo by beytlik
You expect to feel pain; a sharp stab spreading across your stomach, a head-splitting strike against your skull, a throbbing ache in your fingers.
You expect to feel sad, visualizing the endless possibilities of your life snap off like split ends. Facing the reality that you will never achieve any of the goals you set on your eighteenth birthday, glassy-eyed and smiling, as you blew out your candles.
You expect to reminisce all of the good times, when mom still sat with you at the breakfast table and talked about your day. When dad made the effort to help you with your schoolwork. When they were still together.
You expect to feel angry, to thrash around and slam your fists at the disappointing truth that you were taken too soon. To scream until your throat is raw and you are so exhausted you collapse onto the cold, dark floor.
You expect yourself to feel regret for all those times your friends achieved something, standing tall and basking in the light of success while you sulked in the back, cloaked in the shadows of doubt and insecurity. Maybe things could have been different.
You expect to feel something.
But in death, you feel nothing.
Hana Marie Gamelin’s “Nothing” received fourth place in the BCPW’s 2026 Flash Fiction Contest. Hana attends St. Joseph's Catholic Secondary School.