Balm in Gilead

Heaven is not as perfect as she'd imagined.

The girl had certainly earned her way into heaven. At only fifteen years old, she had died saving her little brother from an oncoming car. Very sweet. Very heroic.
And now she was here. The girl had spent a long time here - longer than she could remember. Certainly longer than fifteen years. Wings had sprouted from her back, and a silver circlet rested on her waves of long, dark hair. The girl had expected gold and jewels in Heaven, everything pretty and bright. Instead everything was silver. No gold, and certainly no jewels. Just the everlasting, lustrous gleam of the chrome-colored metal.
She had never gotten a definite answer as to why. Lots of the others said that it was because gold and gems bred greed and contempt. Some there was no gold because it was too soft to withstand the time. In any case, the fact remained that there was only ever silver, giving the entire place a sort of clinical feel. It gave the girl the creeps when she thought about it too much.
There were no responsibilities in Heaven. Everyone was mostly left to their own devices, doing whatever struck their fancy. It left the intelligent and curious girl so bored. She became obsessed with finding something, anything to do. She would learn a new skill, master it in a supernaturally short amount of time. she could knit, sew, crochet, sing, dance, cook, play any silver instrument set into her hands. And, as with everything here, she became bored of it just as quickly. She needed tasks to occupy her time. Anything to occupy her thoughts, stimulate her creativity. She quickly became destructive, throwing things around just to study why they didn't break. She drew countless meaningless drawings and wrote incoherent snippets of stories she never finished. Mortals would have called her mad.
The strangest thing about Heaven was that no one ever felt pain. Even if someone was engulfed in flames, they would not have felt a thing. It perplexed the girl. It became the only thing that she could constantly wonder about without becoming bored or depressed, or both.
She had gone through a phase where she would take knives from her dishes. She would try to cut through her smooth flesh, pressing the razor-sharp blade harder and harder to the thin skin on the insides of her wrists. The girl had tried and tried to feel the physical sensation. It was all in vain. She usually ended up in tears.
The only pain felt by anyone here was the emotional sort. The girl had plenty of that. The only hurt she felt occurred inside her head.
She began to crave the hurt, enjoying the tears that flowed fast down her cheeks. They comforted her, telling her that at least part of her was still human. She thought of her family, her friends. She pictured them, hurt or dying, just to feel her stomach clench and her heart twist into knots. She knew it was wrong, evil almost. The girl didn't care. She had stopped caring eons ago.
How had her life of selflessness and kindness earned her this? She would have preferred spending eternity in Hell. This endless perfection had driven her past madness, past depression. She was so far from the innocent sister she had been when she died. An existence of sheer silver-lined darkness had twisted her into this.
Now the girl spends her years conjuring up images of people she loved, believing that they are here beside her. It makes her cry, thinking that those nearest to her heart will be (have been?) subjected to the same fate as she. Her dark hair is matted and tangled behind her thin form. She does not eat. She does not sleep. Her once beautiful, clear brown eyes have long since been eclipsed by a darker shade. She never leaves her silver dwelling. She wails at the walls all day, and talks with the wind all night. She sits in her palace of perfection, wishing for Heaven to burn.