A couple of years ago I was driving home from my now ex-girlfriend’s house. I was on the interstate and I don’t remember what I was thinking but I put the car in cruise control. It was storming badly, I seriously don’t remember why I did it. I know it was stupid and of course, I hydroplaned. I went through the median and made it across two lanes of traffic without a scratch. But as I looked to my right I saw a huge Yukon coming towards me. I guess the driver had hit their brakes and started to slide themselves. I was told the civic I was in flipped a few times and landed upside down. I don’t remember when the paramedics and firefighters had to pry open the door and get me from hanging upside down or rushed me to the hospital. I don’t remember when they had to give me stitches on the various cuts I had.
What I do remember is Nothing. The second the Yukon hit me everything went black. That’s it. It didn’t take long, there were no thoughts before it happened. One minute I was in the car, the next minute blackness. I could see my hands, legs, and feet even though there was absolute blackness. No lights in the distance, nothing, I felt like I could see forever but there was nothing to look at. I wasn’t floating, I was sort of sitting but there was nothing there to sit on. I was in the middle of trying to figure out why I was there when I felt a presence. I knew I was not alone and I knew this was not a good thing. In front of me sort of materialized something blacker than the blackness that went on forever. I could make out a sort of human shape; legs, torso, arms, shoulders, and a head. But looking at it felt like when you were using a camera that could not figure out where to focus. I could never narrow down the exact shape of this thing in front of me and it made me feel uneasy. While I was trying to figure out what I was looking at it spoke. But saying IT spoke isn’t quite right either.
“Hello Matthew, I am Nothing, and you will now spend eternity with me.” Its voice was immediately unsettling. It seemed to morph between multiple voices at once, to one voice for two or three words, and then back to multiple voices. Also, every voice I heard was familiar, but just like its shape every time I thought I was about to nail down whose voice it was the voice or voices would change into a new one or several new ones.
“Why am I here?” I ask
“You are here because you feel guilty for things that you did in the past. So you will be stuck in a place where you can only dwell in those thoughts and punish yourself for the rest of time?”
“But…” Just then I woke up seated in a wheelchair.
I remembered the wreck and suddenly thought ‘Oh no I must be paralyzed!’
Looking down at my toes I wiggled them and let out a ‘woo hoo’. I looked up at my girlfriend, I could see on her face she had clearly been crying. I remembered I had been on the phone with her at the time of my wreck.
“Oh my gosh, Catherine. I’m sorry you heard that”
“It’s ok. They are saying it was an ‘act of god’. I called your parents and told them what happened. I assured them you would be alright and that you would call them the second you woke up.”
Just then the doctor walked in. “Mr. Walker, how are you feeling.”
I said find and he started to check me out.
“You seem fine, though you have a slight concussion. I will let your girlfriend check you out if you promise to make sure to wake you up every couple of hours to make sure that you are ok”
“Yes, doctor I can do that” Catherine replied.
…
We had checked into a hotel near the hospital, I called my parents when we got to the room assured them I was ok, and promised to call them in the morning when I woke up. I got into the shower because I could smell myself and did not like what I smelled. As I got out of the shower and began putting on some sweatpants Catherine had brought for me. I noticed she was passed out.
‘I shouldn’t wake her’ I thought ‘all the stress she went through today. Hopefully, she can sleep well enough.’
I set the clock on my phone for 2 hours and turned off the light. Darkness took the hotel room. In the corner of the room, I noticed this area that was blacker than the rest of the shadows in the room.
Suddenly, I heard this voice/voices “Don’t think that you have gotten away from me, Matthew. Know that Nothing awaits you and Nothing will get you back.
Just then everything that had happened when I had been hit by the Yukon came rushing back to me. The endless darkness and speaking with Nothing about what I had to look forward to when I died. The hair stifled on the back of my neck and down my arms. But evidently, my body was too exhausted from the day’s events, and even though I tried hard to stay awake to think about what had happened, sleep overtook me.
In my dream, all I could do was stare into the vast darkness with no lights in every direction and this figure blacker than the darkness standing right in front of me. While I could not focus on the creature in front of me. I could ‘feel’ what it was doing, I could ‘feel’ the evil grin on its face as it stared and thought about what to do with me next.