It was a cold summer night. The city was filled with never-ending busy, restless traffic and lights were illuminating from the colossal skyscrapers. About 20 kilometers from the heart of Detroit was me walking down the street in a small town back to my apartment, right after finishing my work shift as the retail employee.
It was an uneventful day, really. I could only stand people coming in and out with their trolleys, buying whatever was in the shop. Luckily for me though, there weren’t any major inconveniences that happened today.
Life was decent there; I got a small apartment room, a ‘meh’ job, a boss with the most punchable face and a boring neighborhood. I did everything I could to support my tuition fees. Things went pretty well, until that very fateful evening when my perspective towards life changed probably until the day I die for real.
I was about 3 blocks away from my apartment. As I crossed the empty street using the crosswalk, a middle aged man in a hoodie approached me from the opposite side of the road. I couldn’t view his entire face clearly as it was dark, but an uncanny feeling twisted in my gut as that person walked by. Approaching him felt like an eternity even though we were just meters away. Turns out, I should’ve listened to my gut as the man came into my proximity and pulls out a pocket knife right against my torso.
“Don’t even try to fight, give everything you have and you’ll be spared”
My fight-or-flight response kicked in, but in this situation, doing either would risk my life, so in a state of shock, I said okay in the most timid tone ever and pulled out the paycheck I just received today.
“That’s all you got, punk? ” the man in hoodie stared at me with dead and irritated expression.
“I swear that’s all I got, buddy” my body still tremor.
The man looked around him for a few times before cursing himself and fled from the scene as another gang of mobs appeared out of nowhere.
“That man! Get him!” a black man in a singlet voiced out to what seemed to be his subordinates. A series of gunshots reverberated the dead silent night as the three men pursued the man in hoodie which was now running for his dear life. It was straight out of a movie scene. I suspected drugs were involved in this chaotic mayhem. Meanwhile, I just decided to duck for cover even though I’m at the middle of the road. That barely helped as one of the men approached me. The 6 feet tall guy towered me as he glanced at my pathetic posture. I’ve never felt so much fear in my life.
You’ve probably seen or heard stories of people getting violently murdered or on the verge of certain death, and surely you’ll feel the adrenaline rushing as the near-death experience teases them. But experiencing it firsthand…My heart was going to explode as anything could happen at that moment.
The man yelled at his leader “Ay yo boss what are we supposed to do with this random guy?”. Approaching both of us, the black man annoyingly replied “You dumb or something? Leaving an evidence and risking prison for life? Don’t be a fucking pussy.”
With that, he pulled out a familiar black metallic object and pointed onto my head. Something that one never wishes to see in a situation like this. The sound of metallic cocking of the gun sounds like the ticking of the end of time, a premonition of an impending, inevitable doom. Apparently, the popular myth where you get flashbacks when you die is true. Flashes of my previous days literally popped out like an ending theme of a movie followed by a loud sound “Bam”. Then, nothing.
The feeling of an eternity passed as I sunk into the void of darkness with pure pain and agony. Eventually, I woke up, feeling extremely nauseous and headache. Weird, I’ve never had migraine before. A sense of dread surrounded my vicinity. But as soon as I opened my eyes… Nothing. It was absolute darkness.
A void of nothingness surrounded within my vicinity. My body felt…light? As if I was floating at space with no mass. I tried to move my limbs, but to my shock I was completely paralyzed. Suddenly, I felt a huge mass within me. I began to fall. It became heavier to the point that I was free falling, then ‘thump’. The force of the entire universe acted on my feet. I just landed.
I tumbled onto a soft terrain. I couldn’t help myself but cry due to the extreme pain. Trying to gain my balance, I used my bare hands to grasp the ground firmly. I touched grass. Short but hard and spiky grass. I stood up, trying to process what had just happened. However as soon as I looked around me, I was beyond flabbergasted, speechless as I dropped my jaw down to the soil.
I couldn’t believe what my eyes had just perceived. What lied in front of me was an infinitely massive landscape of hills with endless pixels of grasses and skies glamouring across the dead scene of whatever this place is. Just imagine the background from a vintage Windows 97, that but without color.
Why dead? The sky…it was devoid of color. The grass…it was devoid of greenery… Everything was in gray. Nothing is in color, expect for myself, as I could see the blue vein protruding the skin of my arm, let alone my bare skin. I stood up and took the first step. Everything felt dead. There was literally nothing around me, but it felt too familiar.
Have you ever heard of Deja Vu? That was what I was experiencing. It felt as if I was teleported… or rather trespassed into another high level dimension, as a sudden high-pitched screech sent chill down my spines, paralyzing every single muscle tissue in my body.
“Where is it from!?” I looked everywhere, but to no avail I couldn’t find anything. Fight-or-flight response kicked in, and I increased my walking pace as I wander aimlessly across the lifeless field. I stopped when I saw a fading figure over the horizon. It had the shape of a humanoid entity, but looked alien simultaneously. It just stood there menacingly, as if it felt my presence, staring directly into my soul.
A moment later, the entity slowly, but surely started to zoom closer. It was not walking, but hovering towards me without its feet. Once it was about 10 feet away from me, the thing stopped and I could finally see it clearly. Towering me was a 7 feet tall, humanoid entity with slender but long arms and devoid of skin pigments, while wearing an old fancy tuxedo, that’s the best I could describe it. I froze in fear as the sense of creepiness engulfed my emotion.
It had a face, but only a flat face, with no eyes, nose nor mouth. Its emotionless face stared at me for god knows how long, before muttering “Fear not, my child, for thy shall be accompanied by an angel and be escorted to the heavens.”
Its voice was genderless, yet so gentle and relaxing. I only realized it when it introduced itself as God. It told me that my time had come and I shall rest in peace for all I’ve done previously on Earth. The thing was, I couldn’t control my body nor my tongue, and instead it felt like the thing was controlling me instead. I couldn’t even speak at all. I started to walk involuntarily as the thing grabbed my arm and floated to the skies. I also floated with him. “Something’s not right” I thought as my sixth-sense alarm went off.
As I float higher and the sky turned into a brighter blue precipitate, in the most intriguing tone, it muttered “Thy will not regret it. May thy sins be cleansed and thy shall be let in.” I finally saw the red embedded eyes in the figure. It can read my emotions, I knew it. I could feel it as well. I screamed at it to let me go and I forced my way out of ‘God’s grip. However, I failed as pathetic little me could stand no chance against the obviously overpowered entity.
It continued to pull me up so high that I finally saw the true heaven. As the people on Earth usually portrays the heavens to be white clouds with loving angels and golden gates, it was completely the opposite from my perspective. We resided on top of a cliff to have a better view of ‘Heaven’. My eyes widened and my jaw dropped even harder this time as what appeared in front of me would probably haunt my soul until the very end of existence itself.
Instead of beautiful angels with flapping wings, they turned out to be deformed monstrosity of abominations holding golden tridents and angrily devouring and torturing the souls of the damned. I saw the souls being slain, being crushed and tortured beyond human imagination. They were begging for help and mercy, but in vain. Be it an innocent soul or not, every single one of them got the same treatment. I saw it with my bare eyes. There were millions of them being slain and flayed alive. Is this even heaven?
I wanted to vomit when I hear the laughter from some of the demonic angels. As ‘God’ let go of my hand to push me over the cliff, I took the opportunity to flee and escape. I don’t know how was this even possible but maybe luck was at my side. It missed me and I flanked past its sideways. It was a success, but yet, the imagery that I just perceived still remain burned into my retina.
It took me hours to run but my stamina never seemed to end. I was running through a mist of fog, where visibility was merely meters away. About tens of thousands of steps later, where I lost sense of time by that moment, I stepped into an enormous pit. I fell for almost an hour, much longer than it took to ascend just now. Imagine how high was that, but I somewhat managed to survive unscathed.
The scenery returned to the monochromatic landscape but this time I just decided to keep on running. Running away from whatever that abomination was. I could hear a demonic screech from behind me “Oh no! Come back here my creation! Thy will face the consequences!” before I felt a sudden force and I fell into a deep void. My vision turned to total darkness again.
I opened my eyes and saw blue and red strobe lights flashing. There were sirens around me. Finally, something that’s from Earth.
“Patient’s pulse has returned!” I could hear someone screaming beside me. It was a paramedic. They were desperate to resuscitate me. I looked at my other side. From a distance, I saw the man in hoodie. He was so, so dead, for failing to escape the mobs. I wonder if he shared the same fate as mine in the afterlife. I stared at the beautiful night sky before closing my eyes to rest as I was glad to know that I escaped death.
A year had passed since that incident. Every time I look back, countless of questions pondered above my mind. Is the afterlife going to look like this? Is this what happens to people when they depart? Is the afterlife…really that merciless? Am I going to be punished by God once I eventually reach there?
I’m scared. I don’t want my fate to end up being pierced endlessly by the tridents of the demonic angels. The incident is making me to lose my sanity day by day. Every day, I fear death. Every now and then, I could feel the presence of God, knowing that he was waiting for my second time arrival, waiting excitedly to sentence me a punishment worse than I could imagine. Only time will tell. Was it all a reality or just a fiction? Or just a dream? – Nobody knows for sure – even until now.
That’s why, enjoy the current life you have right now, even though it may not be always smooth. Show your appreciation towards your parents, partner, friends, whoever is important in your life because eventually the golden age of our existence will end and the souls of us will succumb into an endless pit of torture, all to entertain the so called ‘God’.