After death

I always wondered what death felt like. If it really felt like anything at all. I mean, even with all the technological progress humanity has made in the past few decades, what happens after death is still, to this day, beyond human comprehension.

So what I did was pretty much the biggest gamble anyone could've ever done.

And right now, I was afraid that my plan might not have worked out.

After the flames disintegrated every last cell in my body and I died, I lost consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time.

After regaining consciousness, the first thing I realized is that I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. All of my senses were useless.

Actually, that wasn't it. It's not that my senses were useless, I had none. I had no body. All I could perceive were my own thoughts.

This sure wasn't what I imagined Hell to be like. There were no pits of fire, no demons, there was nothing.

I didn't end up in Hell or any place like that. I ended up in a boundless expanse of black, inside the void, with nothing left but my own thoughts. And I'd probably stay this way for all eternity.

Well, I would be lying if I were to say this wasn't one of the options I imagined could happen when I was formulating my plan.

I thought about countless possibilities like getting reincarnated in this world with losing my memories or perhaps getting transmigrated into another world. I even considered the possibility that God, if he exists, would see through my plans and decide, by some twisted logic, to invite me to Heaven, despite my sins, therefore ruining my plans.

However, this one was the worst of all of them. I would've preferred any of the above options.

That does not mean that I haven't thought of a plan for this particular scenario.

For now, I should keep my head clear for as long as I can, because I was fairly certain that madness wasn't a matter of 'if' but 'when' in the void.

I started meditating, completely ridding my head of any unnecessary thoughts and focusing only on one thing.

My soul.

I assumed that the concept of a soul must be real if I'm able to exist without a body.

Since 'the soul' is often depicted as a bright orb of light, I tried to formulate a picture of exactly that in my mind, as clearly as I could.

As I had no body to worry about and there were absolutely no distractions, that combined with my extreme focus honed throughout the years from before my death, this task proved to be relatively easy. What I was worried more about though was the second, more important part.

Moving.

Not in the conventional sense, as I had no body to move, but I wanted to see if it was somehow possible to move my consciousness throughout this nothingness.

I added a black background to the image in my mind and then tried to slowly move it. But it didn't budge.

Of course I wasn't expecting it to work out on the first try.

I kept trying over and over again for what felt like months, but could have very well been just a few hours, but I wasn't 'feeling' any movement.

The problem wasn't that I wasn't moving, no, actually, this whole time I have been unable to move the image of my soul in my mind.

That meant one of two things: either I didn't even have full control over my thoughts which would be disastrous, or the other one, which I hoped to be the case:

I had actually successfully been able to 'access' my soul.

This was a good thing, but it would also confirm that I can't really control it's movement, as it has no inherent movement capabilities.

But of course, that in no way meant that I was out of ideas.

Because at one point during my meditation, when my focus shifted slightly off my soul, I felt a ripple in the space around me.

If, somehow, I could use that effect to my advantage, I should be able to move around.

Falling back into meditation, I shifted my focus towards the space around me, trying to cause more ripples.

I was only able to generate small, uneffective ripples at first, but as time passed by in this endless and timeless expanse, I started being able to control them more and more, until eventually I made a breakthrough.

I finally did it.

I managed to move my soul.

It felt so weird and unnatural, but I could tell that it definitely worked.

Knowing that it was not yet time to celebrate, I started slowly navigating throughout the void.

Rarely, I would 'feel' other souls inside this space, none of which ever seemed to show any signs of activity.

These other souls also seemed to be different from me.

Or rather, I was different from them.

If I had to put it into words, then I'd say that the color of my soul was... slightly off.

I tried to interact with them, but it proved to be pointless.

I knew that unless something significant happens, I'll be trapped here forever.

***

I don't know how long I have been flying through this emptiness.

Days? Month? Years?

It didn't matter.

The only thing that did matter was that I finally found something worthy of notice.

I sensed a distortion in the space ahead of me. Nothing like the nothingness that I've been trapped in. And the space beyond the distortion seemed to emit a rather sinister and ominous aura.

It was a portal.

A portal which would lead me out of this place.

But it was rather odd.

With how vast this space was, weren't the chances of me finding a portal near zero.

It's almost as if someone meant for me to find it.

But.. no, that's impossible. I should stop overthinking.

Why would anyone want me to deliberately find a portal out of this place?

Leaving that train of thought, I tried to enter the portal.

But I couldn't. It felt almost as if the space beyond the portal was rejecting me.

But I wouldn't give up. Not after getting so close to finally escaping.

I tried everything I could think of.

From trying to identify and dispel the repulsive force inside the portal to simply just forcing my way through, I made little to no progress.

Just when I ran out of ideas, I suddenly felt a soul nearing me, but it was unlike any others I've encountered.

It appeared as a bright, golden light.

Its appearance made me really wary, since I had seen no other active souls before, but before I even had the chance to react, the soul slammed into me.

It was incredibly fast.

I was enveloped with bright light, as the soul aimed for the portal with me in its hold.

Under its power, the seal that was preventing me from passing snapped easily.

But before I fully passed, I heard an almost divine voice echo inside my head, saying:

"I hope you won't disappoint me."