It's awfully pink in here.

It spread from the center of my awareness and seeped into my periphery until it was all I saw.

What is this?

It was the very first thing I noticed after coming to. Or rather, whatever happened after I died. Couldn't remember what caused my death, but somehow, I knew that I did die. I can't remember why.

This is strange...

I remembered who I was, where I came from, and how I came to be in that other world. Inconsistent, considering the lopsided logic of what I knew and what I didn't know, but understandable. After all, people typically don't remember things after their untimely demise. That's what most believe, I suppose. The end should be immutable, silent, fleeting. Memories were meant to be a belonging left behind after death, and I like the many before me took it as the truth. To see the contrary came as a surprise.

But that's just conjecture, isn't it? Who would know except those that went before?

As for my rose-tinted existence, I didn't 'see' the color, although I could only describe it as sight. Instead, it was more of a feeling. A sixth sense, or some visual analog of proprioception allowed my body to collectively agree that the world around me was pink.

It's as if I have countless eyes all vying to tell me the same thing.

Moreover, it was a very thick pink, viscous, and difficult to feel any appreciable heat or cold from. That, or perhaps I just didn't have the faculties 'to' sense temperature.

It would be nice to at least feel warm.

Taste-wise, well, that was the confusing part. My olfactory senses seemed absent from duty, and taste along with it. I don't think I had a cold to stifle them, but since I'm dead I don't think it was possible to catch one.

Would the dead even want to smell their corpse anyway?

It was what stood in lieu of these sensations that convinced me otherwise. I had this abstract notion of texture and presence which felt... uncomfortably close by, if that makes sense. A sensory deprivationist's view of claustrophobia could be a way to describe the experience.

One step short of a contradiction, to tell the truth.

They're poor substitutes by any standard, that much went without saying, but they were still enough to tell me that this 'pink' had the viscidity of molasses.

The pink was also quite extensive, according to that sense of presence. It dwarfed me by several times in nearly every direction, which was a little imposing. I viewed myself as a rather well-elevated man. It would be no small feat to make me feel small as I did now, yet here I was. Determining how big it was would probably take some time with my limited array of senses.

It would've behooved me to have gone without them. Maybe this is how those blind from birth think?

On that note, setting out to explore this pinkness led me to my first impasse: my body wasn't the same anymore. Interestingly, I lacked any skeletal or phrenological structure, and it followed that I hadn't any organs or limbs to accompany them. My body wasn't even a bag of bones. It was just the bag. I was half-convinced I didn't have any way to move until I discovered how to wriggle.

It's probably more accurate to say I'm wobbling like a precarious glob of gelatin.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It took some getting used to. Those engrained constants of where my head and feet were from when I was alive soon deteriorated into confusion. If I had a stomach, it would've lurched several times as I flip-flopped over and over again. The whole process felt unwieldy, and it took quite a bit of concentration to reorient my perspective.

I suppose we all have lessons to relearn. Unfortunately, I don't have the pleasure of limbs.

Several failed attempts taught me it was unwise cleaving to what I once knew. Grudgingly, I was forced to discard my human habits and let myself sink into whatever orientation my body took at each revolution. To my surprise, it proved to be remarkably effective, and I was soon on my way into the wild pink yonder.

Eventually, I bumped into the end of the pink, where there was an edge. It didn't cascade over into a bottomless void, nor was it the furthest extent of my world. Instead, there was a barrier, which I assumed to be an encircling affair. Smooth, and somehow my senses told me that it was transparent. Light lensed through, diffracting into the surface of the pink to give it a fluorescent glow. The barrier to my progress was most likely glass, judging by these properties, but I couldn't 'see' outside of it. Perhaps the range of my senses couldn't distinguish anything beyond, or they simply couldn't process light in the way I was used to.

Light in itself is a mystery, despite humanity's knowledge concerning it. Considering that mystery layered upon my own, it's only natural there would be more.

It was rather disappointing. I hoped there was some way around it, but after an excessive amount of rolling later, I couldn't find any openings. Climbing up was impossible. Whatever my body used for a frictive couldn't find purchase against the barrier's smooth surface. Descending wasn't an option either, since there was no down. Unless I could phase through the metal flooring, as one might expect of a specter of the dead, which seemed about as likely as getting used to the topsy-turvy locomotion I had to live with. But even then, what would I do? If I didn't have a human form, as all evidence seemed to point towards, would I even survive on the outside? This pink fluid might be essential for nutrition or keeping me alive in general for all I knew. If I was alive, that is.

Like air, I guess?

After wrestling with those thoughts, I soon capitulated to common sense. Though that's ironic coming from me. Nothing was commonplace or made any sense at all. Little told me what purpose there was for me to be here and a bit foreboding that not one engagement or sign had shown itself yet.

At least, that was until I felt a sharp jolt.

Something akin to a several-hundred-volt electric shock coursed throughout my abstract anatomy. I had no voice to scream, and it probably wouldn't have carried through the viscous amniotic fluid given the contrary. But scream I did, internally, subsiding only after many excruciating seconds passed. Needles pricked every fiber of my being, and I ruefully cursed while rolling about.

[Proficiency requirements met. Rudimentary Locomotion awarded.]

[Rudimentary Locomotion: Despite your limitations, you have successfully discovered a viable method to overcome your immobility. +1 Dexterity, +1 Agility]

The words echoed in some corner of my consciousness in a flat monotone. Their speaker didn't seem to have a discernable gender, but I had a vague suspicion it was feminine. Could have just been my imagination, but I hadn't the presence of mind to think that one out.

How cliché. But that much told me everything I needed to know. I wasn't into games or fantasy all that much in my previous life, but that didn't stop me from learning about them. It would probably be more accurate to say that most of my friends were into those things, while I casually shrugged off their sermons praising -and cursing- gacha, role-players, or numerous acronyms and pseudonyms I hadn't the faintest idea what were for. Their overbearing infatuation with them didn't help much either.

I've often wondered why people devote themselves to them.

Hmmm... at least how the world around me worked was straightforward, albeit as convoluted and unexplained my death and inexplicable resurrection was. It also implied that I probably wasn't in "the bad place". After that panic attack, Hell might've been an appropriate conclusion to make.

It's a bit hasty to think that pain is equivalent to the bad place. Maybe.

Recovery from that notice took several minutes. I felt winded, even though I didn't have lungs. Biologically speaking, cellular respiration probably wasn't necessary for staying alive, if I qualified as being alive. My aquatic environment informed me of that early on.

I assume I'm something like an amoeba now, but without an external view of myself, I couldn't make that judgment. That is if self-perception as an eye-less, ear-less, nose-less mass fell within any sensible realm of possibility. Outside my proprioceptive capability, which told me nothing about my body's makeup or appearance, it might not.

Which left me at a loss.

I'm supposed to be dead, yet I'm alive without any idea of what I am anymore.