It was cold. So very cold.

A ghastly cold only known to the perished. I had known not death, yet I knew so…

Surely, the day I die, this is what I will find – cold, like the depths of sea; darkness, like the ends of space; and nothingness, like the purgatorial void.

It was strange. How did I know that? Had it been taught to me in the past? Or perhaps I had always known? Instinctively. As the birds know when it will storm, as herds know how to migrate. As the moon knows when to rise, and the sun knows when to slumber.

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Was I then conscious?

Having become aware of something only the subconscious ever would. In what state did that suggest?

Perhaps conscious. Or subconscious.

Perhaps awake. Or in slumber.

Perhaps alive. Or perished.

Perhaps both. Or neither.

Perhaps lost in a realm in-between. A dreamlike, hyper realistic realm that teetered between life and death, reality and fiction. In someways both, in someways neither.

Adhering to preestablished rules, yet not even following its own.

Where my mind was free to wander as it pleased. Entertaining every passing thought, going off on incoherent tangents that never really went anywhere. Limited only by what it could imagine, yet having an eternity to begin to fathom.

And yet, my body remained prisoner of the void.

In this state my existence seemed to continue. For now, and perhaps forever.