Purgatory was neither hot nor cold. Human beings often had that one misconception of the afterlife in its everlasting glory. Purgatory turned out to be room temperature; many souls weren’t shocked to have their assumptions shattered based on this minor discovery. On the contrary, they barely looked conscious enough to perform such a reaction at all.

The souls were in lines; each were arranged neatly into a countless number of endless rows. The floating spheres of light that possessed an array of different shades and hues of colours. Before the background of an abyssal darkness, it was a grand scenery of a billion blooming flowers.

I knew not where I was or how I got here or why; my mind was barely alive during the entire process.

I only seemed to know of Order. Rebirth. Redemption. Hope.

The obsession even came in that particular order. I could think of nothing else.

Order. Rebirth. Redemption. Hope. Nothing more.

I wasn’t abled an access to memories at the time. There was an ache in my (seemingly non-existent) head that chanted words in my voice, but certainly not by me as it kept echoing. And it was mechanical in its tone, almost bored. It was an exact image I’d have for people stuck in a mental hospital from the movies. Whereupon in an extended therapy, as you sit alone in a cell and forced to heal a sickness you can’t be rid of like late-staged cancer; in the background would be a voice like this- cold and robotic, yet the voice would help me survive. It was the only source of reality I’d get.

Funnily enough, if the entire world had only been this still, life would have been much more peaceful. It would’ve been much pleasant for anyone else that mysteriously only had insuppressibly urges to harm another with their body or words.

The line moved; changes were subtle but definitely there. I waited as I chanted religiously.

Order. Rebirth. Redemption. Hope.

I knew nothing else.

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They said with every second that passes, Death turns to Life as Life turns to Death.

The queue I was in started to quicken in its pace. Souls disappeared at the front line while more piled behind; the ratio was consistent. I was at the further back, so I knew not of where the others went. No sense of anticipation rose. Fear became something to be forgotten.

There was the field of flowers, the chant, and an eternity more to wait before anything happened.

When the end of the line came close, I saw angels- wingless and without a halo, they were beautiful. Before my first death, Earth had known humans to be created after the image of God. They were wrong somewhat, because I turned bias and concluded that we were created after angels first, and God would appear as nothingness for they are, and aren’t.

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I drifted to the middle of a circle written in an archaic language. My mind was in between flickers of consciousness still; the circle glowed. My dazed state felt a tug beneath. A mysterious force started to pull itself apart and I felt as though I was drowning.

The memory was vague, but I exchanged breaths with water once. My young self was… running, I recalled. I left the place I lived and rode on a dull coloured bus with a mind that desired freedom and escape. I remembered I stood before a line that separated sand and sea; where salt left the air thick and I was free. The sky was a sorrowful grey, pale in its hue- it was early morning, couldn’t be more than half past five. The sun had yet to rise but I was already awake and running.

I’d trembled as the water reached my feet. Or was it me that reached it first…? I walked, jogged, ran; a step at a time- deeper. Further into the sea where it was colder as well. The sound of waves blended with a sharp cries of water birds. ‘away,’ I’d screamed. ‘Away, where they’ll never know.’

There was guilt.

Fear.

No order, nor hope. I desired a healthy loneliness where rebirth and redemption would take me… away.

I remembered taking the life of someone away. A life I believed belonged to me; I had every right. I was righteous, but guilty. Why?

The pieces wouldn’t click. Everything turned into a blur. Bamboo, blood, rope, the sea. Salt, water, birds, clouds, morning. There was earth, I think? Then lavender. Yes, lavender. It also seemed to be the memory that tugged at the roots of my heart the hardest.

As the water hit my nose, my head tilted up in instinct. I was afloat and drifting quite a distance away from shore while shirtless. I tasted salt in its absolute state of rawness; my eyes burned as I sluggishly fought to keep them blinking and not just shut tight from the onslaught of seawater going into mine eyes. My legs had kicked even though I tried to keep them still.

I wanted to sink, then drown and get it over with- but unlike the common movies, my body refused to sink; I couldn’t drown and it was a devastating set of news to behold. I hated pain and helplessness; and that was the state I simply left myself in. I wanted to die. The need overpowered every other ounce of emotion within the flash of memory. I wanted to my life to come to a reasonable finality but all the more similarly, I found it difficult to recall why.

I choked, and tried to scream. My eyes fluttered, as dark curls of hair stuck to my forehead. My skin was cold; my eyeballs burnt. My legs tired and so did my flailing arms. The breeze’s scent was thick with salt and life.

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I awake to a sleep I hadn’t remembered falling to. Before me was a building in the midst of construction. I felt confused by the array of events. The slight knock of bricks gradually brought pieces of my attention back. Floating clay piled on top each other purposefully. The building built itself; every detail upon its walls and floors came into picture not after. There wasn’t wind.

I was soon in a familiar church; the one Uncle held his fortunate farewells in.

An echoing voice boomed. Neither male nor female. It simply was. A voice meant for the sole purpose of convenient communication.

“Tis your turning point, this one.”

What…?

“Tis your start as well, this one.”

“Tis a calm to your sorrows, thus covet not another tomorrow child o’ mine. Tis all yours, this one is. For We allow it; for tis Our Will.”

Who are you?

“We are not. We are. For tis Our Will; for We allow it.”