Its getting harder to breathe.

I can barely feel my lungs expanding with every breath. The tubes on my mouth and nose feel suffocating, despite their purpose. Noises around me feel distant and muffled. The beeps and whirs of machines, the sob and murmurs of the people around me, the hushed discussions being made on my condition, all of them bleed out into white noise.

I faintly feel something gripping my hand. The grasp is firm but my senses are too shot to feel its strength. A blurred figure blocks the light of the ceiling I've been staring at for what feels to be ages. The face is familiar, but indistinct. I feel tears from their face fall to mine. The drops feel cold as they hit me. That cold seems to to spread as my vision darkens. The noise fades, as if someone was turnign down the volume. Silence hits me first, before my vision fades to black.

...

" ----- -----."

A familar voice says what sounds like a name.

"Accomplished author at the age of 13. Your literary work gained world reknown even before the public found out it was written by a child. You were smart. Gifted, people called you. You were already set up to take studies years before your cotemporaries."

This story. I know it.

"Diagnosed with lung cancer by the age of 14. It was already in the advance stages when they found it. Treatment looked promising. Doctors were optimistic that they could buy you at least 10 years."

I try to open my eyes. The weight feels as if I've never opened them before.

"After 3 months of treament, complications came up. You were confined to a room where you could barely move or breathe. You died 2 years later."

At last I see the face on the person talking to me. He looked young, mid-teens, dark unruly hair, thinly built. His features were rounded and gentle, but his eyes looked tired and weary. A face I recognize. It was my face.

I look to what appears to be a reflection, except that his expression did not match my own. I feel my jaw unhinge in bewilderment as my memories slowly come back to me. The person across me was smiling, as if to console me. He looked like me in what appears to be a white hospital gown. I look down to my own body to see that I was wearing the same thing.

"Who... Are you me?"

My duplicate chuckled. "In a way, yes and no." He says gently. "I am your guide from here on out, taking a form which you are most comfortable with."

I take a moment to collect myself. "So... I've died huh?"

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"I'm afraid so."

I feel a pain in my chest. A profound sense of defeat. What felt like countless battles of slim victories culminated into nothing.

I feel my nails dig into my palms as curl my hands into a fist. The anger, the frustration that has welled in me for those 2 years of pain start to boil up again. I tried, dammit. I did my best. What else could I have done? I felt robbed. Pranked into a horrible joke. 

"Its... not fair." my words escape me.

My duplicate puts his hands on my shoulders, and quietly says "No. Its not... It seldom is."  I feel tears run to my face. "Take all the time you need. We are in no rush."

I cry for what feels like years. The other me pulls me into a hug and lets me wail. I shout, I scream and I curse. My yells echo around the void that we occupy.

Eventually I stop. I try to collect myself as I continue to sob. The other me releases me from the embrace and faces me with the same smile. I gather my thoughts and try to be coherent.

"So.. what now?" I ask. I quietly appreciate that thoughts are still my own. At least there was something after all. "Is there an afterlife? Am I going to heaven? Hell?"

My duplicate starts to beam. "Thats actually interesting." He straightens up and looks me in the eye. "Now, if you wish to stop here, you can. It will be like going to sleep. You will no longer feel tired, pain or anything. You will simply rest. Your soul will be reborn into a new life, and you will forget everything"

So the void after death is a thing. I suppose I shoud be grateful that its a choice.

"You had what we would call an 'unfufilled life'. So you have the choice to be reborn as you are now. Your thoughts and your being will be reborn into a entity different from what you are in your previous life." As he talks, what appears to be the night sky appears around us. Like the clearest skies only seen in photographs, tiny lights and shapes fill the void. Stars, celestial bodies, nebulas and galaxies appear to circle around us.

"Because of your circumstance, you have been granted the choice to be an entity of power in a world unlike your own." He continues as the grin on his face widens. "You have lived your life frustrated with your circumstance. You worked hard despite your condition. As such you are deemed worthy..."

Something flickers in my duplicates eyes. A spark of what feels like mischief. The dark back surrounding us turns slowly to a shade of crimson.

"...to become the Demon of Sloth in this new world."