An outside observer might think that, after the profound and life altering experience of dying and being reborn, the threat of imminent death loses some of its teeth.

This is because the outside observer is stupid.

The human – or angel, I’m now realizing – Amygdala cares not for metaphysical trifles like the continued existence of consciousness after death, it cares that the monkey it’s attached to is about to fucking die.

Because of this unfortunate tendency of my under-evolved brain, I was now once again freaking out, and this time at least, everyone in the room was clearly feeling the same thing.

Everyone, that is, except the prayer circle. A group of people who have never so much as heard of “disprovability”, and who can’t come up with less than ten predictions between the nine of them, but are somehow so confident that they’ll pass whatever test our kawaii eldritch spymaster has come up that they’re having a quiet little chuckle at the rest of the room having a full blown panic attack.

Maybe there is a god, maybe the supernatural is real, because these people are clearly possessed.

Vladimir turns to me, face drained of all blood, and opens their mouth to speak. I interrupt them. Their door has started opening.

“You probably don’t want to miss that.” I say.

They quietly nod, and walk into the dark hallway. Behind them, the door not so much closes, as flickers fully closed behind them.

Doors start opening at a roughly uniform rate.

When the first door opens for a member of the prayer group, they stand up, bow at the remaining members of the group, and leave, smug smile on face.

As the room quickly drains, I’m equally quickly filled with dread. Despite every neuron in my prefrontal cortex screaming that I’m equally likely to be in any given quartile, that I’ve got no reason to ascribe any meaning at all to being in the end, my amygdala has the rein and it knows something is up.

My door opens second last, the only other human being left in the room is one of the post-coital partners. I almost feel sorry for them, being the last one left, until they wink at me. I’m not in the mood to add another stain to their collection, so I make a hurried pace to my door.

The hallway inside is dark, unnaturally dark, as if light from outside the room has to penetrate a thick fog to have any chance of meeting my retinas.

Trying to make another step forward, I notice something else. This isn’t a hallway, it’s a room, and a small one at that. I can just about stretch my arm out in front of me, but I can’t extend them to the side. What could the purpose of this room possibly be?

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A quiet hummmm starts to emanate from the room, and my outstretched arms start getting slowly pushed back towards my body.

I quickly check my sides. They’re collapsing inwards too, I can now barely hold my arms thirty degrees out, and even that is rapidly decreasing.

I push as hard as I can manage, trying to fight back against the shrinking room. It doesn’t budge.

As my hands are pushed back just infront of my chest, and my warm hyperventilating breath starts meeting my nose with every exhale, I come to a realization.

This room has a purpose. This room is my coffin.

While every nerve in my body screams at me to fight back, and as panic fills every last nook and cranny of my body, I slump into a ball to give myself a few extra seconds of life, and calm myself down by thinking calming thoughts.

I think of my husband, I think of the good times I’ve had, and I think of my suicide. How I went out of my own accord.

All six walls now touch me, and slowly but surely, they start leaking and moulding around me.

The walls invade my nostrils like a nasogastric tube. They fill my chest, and my stomach, and soon I’m completely surrounded. But somehow still awake.

Am I just stuck here forever? Unable to move a centimetre? Entombed, but alive?

Despite the abject horror of my situation, somehow my amygdala calms down at the word alive. I guess that’s all that matters to it in the end.

Soon, my stomach twists and I feel like vomiting, and I would if not for the black cement filling my gastric tract. I go to wretch, but I can’t even move enough for that. To my great relief, soon the feeling begins to depart, and the substance removes itself from my body.

Now, throat free, I heave, and my insides become outsides.

The dark wall, mere centimetres from my face, is covered in by orange vomit. It smells like Parmesan, and leaks on my chin.

Despite my recent near death, and the complete lack of people in the room, I find this embarrassing, and long for a shower.

I watch the orange splotch recede into the distance, once it hits about an arms length away, it suddenly disappears, and is instantly replaced by a blood red door.

It humms, and pulses.

Before I can work up the courage to open it, a man strides through carrying a pink clipboard.

He takes one look at me, and bursts into laughter.

“Ha! The guys in maintenance are gonna have a fit when they see this!”

He grabs my hand and pulls.

“Come on! We can clean you up later, we have to do something important first.” He says, “We have paperwork to file.”