Lightheadedness assaulted my being. Something felt off… Well… Everything felt off. Or did it? It was a strange feeling. Emptiness. The incapability of feeling anything at all. Nor limbs, nor anything, really. A truly out-of-body experience. Literally.

I looked at my surroundings to find absolute nothingness. Not even my body. The pitch-black existence enveloped me. A limitless horizon, only populated by the darkest black, as if I had turned blind. Until it did not. It felt like blinking, even though, I had no body to speak of. No eyelids were fluttered, yet, in a single motion, the world changed.

The previous monotonous black scenery became akin to a cave. Except the cave had a lack of ceiling, which was substituted by even more infinite obscurity, and the whole place was exuding fog. I wasn’t able to describe the floor below me, even if I could identify it as a rocky cave floor. It was… strange. I knew that there was bedrock below, yet something told me that wasn’t true. Or real, to be more accurate. What that something is, I cannot tell.

I suddenly found myself moving, contrary to my will to stay in place. An unnatural, or maybe natural, force pushed me to move forward. For some reason, I couldn’t manage to defy it, my body (or whatever I possessed currently) considered it as menial, not a hostile and forced action. It was then that I saw the rest.

Beings of dense, semi-opaque fog surrounded me.

They weren’t hostile, in fact, they had the same objective as me. Whatever it was. We moved together, though not at the same pace. Some were faster, others slower. I was on the slow end of the spectrum, seeing everyone outrun (out-float?) me.

These beings were not like each other, even if they had the same characteristics. All of them were floating ovals of this strange opaque fog. The color of the fog alternated between every individual. Some were almost pitch-black, others irradiated white, while the majority was a greyish tone. No matter the individual, everyone had a bit of each of these colors. One may be a near-black fog-being and yet they could have white dots that resembled eyes.

The more obscure fog-beings had grey eyes and were totally opaque. Whilst the absolute majority, while opaque, had some translucent structure. There seemed to be no correlation between their coloration and speed. I pondered if my over-analytical mindset was a way to elude whatever was happening.

My observations paid no reward, but at least they entertained me while we arrived at our destination. A river of muddy water. Black slug followed the stream of the waters. Some strings of turquoise water could be seen, yet they were rapidly swallowed by the slug. It was unnerving how something so thick could flow at such speeds.

The fog-beings entered the current of unknown fate. There wasn’t any hesitation. It was their destiny. (Why do I know that?) Even then… why did they cry in agony when their bodies touch the waters? The massless beings were dragged by the force of nature. The cacophony of suffering awakened something in me. I should not enter there. That was made quite obvious.

Every fiber of my being resonated with that notion, yet even if my intentions were otherwise, I couldn’t resist the force that kept me walking toward my oblivion.

Why?

Why is this painful? Why am I here? … Who am I?

Even as death tolled right before me, I didn’t push it away. Was I dead? Was this some sort of afterlife? A myriad of questions kept coming in a single uncounted instant. But most importantly, who am I?

That answerless question resonated within me.

In my distracted mind, I hadn’t noticed that my body had already touched the waters.

Strange.

I felt nothing. Not the flow of water, not any pain, nor my body. Well, the latter I already knew. The continuous cacophony of cries indicated this should be painful and torturous, though I had yet to experience the same feeling as the nearby fog-beings.

As a matter of fact, I was resisting the stream. Not that I was swimming upstream, mind you. I stayed still, like a rock fighting a river. Except I was literally in a river and that didn’t work as a good comparison. My willpower was only enough to keep me rooted, still better than getting carried away by awful-looking tar.

I stood there for a good time. Don’t know how much. The only company I had were the cries of misery of the poor beings that were forced to do this. Whatever it is. From time to time more beings flowed at a given moment, and even if there seemed to be instances where the black river was to the point of overflowing with such crowds, the opposite hadn’t happened. Every instant there was a being floating down, getting swallowed, or entering the river, never the current of black tar was empty. I wonder how. Where were these beings coming from and why did they appear to be infinite?

To be honest, there was a lot more unanswered question that I kept to myself. The timeless passage of time told me nothing, I could only assume that time was even a thing as the stream of sludge never ceased.

For a moment I decided to count the beings outrunning me, then the next one I stopped as the next number was way longer to think than the interval between each one coming next. The only thing I knew for real was that no other creature of fog was able to defy the black river, I was the only one able to stay still. Well, I wasn’t even sure of that either. It wasn’t within my capabilities to turn around and look upstream, I could only see the beings who had overrun me. For all that I knew, there could be an infinite number of beings that also managed to fight the unrelenting force of the river, and it just so happened I was the last one who did so.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard something. Strange. All this time I hadn’t heard anything apart from the cries. The river itself was mute, with no sound provided from the stream, the initial sounds were but an illusion. That, or I had grown accustomed to the sound. Either way, a creaking was approaching. Maybe a creature of the dark, it didn’t matter really. I couldn’t move and I was stuck looking downstream while the sound came from behind.

The creaking was getting nearer and nearer. The soundtrack of my death? Perhaps. I actually hoped it got here sooner, I was getting quite bored. Final death sounded like a more entertaining destiny than this.

My wish was fulfilled as something hit me from behind.

I could hear a loud crash at my rear. It had definitively hit with force. I didn’t feel pain, per se, but the sound was so strenuous that it made me imagine a shock of monumental proportions.

“Aaa-rgh.” I heard a guttural sound from behind. A bit scary, to be honest. But a feeling of dread was far more enjoyable than no feeling at all.

“My, what do we have here?” Another voice, a feminine one, told at my back. The voice was young, yet it had a spark of sensuality.

I felt as if something rough grabbed me and yanked me out of my station. I was moved to a place that seemed to be a gondola, decorated with a lot of pillows of a plethora of colors. My captor stood out, a scrawny, boney, and pallid man that lacked eyes, but what was truly noteworthy was the other passenger. A beauty only known in legends showed before me. Wearing a white Victorian dress (what does that even mean?) that exuberated frills, a woman of jet-black hair and light-blue eyes that contained the power of winter itself.

“Aa-ng…” The not-truly-dead being which I presumed to be a man grunted.

“Yes, truly strange.” The woman responded as if she understood that grunt. “A pure white soul flowing the rivers.”

What did she say? A soul? Was she talking about me? If so, then I was truly dead. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. I already went over innumerable scenarios in my mind, and this one wasn’t even the most worrying.

My thoughts were interrupted as the scrawny man left me on the floor of the gondola. I just noticed that he was the rower once I noticed the stone oars he was wielding, but I think that was a bit obvious either way.

“Can you hear me, untainted soul?” The woman talked with a soothing, warm tone. Her voice was incredibly sweet as if I could even taste it.

I wanted to say ‘yes’, but that was beyond my capabilities. I tried to wiggle a bit, to see if I could carry the message.

“I see.” She answered, “do you remember anything?”

I stood immobile and looked at her to transmit my negation. I had become quite a professional in the art of not doing anything if I say so myself.

“Nothing at all?” I was as reactive as a statue. “Well, this is clearly an anomaly. I have never seen something like this. Pure souls like you shouldn’t be here. This place is one for tormenting the evil and wicked, those in need of purification.”

Then how did I end up in this... underworld?

“I do not know, child.” She talked back as she understood my wordless question. “But I wouldn’t want to send a good soul to its perdition. It would be a burden on my soul.”

Was that a pun? Sorry ma’am, not in the mood for jokes.

“The only help that I could give you would be to throw you once again in the cycle of reincarnation.” The woman adjusted her umbrella.

Wait. Did she always have an umbrella? Is it me or has she taken it out of nowhere?

“Ag... un…” The ferryman seemed to protest at the lady’s proposition.

“Oh, don’t be such a bore, …”

I recoiled as the sound the lady produced struck me true. It hurt. I haven’t felt everything like it since… ever. My whole was shaken in pain, yet, I was happy about it. Not only could I feel, but in a way, I could move. What had she said, though? Was it the name of the rower that induced me such damage?

“Ogh...” The ferryman grunted in acceptance.

It seems I had lost the whole conversation whilst I was pondering over my suffering. I didn’t think I was out of commission for more than a moment, but I don’t even know how to measure time.

“What did you think? Reincarnation or eternal suffering?”

The woman said with a beautiful, mother-like smile. And it was creepy as hell. The dissonance between her words and her actions resonated further beyond the endless cacophony of torment present in the river. I had never feared more for my life, or whatever my current status was, yet a primal instinct overtook me.

“You will be able to conserve your memories. If they even remain.” The last part carried uncertainty, something you wouldn’t expect from such a divine entity.

Oh, thanks. That changes things. From a yes to an absolute yes.

“I see you’ve made up your mind.” The lady put her umbrella down. “Even I could tell that the answer was pretty obvious.” A bit self-depreciative, don’t you think?

The woman, dressed like a porcelain doll, stood up and grabbed me. She looked at me with her cold, chilling eyes. Truly the essence of the winter. But amidst the endless snowstorm, I could foresee a glint of life. A light so powerful it could erase any blizzard with ease.

“Whoever you were in life, it has now ended.” She began. “Lost soul, whose death has claimed you. Pure soul, which place has been wrongfully given. Now, just soul, you begin to walk a new path, a new life, and a new death. Yet not be discouraged by it, because death is just the end of the path.”

I couldn't explain why, but her words carried more than meaning. They carried power as if the world itself shifted around her voice.

“I may have forgotten to tell you that I have no power in how or what you will reincarnate, but I doubt it will change your decision.” She added with a rascal smile.

It does not.

With a small nod, the mythical beauty indicated she got my message. A new feeling overwhelmed my body. Instead of dread and death, of eternity and torment; it became a revitalizing breeze, short but strong. In this brief instant, I could tell it was the force of life. An unknown factor to this dead realm, yet familiar energy to me.

“Our conversation may have been short, yet I feel I have learned more of the realm in such a speck of time than I have done in ages.” She looked me in the eyes, or where I felt they should be, her facial expressions sweetening. There was something melancholic in the image, though I couldn’t recall why. “Farewell, untainted soul.” Her words contained power beyond my comprehension.

Farewell, lady of the river of the dead.

I hope she got my message. In another impossible blink, the scenario changed once more.