I didn't believe in the supernatural, didn't accept the teaching of any god. I was a strict atheist. I had a simple belief; there was no creator, there was nothing after death, nobody that would make what you've sacrificed worth it. So live the life you have to the fullest.
I'm ashamed to admit I didn't do that. I wasn't old or very young. I had been drifting through life, just passing time by doing useless and random stuff. I still worked a job, still kept myself healthy, still had something of a social life. But I was stagnant, content. I never pushed for the next thing.
Never knew how much I let slip through my fingers until I suddenly lost it all. The accident wasn't terrible, a car crash. Some injuries, nothing truly bad. No, it was the bill that did the most damage. I didn't have insurance. So with the cost of a car, plus the medical bills for my injuries and the sudden inability to work thanks to those injuries. I was homeless, out of cash and with wounds that made the elements a direct threat to my life.
I tried reaching out, perhaps someone I knew would be fine letting me crash at their place until this all smoothed over. Automated messages greeted me and the few I got through to said they couldn't. I got desperate, and called somebody I hadn't in a long time.
The phone crackled, the sounds of it dialling up echoing in the street as I stood underneath a overhang, snow white and soft coated the surrounding street and road. I was alone and the chill had set in. On and on the line rang until a soft click and a deep voice echoed into the shell of my ear.
"What do ya want"
I opened my mouth, hundreds of thoughts flittered through my head. But all I managed to stay was a few words.
"Hello dad..."
The line went silent. I could feel the tension in the air, it stung. I knew I didn't have a good relation with him but... surely it was that bad? I swallow and spoke quickly, hoping he wasn't about to hang up on me.
"Dad... I... I'm in a bit of a rough spot... I-"
A loud sigh cut me and, I felt the rest of the words drain out of me. My body felt weak, this was the final chance I had, if I lost this. I would surely freeze to death. I felt like the world had curved inward, my whole life. It all seemed to condense into that moment. Everything I'd ever done, it had built up to a freezing crescendo.
"Jeramiah. I'm sorry, but I can't."
I froze, my mind lock down and I stared at the ground, at my ragged shoes that barely covered my feet. I didn't even notice the call ending, the final click followed by utter silence. I shuddered, a laugh of pure madness bubbling up out of my chest as I stumbled out from underneath the overhang and into the snow covered road. I trudged forward, choking sobs of anger at it all out into the night.
I stopped in the middle of the street and looked up, into the sky above. No cloud blocked my vision and I smiled, my eyes softening for just a moment. Then I felt my legs giving out and I felt like a tree. I hit the cold snow with a thud. But I'd died standing, smiling at the heavens above.
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The instant I woke in that room I almost thought I'd only passed out and was in some manner of hospital. Then my eyes adjusted to the brightness and I noticed I was sitting before a large wooden desk. It was made out of some strange wood, it looked wrong and felt old. Patterns no normal tree could produce shimmered from underneath a coating of some kind of clear paint.
I looked around, pulling my gaze from the strangely imposing desk. I sat on a small stool, around me was a typical office room, some bookshelves aligned the walls behind me and a door sat to my left. I furrowed my brow, this place felt wrong. I turn back looking at the desk, that was when I realised what was making me feel off.
The desk had nobody sitting behind it. That fact for some reason had me shivering. I rubbed my hands together only to stop, memories flooded in. I recall standing underneath the overhang, speaking to my father in the first time in years
Then walking out onto the road, looking up, feeling the cold I'd been fighting off break past some barrier inside me. The chill setting in so deep I didn't even notice when my heart stopped beating. As the memories started to organise and I made sense of what I was remembering I started to hyperventilate.
No..
It cannot be, I can't be dead. Not like that...
But... if I was...
Where am I?
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The first day, or at least what I thought could have been a day was spent arguing with my mind. This was a dream, this wasn't real. I when through it all. Then finally after hours, I swallow my pride down and accepted it. I was dead, this was the afterlife. But there was still something that nagged at me. If this was the afterlife, where was god?
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I had tried to get up when that thought had hit me, clearly god or whatever presided after the afterlife wasn't here. So naturally it was up to me to go and find them.
Go find god.
But I found no matter how hard I tried, when I attempted to get up. I would just not. It was like I was stuck to the chair. No, it was something more. Every time I told myself, ok. Time to get up. That would go through clearly, I would be able to reason that I was just sitting on a chair and could very easily get up. But the moment I tried to get up I found myself reasoning that I shouldn't, or I couldn't. It was like my mind just, turned against me whenever I tried to get off the chair.
The worst part was I didn't even notice it at first. It was only when after another attempt to get up I finally noticed how strange I was acting. Why was I activity attempting to get up, yet whenever I tried to get up I found myself refusing to get up. I of course freaked out, who wouldn't? But eventually even the most mentally unstable of people get a grip and decide to continue trying anyway.
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It took a year.
A full year until I was able to get up off the chair. I didn't grow hungry, or tired or even thirsty. The only thing that changed was my hair, it grew long and hung off my head like long black ropes. I'd braided them at some point, I didn't remember but with how little I had to do in that long year I felt quite mad.
There was only so much time you could withstand sitting on a chair, only able to look at the same room around you with the constant sense something was desperately wrong.
But, that didn't matter I was up off the chair! I first checked the door, the plain wooden thing with a metal handle had been bugging me since the beginning. I grasped the smooth spherical head and twisted. It opened with a soft click and I pulled it open to reveal...
A wall.
It was made of a plain white plaster, much like the rest of the room. I stared at the wall for a long while. A faint hope that had burned inside me for the longest time having been squashed at the moment. I was trapped here, there was no escape.
I started laughing and banging my fists on the wall. How dare they, how dare they do this to me? How dare they give me false hope, how dare they do this to me!
I was angry and wanted something to take my anger out on. I turned to the room around me, grabbing the little desk bits and throwing them around the room. I punched and kicked, anger clouding my vision. But eventually my rage cooled and I found myself sitting on the floor, back up against the plaster wall. I stared blankly at the ground. Books and other objects lay strew across the room. Before my feet was the little name badge that had sat on the desk. It had always been facing away from me so I'd never gotten to see what name was written on it.
I reached down, grabbing it off the wooden floor and brought it up to my face. The side I could see was blank and I turned it over. But the other side was blank as well. I let out an angry sob and threw it across the room. Nothing, there was no name.
I stared at the celling for a while until boredom started gnawing at me and I pushed myself off the floor and up onto my legs. I surveyed the room, looking at the scattered books and. Wait. Books.
I swallow hard, excitement on my face. Books, something to do, something to read. I felt like a child again. I hurriedly leaned down and picked a book off the ground. It had no title on its plain spine and its front bore nothing but a pale brown cover. I hurriedly open the book, ready to feast my eyes on whatever its contents were.
But there was nothing but a random jumble of letters and symbols. I stare for a moment, flipping through the pages. Most of them were random jumbles of the same but rarely I saw a words I recognised and others I did not. I dropped the book and scrambled to grab the next. No, no it was all the same. By the time I'd gone through every book I'd torn from the selves I could almost cry. I shuddered and closed my eyes in defeat.
But when I opened them I found myself on the chair. I turned this way and that. What... no I... The room around me had returned to its original state. The desk was back in order, the doors closed and the books back on their selves. All the same featureless and a pale brown. I started crying.
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59 years later
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I found a book! An actual book! Nothing of those letters and uh... what was the word... syum... symbols. Yes. I found a book I can read!
I shook with excitement. Finally after so long, I found something that wasn't the constant random jumble! I pried open the next pages. The books contents was some dry report on earning from a random company called 'TCH LIMITED' and detailed how they were up 1.2% compared to last year. I didn't care I had found a book I could finally read!
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732 years later
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Found another! Book Bokk bBook!
LOve Books!
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10324 years later
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Koob
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An uncertain amount of time later
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I sat on the chair. The walls had cracks in them. Bright shining cracks. I touched one a while ago. It hurt and I still felt the pain in my hand. The finger I touched the crack with was broken, turned a soot black and filled with white cracks of its own.
I hadn't moved in a long time. I sat staring at the desk. Unblinking, unbreathing and motionless. I just stared. Slowly time passed and the cracks grew larger and larger. The door had fallen away, revealing a void of white. I didn't look at it anymore. It made my head hurt.
The cracks are large enough that not matter were I look I see that white void beyond. I keep my eyes closed now. But I can see them, shining through the skin of my face. I can feel the light in my brain.
I felt the desk leave, falling into the void. I opened my eyes at that. The room isn't really a room anymore. The white is everywhere, the room looked like the cracks now. Slivers of reality barely holding on. I closed my eyes. It hurt to look.
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The precipice of infinity
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I can feel it. Everything is gone now. Its just me, and the white. The chair is there but its almost gone, reduced to a fragment. I shudder, taking a breath for the first time in forever. I open my eyes as I feel that final fragment fall away as well. The room shatters in that instant and I'm burning.
Fragments of something swirling and shoot around me. Flittering like leaves in the wind. The sight is enough to override the pain. I reached out, my body is white filled with crack of me. Whispers of what I once was. One of the fragments flitters close enough and I grab it.
Then I'm gone.
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∞
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A hand touches my shoulder. A soft voice wakes my sleeping mind. Everything feels distant as I raise my head and open my eyes. The room that greets me is familiar yet wrong. I'm sitting behind the desk. A soft dainty person is shaking me. I blinked and the words falling from their lips register.
"My prince are you alright?"