It was a day like any other. I was driving to my college and obeying every traffic law. I wouldn’t call myself a saint, but in my lifetime I tried to be as good of a Christian as I could. I went to church, gave money to the poor, and prayed regularly. These things would not chance my fate.

A truck, to my left, ran a red light. I was killed instantly.

This is the part of the story where usually the protagonist would be reincarnated or cheat death through the power of love. Unfortunately I was graced with neither of these things. Moments after the impact, I see my body below me. I am surprisingly calm for the situation. I look at myself; I see a mirage of my body, presumably my soul. I contemplate this for a moment and think,

"Am I… dead?" I contemplate this for a moment and am filled with a sadness, followed by an intense excitement.

"God decided it was my time. Soon I will be in his embrace!" A more ironic sentence has never been uttered by anyone.

My soul sits idly for a moment. After about a minute, I feel something. My consciousness begins shifting through the annals of time and the fourth dimension. The experience is physically impossible for me to describe. It seems I drift for an eternity. After spiraling through eternity in thoughtless observation, I sense I am nearing God. The Veil. The most beautifully woven piece of creation in all of existence. The barrier that separates life and death. I accept God’s embrace as I rapidly approach it…

But something happened. I stopped moving. The Veil sits micrometers from my soul. I try to move towards it, but I can’t move at all. I look around me, bound around my limbs and my body are seven crimson bands, brighter and deeper than anything I have ever seen in my life. They begin to tug on me. I estimate some sort of magical spell is attempting to draw my soul into another world. Unfortunately for me, seven worlds decided to do this at once, and I was the target. In retrospect I have calculated the odds of this event as 1 against 10^559.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I am sure in that moment the pulling of the bands is the most painful thing any sentient being has ever endured. This goes on for an hour, the Veil mocking me with how close it is. All I have to do is reach out and touch it… but I am too late. My soul is at its limit. I feel it shatter into the 7 pieces as the bands finally relent. There are no words to describe the sensation, but for eons it feels I am drifting through time and space. At last, my soul reforms and I regain coherent thought. I look up and the Veil is gone; instead, I see a vast array of realities above me, near infinite in girth. I plummet so far down into creation I can’t see anything around me. Just then, my shattered soul plunged into a physical realm.

I slowly regain consciousness. Where am I? I wonder. I can’t see or hear anything. Just then I realize I can feel my body. I try to move, but all that happens is I shift around a little bit. Concentrate… I focus all my effort into trying to see something, anything. And to my surprise, it works.

The sky is black. There are no celestial bodies. Everything around me is dark too except for a few splotches of dark purple light. I see something moving in the distance. Using all of my focus and willpower, I attempt to stand up, although it seems my new physical form has no legs. As with my sight, however, I can feel that somehow, it’s working. Looking, I realize I am a pile of purple sludge. What the fuck is going on…

I maintain composure and crawl out of whatever liquid I’m in. My new body seems to be attempting to form rough limbs and shapes as I do so. After hours of effort, I can finally stand. I look down, and I see the body of some sort of gelatinous monstrosity instead of my own. Holy fuck. Am I in Hell? No! I couldn’t be. I wasn’t even judged by God. So then… I look to the horizon hopelessly. There is no love in whatever demented place my soul has wound up in.