Contemplating your last day on Earth is a hard thing for anyone; especially because it's almost certainly the day you die. Unless perhaps you're an astronaut who then later dies in space or in my case, transported to another world.

For me, my last day was pretty good until suddenly everything wasn’t. It was a hot day, the sun was burning and the wind was up. That dry and warm kind of breeze that washes over your skin as it hits you. With a day to yourself on a day like this there’s only two good options; take shelter in a room with strong air conditioning or go to the beach.

And so after breakfast and the regular morning routine I put on some board shorts, slapped on some sunscreen and grabbed a towel before I made my way to the beach, and on a day like that, it was packed.

The sand was covered in towels and tents with families and friends scattered around but everyone was mostly in the water, swimming shoulder to shoulder, jumping up and down with the waves with the more daring further out where you're kicking to stay afloat, the sand floor far beneath your feet.

That’s where I was, by myself. I can admit it, I’m a bit of a loner but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna go outside and enjoy myself with everyone else which, for me, made it a lot easier in the long run considering what was about to occur.

So there I was, swimming through the waves with maybe two hundred or so other people, enjoying the cool salty waters on a hot day when it started. 

I had been caught in rips and strong currents before and been thrown about pretty roughly a couple of times when I was caught badly in crashing waves, but this was different, and totally unfamiliar.

It started slow, only for a moment, but that immediately changed. Next thing I knew I was being pulled strongly by the water, moving too fast before I even had a chance to resist.

And I wasn’t alone.

All around me is everyone else in the water and I’m suddenly crashing into someone else, then another someone else and before I know it everyone is bunched up, pressing into one another. Limb’s are flailing and there are shouts and gasps of breath. You couldn’t see anything as the water was churning and splashing, water and seafoam being all you could see and the saltwater being all you could taste as it dived into your month and tunnelled up your nose. And then you were sinking.

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I don’t know if you’ve almost drowned before but it doesn’t start off with panic, it starts off with thinking you’re going to be fine, you’re not going to drown. You know you can hold your breath and if you’re a strong swimmer, you can think back to all the times you’ve struggled to breathe before when you were trying to get to the surface and it all turned out to be nothing to worry about in the end. You’re going to be fine.

But when the doubt comes in, that’s when you panic. All the calm you had before explodes into dust. You move, you wriggle, you struggle and you hit and beat the water and try to fight it back so that you can get some air. So that you can escape the screaming in your lungs and finally breathe.

This was worse.

Much worse.

Because this wasn’t just me; this was two hundred people drowning together, getting pressed and squished against each other as we all punch and kick and get punched and kicked and scratched and headbutted by the bodies all around us all whilst we’re suffocating and clawing for air. It goes on and on. The passing of time becomes increasingly more painful and the mercy of air becomes further and further distant.

That was how my last day on Earth went; no goodbyes, no last words, just panic and agony.

Until I fell through.

It was kinda like breaking out of the pool at the bottom of a water slide when you come out, except squished and bruised and finding yourself not in water but on a pile of other bodies. 

Before being piled on further by more bodies.

But I could breathe! I don’t know how I held my breath for so long but I did, and after I let out my last gasp of Earth’s air, I breathed in this new air that would change everything, though I didn’t know it at the time.

It hurt, it tasted of salt, but it was delicious.

I breathed in again. And again. Then I felt my body and the bodies on top of me which was shortly followed by the sound of the collective groaning of two hundred or so people in a lot of pain. 

Eventually coming to my senses, I started digging my way out of the pile. Somewhat luckily enough, there were only five people on top of me that I had to push away, which I managed  without too much difficulty before I fell down a, kind of, makeshift human hill. 

Though disorientated some things did come through clearly; my broken ribs, my wet skin, the cold stone beneath my feet but mostly - the air around me.

It had an electricity I had never quite felt before and as I took stock of myself I could also feel it gradually begin to fade.

Looking around people were starting to stand up, at least those at the edges who had gotten off  the people pile. Everyone was wet and half naked, still in their swimwear nursing whatever list of injuries they had gotten from the fall. There were kids, elderly, families and friends, all beginning to huddle together whilst I was standing alone by myself, hugging my arms. Everyone was confused, sore, and now... we were starting to get scared.

Looking around I noticed there were no lights but everything was illuminated by a dim ultraviolet hue anyway. It took me a moment until I realised that the light was coming from the stone floor, walls and ceiling. It was when I was checking this out that I saw it happen. The wall opened up; and he came in.

The man was small, with some wrinkles and silver white hair on his head but he was stately, dressed in what I guessed were, some sort of robes, with a large clearly hanging pendant on his chest made in the shape of a metal hourglass figure.

Everyone looked at him. You couldn’t not. He was magnetic. And he looked back, scrutinising over every one of us, assessing us like cuts of meat at the butchers.

And then he smiled.

And it went black.