29 Jan Heaven’s Prisoner

I wasn’t ready when I died. I held her hand until the end, and then beyond.

Death stole many illusions from me. The first was that my body had been designed to perceive the world around me. This is incorrect. The primary function of my senses must have been to stop myself from experiencing what truly was. Otherwise, I would have been overwhelmed and driven mad by the chaos that I had now returned to.

The web of all things concealed no longer, I found my strand and ran it to the center of creation. Eyes, which once simplified the world into finite wavelengths of color, closed for the last time, and I now saw everything. My ears, once deaf to the cosmic music of birthing stars, now bludgeoned me with concussive blows. I did not see or hear any longer, but I was reflected in the light. The rising exuberance of the notes was my triumph, and I could be found in the chorus wherever it was heard.

While I lay claim to these experiences, I cannot say my body existed to experience them at all. I was simply aware of how the universe must feel about itself when jealous humans are not polluting its minds with their own importance. What poor words are these to hold a candle to the sun and praise its light? Even the distinction between my senses decayed alongside my corporal prison. Starlight was a symphony heard as much as seen, bathing me in a warm embrace.

The taste of light and noise left me hungry for the peace of darkness. It’s impossible to measure how long I existed in such a state, but by gradual degrees, I learned to separate my own thoughts from the medley of existence. The moment I began to comprehend my own internal voice, I became aware of a second voice that was not my own.

“… Four hundred and seventy-eight points. Hey, Jason! You close that passenger pigeon room yet? I told you we don’t do those anymore.”

“Um. Hi. Excuse me,” I said to the unrepentant chaos of the universe.

“Here you go, let me help you with that,” the maelstrom replied comfortingly.

Remember what I said about the confused synesthesia of my senses? Now imagine being struck by lightning, and hearing and tasting and smelling the electricity coursing through my new body, which hadn’t been there before. I found myself with hands and knees to collapse onto the stone floor. My new lungs raced a marathon. My heart wanted out of its chest — not my chest; it couldn’t be. This stranger’s body, this stranger’s mind, rising unsteadily into a strange new world. My eyes burned with spots of light as though I had just been staring into the sun. Holy shit, did that hurt. I kind of wanted to do it again.

“Four hundred and seventy-eight points, up from three hundred and fourteen last time. Solid performance.”

I don’t know what was harder to accept: my naked new body, the colossal stone cathedral I discovered around me, or the koala bear who sat cross-legged with a clipboard. He wore reading glasses on the end of his nose, which he adjusted while flipping another page.

“Oh, that explains it,” the koala said in its soothingly gruff undertone. “You gained an extra fifty points for loving someone and being loved in return. That’s always a nice boost. Then you picked up another twenty from that album you released in the eighties — touched more lives than you’ll know with that. Did you know someone once got married to that song? Of course, someone else offed themselves to it too, but I don’t suppose that’s your fault.”

“You were keeping score?” I asked. I ran both hands along my face. The beard I wore when I died was gone. I was younger again. It wasn’t real, but it was the only thing that was real.

“‘Course we’re keeping score. Hate to think what people got up to if we weren’t…” The koala flipped another page with his claw and furrowed his little brow. “Lost twelve points because you stopped visiting Mark when he got cancer. But look! You got a few of those back when you played at his funeral. Hey Jason! What’s ‘accepting your own imperfections’ worth? We got new numbers on that yet?”

The koala was answered by the incomprehensible shriek of an eagle. “Damn, man. Right back at ya!” my furry guide hollered.

“Have you always been a koala?” I asked.

“Have you always asked stupid questions? How many points should we dock for that?”

“Ummm… “

“Kidding, kidding. Sort of. This way now.” The koala slid the clipboard under his stubby arm and began a brisk waddle. I hurried to keep pace. I was self-conscious about my nakedness for only a moment, but there didn’t seem to be any other humans about. I allowed myself to walk freely through the absolute zoo, which thronged the stone hallway onward. Up the great diverging marble staircase with its mountain goats and wolves perched amiably upon the steps. Past the library, the shelves bustled with scaling monkeys, some flinging books at one another. Over the little stone bridge above the pools filled with playing otters and thrashing fish. Beneath the gargantuan golden dome revolving with teeming flights of birds. The koala explained my wonder as we went.

“Long story short, if your life brought more good into the world than evil, you’re going to end up with more points than you started. Your 478 points can unlock any of the rooms on this floor, except for the psychic and the prophet, which are both 500. You need to get over a thousand before you unlock any of the truly supernatural creatures.”

I looked at all the animals and coughed. At least it didn’t smell like a zoo. I don’t suppose they were real bodies at all, but only spirits crawling and slithering and flapping their way through this celestial palace. I looked over the marble rail carved with lions to peer into the darkness of the stairway below. Underneath the main floor of the cathedral, the descending staircase was lined with burning torches. The staircase didn’t go far that way before being blocked by black iron fencing. If this place felt like heaven, then hell was only a stone’s throw away.

“I don’t think I would mind being an otter. Or a bird,” I said.

I had to deliberately resist the urge to pick up my guide and wear him on my shoulders. I was still too dazed from my own death and journey through eternity to know what to ask, but I didn’t want to risk saying or doing something stupid and losing my precious points.

“Think of your choice as an investment: coming back as a human will be expensive, but you also have the greatest capacity to improve your score.”

“Or greatest risk of losing my score, right? I’ve never heard of dolphin Hitler.”

“Not for lack of trying, I’m sure,” the koala huffed indignantly.

I got the impression that it was his job to show me around, and he was beginning to resent it every time I interrupted and made it take longer. He continued:

“It takes many generations of good behavior to unlock the best lives. I’m only a few points away from being a unicorn, you know. I figured a koala that stayed in the system was a safe way to get the last ones I need. Nothing bad I can do here, right? I ain’t never done nothing bad my whole koala life.”

The indignant shriek of the eagle challenged this, but the koala waved it off.

“The only rule is that you pick a new life within your budget. So go ahead, look around, and let me know when you’ve made your choice.”

“What would happen if I didn’t have any points?”

“You would begin again at the bottom as the lowliest of life forms: the chihuahua. It’s the only option, I’m afraid. Why else would there be so many of them? Hey Jason! Did you hear what I just —”

I flinched in anticipation as the eagle hurtled past my ear. I persisted:

“What if I went below zero? Would I never get to live again? And who was I before this? And who runs this place? And hey, um, oh —” the questions tumbled over one another to get out.

I hadn’t been aware koalas could even grin before this moment. Its sharp teeth gnashed as though ready to bite me.

“Planning to be wicked already, are we? This way, then, you will find what you seek.”

The koala climbed clumsily onto the marble railing, still clutching his clipboard. He held on loosely and winked as he began to slide down the way we came. The eagle named Jason let out a pitying croak as it took flight and circled above us. We left behind the animals in their play as we descended the marble staircase. Through the stone floor, the light from above immediately shrank and was swallowed up until it was only a distant moon. The air here was heavy from smoking torches.

“These creatures do not mind the dark, and they drink smoke like water. Lose enough points, and your only choice will be a creature so foul that you may despair of ever being doing good and being saved. Some of these poor souls will double down and trudge ever lower, one life at a time spent stealing good from the world. Their miserable lives are their damnation.”

We stood before the closed iron gates now. There were more than torches in the darkness beyond: fearsome eyes in the shadows jealously guarding the flickering light. I felt suddenly conscious of my nakedness again, feeling vulnerable and weak. I had no business here. But I felt safe in the koala’s comforting and casual presence. I felt like a tourist, lost in amazement ever since my death. I couldn’t imagine how dangerous it might be to ask:

“Can we open the gate? I want to see them too before I decide.”

The koala squirmed and trembled. He looked over his shoulder for his friend, the eagle, but it would not descend so far down the cursed stairs. It perched in the distance on the marble rail, its noble crest framed against the moon of light.

“Yeah. That’s my job, right? Show you the options.” The koala slapped itself across the face. “Points are on the line here, buddy. You doing your job, man? Course you are, man. It’s always watching. Shake it off. Let’s go.”

“What is watching? Who is judging?”

The koala shook its fur like it was shedding water. It took the clipboard and detached a small iron key. Looking reproachfully over its shoulder one last time at the distant eagle, my guide moved to unlock the iron gate.

The moment he touched the bars, a dark meteor slammed into the metal gate from the other side. Black fists, black hands and feet, with curling claws wrapped around the bars. It looked like some kind of huge monkey but for its red eyes and fur, which swirled around its body like living smoke. It clung on and howled, the sound deep and grating, harsh and discordant, like metal shards going down a garbage disposal.

“The Kapi wants out.” The koala hesitated, his key frozen in the lock, staring at the howling beast. “Why would you choose to live a cursed life like that? Are you sure you want to go down here?”

I wasn’t sure at all. But if I was going to return to life and do good, then I had to know what other monstrous things lurked beside me. Maybe I could have gone my whole life, forgetting such an evil thing could exist, but that would not make me safe from them. And even so, I would have turned around and gone back upstairs if it hadn’t been for the whisper drawing me onward.

“Your next life waits for you.”

It wasn’t coming from the monkey. Curling up from the darkness below, the words came with the familiar synesthesia from before. I don’t know if I heard them at all, but they were there crawling on my skin, slithering down my throat, and drawing my eyes to probe the shifting depths of shadow. I grinned, certain it was not my fate to live a normal life. I would not hide from the mysterious call.

“Open the gate,” I said.

The key turned. The Kapi demon dropped away from the bars and lunged for the opening. It froze from an eagle’s shriek fast approaching from above. Jason decided to join us after all, and sailed ahead down the stairs. The Kapi howled and chased after it, leaving the way open for us. The koala locked the door behind it.

“There’s nothing here you want.” The koala still clung to the iron key in a trembling paw.

“IT is waiting for you,” the itch of the whisper lured me onward. I closed my eyes and let the words tickle my skin. “Do not take the life you’re given. Do not play their game. Do not follow their rules. You are born for more than endless death. Find me, break free, release.”

The sensation of the words was not pleasant, but I believed them. The koala might know more than he said, and he might not. But he was a cog in the machine, trapped in the cycle of birth and death like the rest of us. What called to me was something else entirely, and my only hope of unraveling the true mysteries of this place. And more than that, it was my ego that listened most gratefully. My life must have more purpose than these points could measure. I would not go back to a meaningless, ordinary life. I had no patience to grind generations of good behavior to fulfill my destiny.

These words and promises from the darkness squirmed across my skin, and I did not feel naked any longer. I wore them like armor, knowing I would not be harassed by the creatures while the voice still needed me. And such creatures there were: green and yellow eyes leering from the shadows, or misshapen gargoyles clinging onto the underside of the stairs. Grotesque faces like statues recarved themselves before my eyes to scream in silent agony. Some creatures were chaotic amalgamations, like the chimera stitched together from other animals. It sat in the center of the stairs and did not move out of the way. Its lion head turned to watch, as did the black-scaled serpent tail, which twitched menacingly above its back.

Evil spirits haunted the air as thick as the smoke this far down. Cackling laughter echoed from all sides. Harpies sailed through the air, taunting and screeching, their feminine features twisted into hideous mockeries. The beating wings had the rhythm of infernal drums. The stairway beyond the chimera opened into lower halls of stone with innumerable torches marching into endless night. Rows of locked rooms contained the dull beating of countless imprisoned fists. A few times, I thought I caught glimpses of other humans, but no sooner did they turn our direction, but their faces morphed and distorted. Werewolves, skinwalkers, djinn, and wraiths. What a cursed existence they must lead.

“Negative a hundred points for any of the evil spirits,” the koala chirped uneasily. “Good luck ending that life with more than you started, though. Negative two hundred fifty for the vampire, or the werewolves. You’ll need to do some really awful things in your previous life to get that low. The demons all cost more than negative five hundred. I might be able to get you a good deal lingering as the undead, though.”

Maybe it was a demon calling me. I couldn’t make out its words anymore, but I could still feel them crawling down my spine.

“And what’s at the very bottom?” I asked. “If you lived the worst life possible, and did it again for a thousand years. What would you become?”

The koala shrugged. “Dunno. Never gave anyone a body that cost more than negative three hundred points before. Same with the very top — no one has been able to unlock that floor.”

Jason the eagle soared back toward us with a giant bat twice its size in pursuit. The koala lifted a shard of broken marble from the stairs and hurled it at the bat, which veered away. The eagle shrieked, and the koala chuckled.

“Jason says he knows what’s at the bottom. That’s where they keep the politicians. Come on now, don’t give me that face. What is this, a morgue?”

Our commotion drew more attention from these evil creatures. How long have they dwelled in the darkness, with only each other to vent their eternal rage upon? The chimera spread its massive lion paws and stretched luxuriously before lumbering toward the koala. My little guide backed away up the stairs, brandishing his clipboard before him like a shield.

“Are you ready to go back up?” His voice was little more than a squeak, desperate and pleading.

The chimera crouched, powerful muscles rippling as they prepared to launch. The serpent above its back wiggled with anticipation.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

The koala didn’t need to be told twice. It dashed up the stairs in giant bounds. The chimera couldn’t resist the running target. Powerful clawed feet propelled it into the air to bound after the little creature. I pressed myself to the railing and let it pass. The way was clear. I turned my back on the light and took my chance at the lower halls.

Adrift in the swirling profusion between death and life, I was not alone as long as I carried the crawling whispers. Overwhelmed and confused, I continued to climb down the stairs. Haunted by the baleful cries of these miserable creatures, I would not be tempted by any lesser life than what the whisper promised me.

I left behind the monstrous beasts and moved through a skeletal hall. Leering skulls on the ground turned to watch me pass. Strange, alien creatures began mingling with the dwindling remaining options. Seraphic beings made of light and shadow, and deformed abominations whose skin ran down their bones like candle wax. There, on the side, a dark-cloaked figure watched me, clutching a long-bladed scythe that arched over its head. Cruel, tusked faces and muscular behemoths lumbered out of my way. I did not belong, but somehow, they let me pass as if recognizing the unrelenting purpose that drove me deeper.

What began as curiosity continued as obsession. There were no more torches this far down, but somehow it still seemed to be growing lighter as I descended. I was relieved when the stairway finally terminated on a circular marble dais. In fact, I was standing on a balcony that overlooked a new world with its own source of light. But no — it wasn’t a new world at all. Despite only going downward, somehow, I was at the very top of the cathedral, right below the golden dome.

Disoriented, I spun around to look back the way I had come. The marble stairs were only going down behind me. I was so high in the air that I felt like I was looking from an airplane at the thronging animals in the distance. The highest pinnacle was buried in the deepest pit, and there was only one room that served both the top and the bottom of this place. I looked over the balcony at all the minuscule animals eagerly dancing in their new bodies. All sounds from below faded and combined into a single omnipresent hymn. All sounds but the whisper on my skin, and the rapid burst of knocking on the lone door.

This wasn’t like the other doors. Its metallic composition swam in perpetual motion, rippling and glistening like a pool of oil. Three ponderous iron bars were bolted across the frame to prevent it from opening outward, each engraved with mystic runes beyond my comprehension. This must be the most expensive life. I must need the right amount of points to open the door, but then again, maybe I had already circumvented that part by taking this unusual route to the top.

The knocking came again — rapid, urgent, a prisoner desperately calling for aid without wanting to alert the guards.

I pressed myself against the shifting door to listen and called:

“Hello? Is someone in there? Have you been looking for me?”

A hissing sound like high-pressure steam bursting through its confinement. The bolts which secured the iron bars began to slide outward on their own. I jumped back and ran to the balcony in search of my guide. There he was now, climbing up the stairs from the pit to rejoin his spiritual throng so far below. He was looking around, but couldn’t guess where I was. Behind me a clanging ring had me jump — the first iron bar had come loose and dropped off the door.

“Can anyone hear me?” I shouted down.

But I was utterly alone. I took half a dozen steps toward the stairs, but the clang of the second iron bar sent me indecisively spinning back. And why not? What was the worst that could happen, now that I was already dead? That sentiment did not endure through the dropping of the third bar. The whole door shimmered like a mirage in the desert, and then, without motion or warning, it was gone.

Bile rose in my throat the instant I saw the creature. My legs buckled beneath me, and I crashed hard to my knees, vomiting profusely. It was all bile. Heaving again, my whole body convulsed from the swelling pressure. I released another dark torrent of blood, this time with lumps of degraded flesh and even what appeared to be an entire rotting organ contained within, which laboriously caught in my throat and had to be coughed out. I’d almost forgotten my own death for a while, but I had not escaped as far as I thought.

“Come in,” came the commanding whisper. I heard it normally, not like the synesthesia which crawled on me. The reverberation of those words shook me to my core all the same. I was powerless to refuse. Pulling myself through my own sick, not daring to look up again, I passed through the open door. Seeing the creature once had been enough. The humanoid being was swollen to the size of a cow, bloated with gas which unevenly deformed its corpulent frame. Open sores covered its body, weeping blood and pus to stream down its nakedness so thickly that it almost seemed a garment. Gaping mortal wounds punctured its chest and belly in many places, allowing clear sight all the way through to its broken and uneven ribs. Somehow worst of all, the unblemished face of a young boy stared out from that facade of human life.

“Are you alone?” His voice came from his mouth normally, so sweet and innocent.

I was more alone than I’d ever been. I nodded, still not looking up. The room itself was minimal in the extreme: a concrete prison cell with no comfort besides a thin bamboo floor mat.

“Yes, you are. You’ve always been alone. But not anymore,” it said, hot fetid air blowing across my face with each word.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“The highest life. The final prize. Come, sit with me. Be at ease.”

My body tensed so sharply that I thought I was about to vomit again. I remained on my knees.

“Why would anyone want to be —” I stopped myself, but the child simply laughed with a sound like wind-chimes.

“No one would, but being at the top doesn’t mean the best, just like being at the bottom doesn’t make it worse. It simply means I have the greatest capacity to do both good and evil. I can create life, or end it. Does that sound like a power you’d like to have?”

I shook my head, finally daring another glance. The creature leaned forward on its mat, its terribly clean and perfect face mere inches from mine.

“I don’t want that power, either–which is why I remain in this place. My influence is too great, and any good or evil I bring into existence is multiplied countless times. If I allow that to happen, then I will die with so many points that I am forced to be reborn within this same cursed form.”

“So you have the power to do anything, but instead, you sit here and do nothing?”

“Not nothing. Not helping, not hurting, I wait for death. That’s the only way for me to reset to zero points and have another chance to begin again. But death does not come easily for one such as me.” The child waved a tortured hand across its bloated and devastated body. “Unless, of course… “The child’s face was drawing closer again, stretching on an impossibly long neck. The stench was too foul to breathe through my nose, but even having the air enter my mouth was enough to taste its rot.

“You called me here to kill you then,” I said as matter-of-factly as I could, not wishing to cause offense. “You want to start over.”

“You aren’t the first to try,” he said, gesturing at the wounds which scoured his body. “But through revulsion or weakness or cowardice, each has failed so far. Will you be the one to show me mercy?”

The thought of even getting close enough to harm the creature almost had me retching again. “I still don’t understand, though,” I said, buying time. “If you’re the supreme power here, why can’t you save yourself?”

“The supreme power?” Laughter like the wind, so sweet and sad. “Death is the supreme power, and I am his servant like any other. Don’t think I have not tried to take my own life before. The act carries such significance that I simply find myself reborn in this same body. Here, you will need this.”

A trembling hand reached out to me, its obese fingers fused at the joints. I recoiled by reflex, but I felt such pity for the creature that I fought against my instincts and accepted the black dagger from his grasp.

“How do I end you?”

“Through the eye,” he begged.

“Are you sure?”

Such a dazzling smile from such a loathsome creature. I can’t imagine how much he must have suffered. I’m sure I would have asked the same in his place. The cool dark metal felt righteous in my hand as I steeled myself for the killing blow. Some nagging doubt lingered in the back of my head, but I was so mesmerized by my disgust and sympathy that I could think of no other course.

“Won’t you at least close your eyes?” I asked.

His smile widened—unnaturally broad—with too many teeth for the child’s face. “I’ve been looking forward to this moment for as long as I can remember. I’m not going to miss a thing.”

Worried that any hesitation would steal my resolve, I took the dagger in both hands and plunged it deep. The eye did not close even as the blade slipped through. It cut so easily that I felt no resistance until the very hilt was embedded in the boy’s face–the only unspoiled part of him, now in ruin. The smile faltered for the briefest instant before returning. Then grimacing again as though fluctuating between agony and ecstasy. The massive body trembled, but I didn’t relinquish my grip until its last spasm overbalanced the monstrosity. I scrambled to get out of the way as it toppled face-first toward me, slamming against the ground to further pound the dagger within its skull.

There was no way out but down the stairs. Crowds of animals parted around me as I returned from the highest balcony. Claws and talons pointed at me with undisguised fascination. Whispers and murmurs from the multifarious assembly swelled and then faded as I approached like the ocean waves.

“I think I’d like to come back as a cat,” I told the koala when I found him again. He was easy enough to locate, standing out in the open by the lower stair, paralyzed by shock. “Cats seem to have things figured out.”

“Jason! Mixy? Anyone!” the koala shouted in a hoarse, strained voice from the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off me for a moment.

“What is it? Did I do something wrong?”

An owl landed nearby, its head cocking from side-to-side to get a better look.

“Hey, Mixy…” the koala said from the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off me. “How many points do you get for killing God? Has anyone seen that number before?”

I swallowed hard, but I couldn’t get rid of the dry lump in my throat. “You’re sure I didn’t lose points?”

He stared dumbly at his clipboard. “Considering what he would have done if you hadn’t, yeah. Says ‘Act of mercy’ on your file now. You’re way in the positive, my man.”

“I’m not going to become that… thing, am I?”

“Not yet. You came here with 478, so that’s what you’re going back with. But shit, man, you’ve got so many now that —”

“I don’t want to be like that.”

“Then you’ll have to spend all the points you got in your new life. No matter what life comes next, you’re going to have to steal all the good you can to get your score back down.”

One of the birds shrieked and laughed. Other animals joined in, giggling, chittering, cawing, and roaring.

“I don’t want that life! I don’t want to hurt anyone!”

Amused or taunting, the bestial chorus was maddening. I didn’t belong here. I couldn’t go back to life now. Only the darkness of the pit could hide my shame. I ran for the stairs again and sprinted below. Away from the animals and their laughter, I belonged with the demons now. They didn’t see the monster I killed. They didn’t understand how cursed a life could be. Only the demons could understand me now.

Only the reaper himself, who waited for me in the shadows by the iron gate. And I remembered the words — Death is the supreme power here.

“It is waiting for you.” The words on my skin — they had been coming from him all along. Death’s cloak was black. Not the color black, but its essence. It was as though seeing a tiger after a lifetime of looking at a child’s crude drawing and thinking that’s all a tiger was. Reality flowed around his scythe like a brush through watercolors, and I could see each elementary particle–and time itself–sunder across its blade.

Surely this, I thought, staring at the reaper. This is why we were taught without words to fear death. I clutched at my chest, cowering from the intensity of the Reaper’s presence. I watched bewildered as my hand passed through my own chest, flowing like translucent mist. I reached for the iron bars of the gate and saw I moved through them as well. I knew then nothing could hide me from the specter’s grasp, for he was the only real thing left in this world. I was already leaving this place.

“You’re late.”

They weren’t words. My head ached from the strain of knowing he had been waiting for me since I hurried past him the first time. My lateness was burned into my awareness, imparted as unequivocally as gravity.

“We don’t have time for the usual speech. Hurry now.”

I felt myself swept up around the Reaper like dirt in a hurricane. Before I knew what was happening, we had passed straight through the gate and were descending through the lower halls of the cathedral again. This time we moved at such a frenzied pace that the world around me blurred into a dizzying tunnel of flashing torches.

“If you’re lucky, it won’t get you this time.”

I had too many questions, all fighting for attention in the forefront of my brain without any making their way out.

“You’re quiet. I admire that. People usually ask too much.”

“What’s the point?” I asked at last. My voice felt flat and dead compared to his overwhelming substance. “How can I try to comprehend what is waiting for me now?”

“You can’t. But it’s still human nature to ask.”

We weren’t slowing. If anything, our pace was increasing. I wasn’t running, or flying, or anything of that nature. It was more like the rest of the world was moving around us while we stood still. A vague darkness and a heavy damp smell made me guess that we’d gone deeper underground, but I couldn’t say for sure.

“One question then,” I begged. “If you’re Death, then what are you trying to save me from?”

“And that is why questions are pointless. Death is not a place or a person. It’s all there is.”

A troubling thought, made more so by the growing howl pulsing through the rocks around me. The air grew warmer and denser now. The sound continued to mount as though the world itself was suffering.

“Then what is it?”

“What I’m here to protect you from.”

The rocks split from a flash of his scythe, and the ground opened farther into a sprawling cavern dominated by a subterranean lake.

“But I thought you said you were all there is.”

“No, I said Death was all there is.”

We weren’t moving any longer. Light glinted off the scythe from some unseen source and streamed into the lake like a tributary. Once inside, the light didn’t reflect or dissipate; it swirled and danced as luminescent oil.

“I thought you were Death.”

“Death is not a person…”

The voice was getting farther away. I could barely hear it anymore and only felt the words echo across my skin. The light was taking a life of its own inside the water. The still surface began to churn with spectral energy. It took my scattered mind a long while to realize that I was the energy flowing into the lake. I still felt tangled up with the Reaper, but we now existed as a beam of light boiling into the water.

I knew I wouldn’t understand, but that didn’t stop me from feeling frustrated. If Death is all there is, then what is it? What was waiting for me? The water pressed cold. There was no air to speak, but I had no body to need it.

“It is here.”

Something was in the water around me. Hands grabbed me by the legs and began dragging me downward. Light flashed from the scythe — then again. The hands let go, and the howling rose in deafening cascades. The Reaper was fighting something, although I couldn’t make any sense of the battle except for the madness of thrashing water.

The howling earth reached its crescendo, and the screams made the water around me convulse and contract like living fluid. Had the Reaper slashed it? Was I safe? Just when I thought I was beginning to gain control, the hands from below clutched me once more. I lurched downward, struggling in vain against their implacable grip.

“What is here?” I tried to shout against the suffocating liquid. “What is happening?”

But I couldn’t sense the Reaper’s presence any longer. The heat was unbearable, but the hands dragging me down were ice. I became aware of a blinding light at the bottom of the lake, and though I struggled, the hands dragged me inexorably deeper.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t fight it off.” The Reaper’s voice was coming from so far away now. “We will try again next time.”

The pressure — the heat — the noise — the hands dragging me into the light. I closed my eyes and screamed. I was free from the water now, but I just kept screaming. I couldn’t bear to look at it— whatever had stolen me. Whatever was Death but wasn’t — whatever even the Reaper could not defeat.

Then a voice spoke. Real human words, from a real human mouth. My senses were so distraught and overwhelmed that I couldn’t make sense of them, but I’m guessing they were something like:

“Congratulations! He’s a healthy baby boy.”

Most people can’t remember the day they die, or the day they were born. I happen to remember both, and I know that they are the same.