Chapter 3

I felt… Nothing. I felt nothing and I found that that was perfectly alright with me. The ceiling above me was held up with what I guessed was cedar; I loved the smell of cedar, and regretted momentarily that I couldn't smell it from down here. But the floor was cedar too. I should have been able to smell it, but I couldn't. Instead of dwelling on this annoying tidbit of information I continued to look around me, bored by the three walls I looked at, I didn't bother looking in the fourth direction and instead resumed looking up at the crossbeams supporting the ceiling. Thousands of tiny little splinters made up the beam, and in my state of silent nothingness I found that my powers of observation were greatly enhanced. I began to count them. One, ten, fifty, ninety, five hundred and thirty-five, five thirty-six. Now something was blocking my view. I furrowed my brow, wishing the obstruction would move so I could resume my counting, but instead of moving, the large, irregularly shaped object became larger in my field of vision. I was displeased; this new thing was nothing like my cedar friend. My cedar friend was very still and quiet, but this new thing was loud with its black bulky presence.

"Get up, Adam."

The words, yes, words. I remembered words suddenly, and I was again displeased. Like the black thing, the words were loud. The words were demanding. I just wanted to count within my cedar tomb.

"I'm old, Adam. I would prefer not to have to lift you."

The cursed words were tinged with what my mind dully registered as bitter humor.

"Use your arms first, then your legs."

I found myself compelled. My arms seemed to raise me up of my own accord, and to my surprise, I barely had need of legs. The notion of gravity seemed foolish to me, gravity was a lie. I floated effortlessly to my feet.

"That's good. Now look at yourself. You aren't going to like it, but you have to do it anyways."

Confusion in my mind… But my body seemed to know what it was doing. My head turned in the one direction that I had chosen to ignore.

Pain! Pain now! Nothing but pain as my eyes burned in agony, my lids refused to close and hide the horror! It didn't make sense… Gravity was a lie and cedar had no smell, but I wasn't looking in a mirror! I shouldn't be able to see myself!

"You're dead, Adam."

Remembrance now. I returned to my senses at last, the confusion and numbness departed entirely, and I laughed. I laughed hysterically until I should have felt razor blades tearing into my sides, but I didn't. I couldn't get a stitch because I didn't need to breathe. I was dead. I turned to the reaper, looking first at his dark robes before turning to look at the object in his hand. It was supposed to be a scythe, but it wasn't a scythe. It was a hook. "No scythe?" I asked, marveling at the hollow quality of my voice. It sounded as though I was speaking in the middle of a massive auditorium with terrible acoustics, like my voice was bouncing back at me from a million different directions. "Common misconception." He answered with a smile. "It seems humanity has many misconceptions about the afterlife, what gave them the impression you'd be made of bones, I wonder." The gray-haired man before me had astonishingly beautiful features, youthful and angelic; the echoing laughter that erupted from his lips was deep and melodic. "My brothers and sisters often choose to take frightening forms. Some of us are dreadfully arrogant creatures I'm afraid." I raised my intangible eyebrows, "More than one?" The reaper nodded in response. "Many more, but come, this is not the matter at hand."

With a final glimpse at my dangling body I followed the reaper to the door of the cabin. He produced a small key that glowed with a strange fluorescence and used it for its natural purpose. When the door swung outward it no longer lead to the woods, but instead to what appeared to be an endless black landscape. There were no stars in the sky, no sun, no moon, no light, and yet, I found as I followed the grim into the nothingness that I could see. I turned to shut the door, and the reaper's hook arrested its progress towards its frame. "You don't want to do that, Adam." I started and stammered an apology which he ignored as he beckoned me onwards. I walked with the reaper for the space of a few minutes before an unexpected sight met my eyes. A lamp, a white leather sofa, and a plasma screen television were floating in the middle of the abyss. Had I not already been subjected to complete insanity for the space of… Well, however long I had been dead, I might have lay down on the intangible floor and cried.

The reaper's melodic laughter rippled forth from him once again and he turned slightly to look at me as we continued towards the strange scene. "You're handling it better than many, kid." I blinked in surprise despite my semi-conscious resolution to accept everything my senses reported to me without question. "You can read…" "Your mind." He finished briskly. "Come on." The black-swathed ghoul tapped his pale fingers on the cushion of the couch, indicating I should seat myself beside him. I obeyed, and the television immediately flickered to life.