What happened next can be likened to that of experiencing a power-surge while doing business on a computer. My mind flickered back on. I opened my eyes and looked around me. I was standing in the exact same spot I had been when the bomb (presumably) killed me. So this is where you go was my first thought. A brief look around allowed me to discover that this, however, was not the exact same place I had been. The sky was an imperfect blackness that gave the impression of nighttime, although there were no clouds, no moon or stars, no actual sky. Just the idea of it. The horizon mirrored this.
There were others with me, and they looked equally as confused. We gathered together in an opening. What's going on seemed to be the dominant question on everyone's mind, with Where is God in close second. No one knew the answer.
I noticed that people's emotions were still intact. Anger, fear, sorrow-- nothing had changed. People were still people.
I saw friends of mine. We ran to each other and embraced, comforted by the fact that we were not stuck in a strange land, forced to create companionship with strangers. We talked.
By then the crowd had started to disperse. People were going their own ways, searching for the answer to their questions and the solution to escaping what many now thought of as Purgatory. Aimlessly we walked through our town, the buildings and vegetation unscathed. The absence of light left everything in a macabre state.
And then we walked into the Border. We had discovered an invisible wall, marked only a strange line on the ground and reasonably more darkness on the inaccessible side. We followed it. Others had discovered it as well. Later, when we rejoined the collective of dead, we would reason that this must be the radius of the blast. Confusion continued. We could discover no answers.
One our strangest discoveries was that our cell phones still worked. We could call and text one another, but not those who were still living. Other bodily discoveries: We could still feel. We were never hungry, nor were we full. We still grew tired. (Falling asleep when you're already dead is a terrifying experience.)
But this was all irrelevant, because soon we would no longer be there. After the first suicide, everything changed.
One of my friends was the first to discover that suicide brought you back to life, or at least what he considered life. He disappeared one day, and the next we received a phone call from him. I'm back. Dear God, I have no idea how it happened, but I'm back. It feels like a dream and a half.
For reasons unknown, we were unable to call him back. Nor would we discover why he was able to contact us in the first place.
People joined together once more in the square. Most didn't believe us. Always the courageous one, he decided to prove them wrong. He jumped from the building and as his body crashed into the ground, he vanished-- as if falling through the Earth. We built our ladders into the sky, checked the knot twice, and let whatever crude form of gravity existed here take over. Lovers went hand-in-hand into their fate.
The line shortened as everyone took their turn, and then the unexpected happened. We hit the limit. The world sped up and God let there be light.
- - -
The landscape had been upturned. Slabs of desecrated concrete littered the floor, creating my living space. It was a reflection of the present, ruled-by-the-living world. It was both inhabited by the dead and the living-- or some form of the living, at least. The dead told me that there was a clear distinction between those living and those dead, that I would be able to notice immediately. These living were simply placeholder minds and bodies, they said, waiting until the day the soul died.
These "living" could still talk to you as if they were the real thing. I made it my mission to find those that I knew still lived. I boarded my plane and left.
- - -
And then I woke up.
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