The Ascending

Chapter 1

Do you know the sensation of waking up from a sleep so deep that you have no recollection of what day it is? That's exactly the strange feeling I got when I woke up.

I'm dead, I think. I succeeded, after all! But how do I give myself a proper congratulations when I'm in this state?

The first thing that caught me is the peace.

And it's not just any type of depressing calmness, but peace. You see, calmness and peace are two different things. I can be calm when I'm in the hospital, surrounded by nothing but snobbish medical professionals and blinding white light, but that doesn't mean I still wouldn't want to rip my head off. Now the peace I'm experiencing here is soothing. It's filled with comforting silence. It makes me want to go back to Earth and live my life blissfully.

Earth.

I guess I'm not in it anymore. Maybe this is what they called the afterlife. Am I in hell? Sounds plausible, but still unlikely. If I'm in hell, I should be suffering, as righteous and hypocritical people tell me so. There should be lakes of fire, mountains of severed limbs and valleys of pus-filled ponds. I should be punished severely for wearing two articles of clothing made from different fabric, for all eternity. But now, I feel nothing of that sort. I don't feel pain. Or sadness. Or sorrow. Or stress. Hell I don't even feel the shame of puking in my cousin's wedding five years ago. I thought I'd take that one to the grave with me, but boy was I wrong.

Maybe when you die, all the problems that made you want to cease existing will be lifted from your shoulders and a soothing peace will envelope you instead.

Wait a minute.

Am I in heaven?

Is this heaven? I doubt it. I see no flying angels or some pearly-white gates. There's no bearded and saintly dude who greeted me when I woke up. You could've think they'd have a proper introduction, you know? To familiarize newcomers in this place and whatnot. But no. No singing cherubins welcomed me, and I certainly don't feel god's overwhelming presence in the clouds.

But who's to say that our concept of hell and heaven is real, anyway? I'm dead. For all I know, there could be no afterlife after all. Everything those religious nutheads believed in was a big fat lie. I could be trapped in an endless vortex to contemplate on my previous life. Maybe that's where I am now.

"Hello?" I managed to speak despite having a dry throat. Surprise surprise. Nothing answered back but the echo of my own quivering voice.

I'm lying down and I can feel my toes wriggle under the white sheet I'm wrapped in, but that's about it. I can't move neither my hands nor my feet. Whenever I try to move, it feels like my whole body is frozen into place. Thankfully, I can move my eyeballs enough to inspect the place I woke up in.

When I look up, all I can see is a high ceiling illuminated with the sickeningly bright fluorescent lights. There's no windows and aside from a small table in the middle of the room, it was mostly empty. The whole room reeks strongly of detergent. It reminds me of a hospital room, but it lacks the annoying static noise and the overall depressing atmosphere in an ER.

There are no clocks in the room, not even a single window, therefore there is no way to indicate the time.

Is time even relevant in the afterlife? Does it move relative to the time back on Earth? I could be dead for a minute, but who knows, maybe a hundred years have passed on Earth. Honestly, why would it even matter to me what time or date or year it is? I'm dead. If you're dead and woke up with no idea of your whereabouts, I think that time would be the least of your worries.

And besides, I'm trapped in this strange place with no other thing to entertain me but my own thoughts. Which is a far more concerning dilemma.

So where the hell am I?