Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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Five minutes?
How did that deadly and disturbing creature expect Arielle to gather her bearings, swallow down her nausea, and prowl through her impossible-to-breach barriers to get upstairs in five fucking minutes?
She'd barely been dealing with the excruciating migraine, barely managing the stomach aches when passing next to the stairs. So how was she supposed to ignore her body's woes and squeeze out of her perimeter as if it were no big deal? As if it wouldn't tear apart her insides and cause her to faint before she even reached the top?
"Fuck." She glared at the steps and sighted the windy blockade she'd noticed earlier. Its undulating waves beckoned her close and yet screamed at her to stay put, to not try anything stupid. So conflicting, so enticing, so difficult.
But what choice did she have?
"Join me up here, or... I'll snag you myself."
She imagined Penny piercing those horrifying claws through her skin, digging into her like a knife slicing through a tender chunk of meat. Sure, she was dead, but it would still hurt, wouldn't it? Would she bleed? Would she faint, disappear, die again? What happened to ghosts who perished a second time? Arielle wasn't immune to pain, her head and belly aches were proof of that. And a few chops from Penny's talons wouldn't leave her unscathed, that was certain. So where would she go from there?
Gulping, she sauntered a few inches forward, arms outstretched as if preparing to hit a brick wall. The wind's intensity whooshed through her fingertips and applied pressure to her face, her torso, her legs, preventing her from advancing much farther.
"Shit, come on, man." She huffed, pushing harder, trying to break through. "She's going to rip me apart. I have to get up there."
But the gust, if it even understood words or cared about them, grew harsher and jammed into her with more force, knocking her backwards. Whoever—or whatever—controlled it had no intention of letting her through to confront Penny upstairs. It had never been so direct until now; usually, it only hindered her from touching the first step, and it didn't reach out to stop her. But this time, the wind whipped at her like a spear threatening to stab her if she didn't get away.
Her nausea grew as she continued to push. "Let... me... through!" Her vision blurred and that all-too-familiar acidic taste took over every confine of her mouth, coating her tongue, clogging her throat. "Shit, stop it!"
She wanted to hurl her guts out, and yet nothing spewed from her mouth, nothing bubbled at the base of her esophagus. So she kept thrusting into the breeze, begging it to weaken, daring it to make an exception for her. She didn't want Penny to seize her, to devour her soul, to send her into a dimension of utter terror. She didn't want to fight to survive when she'd fought too often in her actual life.
This was death. She was dead, she'd made her peace with that; so why couldn't she rest? Why couldn't this realm let her move on to somewhere her mind would shut off and she wouldn't have to battle bullies to get answers? She'd received some answers, enough of them to feel somewhat satisfied, at least. So why did she have to go through all this?
