What Happens When We Die
By Jessica Kylie Nichols-Vernon
There are many arguments about what happens when we die, ironically humanity has killed each other over which idea of what happens when we die they prefer. Do we go to Sheol and wait for a day when we can be judged for our sins? Do we get judged for our sins immediately and go to either Heaven or Hell depending on if we were good or bad? Is it possible that we can be as bad or good as we wish but if we align ourselves with the right deity they will take us to their ideal Paradise in exchange for eternal servitude? Could it be that Sin nor Service is what is needed, but a certain trait, like maybe the smartest or wealthiest of us can move on? Perhaps we have to die in battle to prove a warrior's spirit?Is it not possible that instead of going somewhere the light at the end of the tunnel we see is the doctor pulling us out of a new mother's maternal areas? Maybe we're overthinking and all that happens is a fade to black forever, game over, you are no more nor do you have any awareness of being, you're just simply erased.
Ha ha ha, well I know the answer and it constantly haunts me. It's so obvious looking back on it. The world follows a script and when you die you're off script and can do anything you want. It doesn't get old either, anytime it starts to you can just wish it didn't get old and it doesn't. I miss it dearly. The problem now that I know is all of these Religious people who swear that their version of the Holy Book is the absolute truth and as long as they hate the right people and say the right prayers they'll have Heaven, and even worse their counterparts who claim there are no such things as spirits and that we need to make the most of the time we have. It's like being in first grade and you're the only one who has any knowledge of basic colors. It's quite maddening.
Anytime I try to tell my story I'm written off as crazy or someone who was just dreaming. I know the truth however, I know what happens when we die. I have no idea if there's a God or a Satan, but I do know that after you've been dead for awhile, living feels like Hell.
It all started a few years ago, I had been at the state fair when a friend of mine dared me to ride the biggest roller coaster there was. I had always been afraid of those things having been paranoid that one would break down. I took the dare when he told me he'd buy me a cheap Steam game 20 dollars was the limit and there's always something on Steam right? My paranoia proved true when the ride had left even though my safety buckle wouldn't fasten. I was forced face down onto the ground on the first drop, the ride had been stopped as soon as I fell though it hadn't been in time to save my life. I felt no pain as I fell face first destroying my skull and shattering my spine. I only had enough time to think to myself. "Well shit."
What happened next was a peaceful dreamless sleep, everything was dark I couldn't see or hear anything. I just knew that I was, and that I was relaxed and at peace. Things had been very strange after this, I felt fine and relaxed in a deep meditative trance for what simultaneously felt like centuries and seconds. It's very hard to describe the passage of time to someone whose never been dead before. The first actual thought that I had in this state was one of observation.
"I'm growing..." I managed to speak without a mouth into a world without sound. I could feel those words vibrating through me even though I was without form.
It was then that I realized I was becoming a universe. I could feel the sensation of my eyes opening and noticed the blank void that I was in, no that I had become, was filled up with stars. As I begin to think and focus I drew my attention to one area and said spoke once more, the feeling of the sound-waves reverberating through me was practically orgasmic. "Let there be light!" I commanded, a large sun forming around the area I focused on.
I drew my focus elsewhere, not too far and not too close. "Let there be land, sea, and air!" I spoke and a small Earth-sized planet appeared just in the right distance to be warmed by the sun that I had created only my words.
I thought about how great it would be to explore that planet and look at how great of a job I had done creating with. The world warped about me and I found myself in the middle of a field. I looked down at my self and well didn't see anything. I had no body, I was nothing at all but a point of view that I could move to my own will. I could even split my viewpoint and look at as many things on this planet as I wanted. Don't ask me to describe how that works, even now thinking about it gives me a headache from the perspective of my mortal mind. Not having a body was cool but I found it disorientating. I focused my thoughts towards the ground and summoned a boulder from it.
In life I was born male, but always felt more like a woman. So this was quite the opportunity for me to build a form where I finally felt like myself. I made the perfect carving merely by imagining a woman standing at 5'6 with long fiery red hair, a highly voluptuous hour glass figure, purple colored eyes, and skin that was a little darker than the skin I had in life though I intended that for something with a bit of an Egyptian Pharaoh flare with matching eye make-up. I thought about a headdress but ultimately decided against it as one would only look tacky and cover up the big hair. Once I had my sculpture I placed my awareness into the figure, immediately turning the rock statue to flesh as I moved. I had realized I had forgotten to cloth myself, but this was my universe and if I didn't feel like putting on pants that was my right.
I lifted myself up off the ground and levitated in place as I called forth an illustrious staff to wield, one made of oak but with a golden tint. I smiled as I flew across my planet looking over vast oceans, tall mountains, deep caves full of beautiful gems, and thick forests all untouched by man as man did not exist in this reality. Only one Goddess looking over the world, I had become Mother Nature.
I grew giddy getting excited about the fact that God was real, she was alone, and she was me. I kept things this way for countless eons, I could feel an intense sensation of love ever since this started and that was good enough for me for the time being. Eventually I did think about populating my world and decided to make for myself an adviser.
Should I make a man or a woman? Did they have to be human at all? No they didn't I could do anything I desired, they didn't have to make logical sense or follow the laws of physics, I am the laws of physics now. With that in mind I decided to give myself wings made of green flame and the tail of scorpion merely because I could.
I waved my golden oak staff having made my decision for my partner. Since there existed the perfect woman by my own design, I would make the perfect man or more accurately the perfect soldier. I decided a minotaur. When I was alive there were those who believed that woman from man was the way things went in the beginning. Here it would be man from woman.
I tore from my head a single strand of hair and placed it in the ground below me. Immediately a plant burst from the ground as a giant flower and attached to it was a fetus that rapidly formed into a red furred, naked, buff cowman. As soon as he was aware he looked towards me and bowed before me. I presented my foot and told him to lick it, which he did.
"Rise!" I ordered, waving my staff over him. "I name you Minos, after the Minotaur King of Earth. I grant you the knowledge required to help and aid me through all of crafts."
The minotaur's light red eyes had gained a sense of intellect to them becoming more human in appearance. Suddenly he felt naked and covered himself. "May I have a suit of clothes my Goddess?"
I snapped my fingers and placed upon him armor made of sapphires.
Minos and myself filled this planet which we named Minos after him, its King, with more of his kind. Minos was immortal as was his wife Helen, and their immediate family. Not that death was a problem, anytime someone died they would go onto to make their own universes or if I wanted to keep them around they would inhabit new bodies almost instantly retaining all of their memories. Murder was non-existent once this became common knowledge, after all, what was the point?
I had made my minotaurs so intelligent that their technology was the stuff sci-fi was made of, they hard hard-light holograms and perpetual energy within decades, by the fifth century they had finally mastered FTL travel. So I made other worlds each with its own dominant species, some were based on mythos or Earth Animals like the Zebra People of planet Stripe and some were more creative like the plant people of Clorus. My downfall came to me when I was with Minos, his people having just won a war with a planet of shadows I had created specifically for the worlds to have conflict was as an amusing blood sport for me to enjoy.
The more I gave to them the more they loved more the opportunity to spill blood in my name, the more they loved to build temples to my honor. I milked it for all it was worth, I even demanded the most beautiful of their women and the most handsome of their men to live in my private quarters to be my live in sex slaves.
When I took their prettiest for my servants, at first I only took those who were over eighteen but I did start taking them a little younger. Oh what fun I had with my servants, I could modify their appearances on a whim. I gave them new bodies and swapped their genders regularly as I tried various things with them. All the positions, all the fetishes, and even a few things that weren't possible when I was merely human. I ate a few alive only to restore them after, I merged some together like conjoined twins sometimes and more like Gotenks from Dragon Ball Z other times. If I was feeling more violent than sexual I would torture a few of my servants just to see how long I could do it before they died. One of them had actually grown to love being mutilated and begged me to continue tearing him asunder until I learned the otter-like boy's anatomy so well I could expose his lungs to the open air without killing him and just watch them inflate with oxygen. Did my world have a God? Is that why it was so horrible? Did my world's God view it as a game to play? Was God as de-sensitized to his actions as I was, to all the starving children of the world and all the sick people in war torn countries? Thinking about it did chill me a little so I made it rain tacos a few times and chocolate a few others. Ultimately I was able to justify the crueler of my actions by reminding myself that no one would be alive or exist at all had I not willed them to creation.
I did think it unlikely that my original universe had a God anyway, no one on Earth had super powers, sci-fi technology, or miracles as blatant as my own. Perhaps my world's God merely had different tastes in how he or she liked to do things, maybe she or he was far more subtle than I. There was never any serious guilt for me, if I really wanted to keep someone around I'd let them come back to life in a new body. I had died myself back in my universe and I had become a deity, thus it was logical to assume anyone who didn't come back to life in my world were just given their own universes to rule over where they too could play the God game.
I think Minos knew the truth, but I had told fibs of an evil counterpart to myself who had created the shadows. That way when I did bad things to my people just to see them squirm I wouldn't get blamed. Minos' prayers had became a little backhanded when he told me these things. I did make him omnipotent, so, perhaps he did know. Maybe I was paranoid.
I told him of Earth and how I had missed my friends, I made the off-hand comment that I'd love to tell them all what happens when we die. That they would become their own universe. I never tested it, but had I wanted to see my fellow dead persons I suppose I could have willed it, but I had so much fun playing dollhouse with so many civilizations. It was like the ultimate game of The Sims!
During mine and Minos' conversation I imagined myself back on Earth, telling people about the afterlife. My powers activated as they normally do when I imagined something and I found myself waking up in a hospital.
"Jessica... Are you okay?" Asked the voice of the friend who dared me to go on the ride. "I'm sorry about the roller coaster, tell you what, scratch the Steam game. I'll buy you a new damn PC."
I looked around the room, there were doctors looking me over watching a heart rate monitor carefully. "You're lucky to be alive, hell I'm amazed you're not paralyzed!" one of them said.
Though I had sight I wasn't coherent enough to take in everything at once, my everything hurt. The first sensation of anything other than bliss in longer than there's ever been time.
My recovery was swift and I was out of the hospital a month later, but I can't shake the depression. I was God and now I'm a mere human, I'd give anything to be a God once more. I've even tried taking my own life to get back to my perfect universe, but every time I do I can hear Minos' voice telling me that if I kill myself it would be like willing myself out of existence and I wouldn't become a Goddess. I would die completely.
I've shared this story dozens of times, no one has ever believed me. They claimed it was all a dream or that I had made it up. I know what I've been through, I know what we're all going through. I wish I were dead. With only five senses I feel blind and deaf, with only my legs I feel so slow and crippled, and with only a human understanding of the world I feel so stupid.
Humans don't die, we evolve, and now that I've gone backwards my body feels even worse than before. I feel like I'm in a straight jacket yet I have an itch on my back that I just can't reach multiplied by a million. Every time I find myself in danger I think I'm going back to my miraculous universe, back to my awe-inspiring temples, back to my wonderfully erotic and well trained sex slaves, back to having any wish I want granted on a whim. Yet each time it just doesn't work like that. I had someone break into my house and open fire at me, they missed every short and even managed to hurt themselves when a bullet ricocheted and hit the intruder in the leg. The next day I forget to look both ways before crossing the street and a car runs me over. I land on my feet and don't even need a doctor or anything. The jackass who hit me had pulled a hit and run, but I was fine.
Hell a few months later I was on a camping trip with my brother, we forgot to put the campfire out and though my tent was caught ablaze the fire didn't touch me. I merely emerged from my tent like a chick from its egg, my foot hurt when I stopped on a cinder but the fire did nothing to take me almost like it was actively avoiding me.
I have to wonder if Minos is somehow in control. If he keeps messing with me, knowing that I won't kill myself if I don't think I'll have an afterlife if I do. Is this his revenge? Is his world better off without me?
I only hear Minos if I try to hurt myself, I can't talk to him, all he ever does is warn me that if I commit suicide than I'll just stop existing altogether. I've tried praying, chanting, meditating, every new age thing I can think of but he only talks to me if I make an attempt on my life and he only ever says the same thing.
How much longer do I have to go through this hell? When will I be able to die once again and take my rightful place as a Goddess? Soon, hopefully very soon.