Burned or Buried

The side of the road approached rapidly as my head went round in circles. I couldn’t see a thing, nothing but my approaching fate. The end was coming closer and closer, and I was soon lying face down on the cold wet floor of the highway. No movement was coming from any of my limbs or muscles, no movement at all; it was as though my mind was refusing to send my body the signals. The only signal that mattered was being neglected. Survive. I needed my brain to tell me to survive but it refused. It must have realised I deserved no less than what I was about to get. I heard footsteps, cold and slow, shuffling awkwardly towards my body.
Suddenly the ground fell away from me, and all that was in the space where I was lying was my body and the man, slowly edging his way towards the limp pile of muscle and bone in front of him. I was above it, above my body, above the man, watching from the clouds.
He was injured as well. He had a piece of shrapnel protruding through his left shoulder, and it was bleeding heavily. He didn’t care.
As the dark demonic man approached me, I willed myself to get up. “Get up! Get up now!!! He’s coming! HE’S HERE!!!!” and so he was.
The mysteriously darkly dressed villain stood over my pathetic body, pulling out the piece of shrapnel and throwing it to the ground with a yelp. I wanted to call out. There must have been someone I could call to help me. There must be someone who wanted to help me.
Unless...
Could it be possible that the floor fell away not only in my head, but also in reality? The floor had disappeared beneath me, everything had gone, but the darkly dressed man stayed in my visible reality. That must have meant we had at least one thing in common. We were both in the same reality. What reality that was I did not know, but we were both certainly in the same place at the same time.
It was when I had this thought that I slowly turned my head to the side, away from the scene of terror below me, to see a man, cloaked in a large black trench coat, holding a piece of bloodied metal, staring at me in interest.
Before this day I had never thought I would know any secrets about the end. I assumed that we died, and we were burned or buried, and we were left there in our physical reality to exist as much as is possible until we decay. But now I knew that this was not the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Physical reality is only one of our habitats, there are others.


And so now I existed in this spiritual reality with the man who caused me to leave the physical. I couldn’t help but wonder why he had done what he had done. I opened my mouth to speak; to ask him what I had done to deserve this, but nothing happened. When I tried to draw a breath to talk, I drew nothing, no air was available to breathe, and I began to panic. I choked and I spluttered and I tried to draw something from nothing into my lungs. I was turning red, I could feel it, and I was going to die all over again.
I continued to choke. I continued to fall apart before his laughing eyes. But he became calm, and to my surprise, he began to speak softly.
“Just don’t think about it. Let it come out. We don’t need air here.”
I stopped struggling, and floated there absolutely still. When I tried for the first time to speak it was like I had just learnt it all over again. It felt un-natural.
“Wha...?” I tried to think of an appropriate phrase. “What the fuck?”
“Hahaha...” the man’s laugh sounded fake, like he had spent years copying it from another. “Yes, that is a popular response.”
I said nothing, I simply stared in astonishment. His voice was quiet, calm, and almost cold.
“Let me explain,” he began. “As you may have already noticed, you’re what you humans call: Dead. Now, in our world we don’t call it Dead, we have many names for this state, but I wont bore you with the history of our people. Now you have a choice. It is not an easy choice, and I would urge you not to take it lightly.” He winked slightly, as if he thought I had guessed the answer.
I hadn’t. “And that choice would be...?” I replied.
“Well, before I throw the difficult question at you, I think I better explain how this works. On this particular plane, there are two main areas. The Camp and The Island. Now let’s begin with the camp shall we?” his eyes glistened mischievously. “The Camp, as we call it, is the waiting area for the ones who die before their allotted date and time. They wait in the camp until their original time arrives, and then they decide whether they want to move on, or be transported to the island. The camp is simply what you would call a field or a green. Each individual has his or her own camp, for we value individuality and privacy in this plane. You would have a garden of any flower or plant you choose, and there would be no need to tend to them. There is no need to tend to anything in this world. Your world was flawed, but we learned from our master’s mistakes when we built this world. So you need not worry about anything, it will all be taken care of.” He spoke like he was the owner of a proud hotel or a humble bed and breakfast. “You will have a home; we will provide you with bedding and comfort. You may feel strange at first, I’m sure you’re not used to not eating, but in this world nutrition is un-necessary. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get used to it, everybody always does.”
“And you said when my time came I could choose to move on or to go the...what was it?”
“The Island. Yes lots of people like The Island. Once again, it will be your own island, free from danger. The Island is the place you will be with your loved ones. It is the area where you may summon anybody you wish, with their consent of course.” He winked again. “And you may live there for as long as you would like. You may even live there for the rest of eternity. Of course, everything from the camp will be transported with you, your home and garden, and anything else you may have wished to have in The Camp.”
I was confused; the information was too much to take in in such a short space of time. “Tell me what the choice is.” I demanded, getting quite frustrated.
“Well, the choice you have is whether to go to The Island or not. Some people don’t wish to exist any longer, and we like to respect your decisions here. If you choose to move on you will effectively end your life for good. You will not think, you will not see, hear, smell, touch, feel. You will know nothing; you will be nowhere. You will simply cease to be. After living in the flawed world many people like this option, and after the creator of your world fled, we made rules to respect any decision a human makes.”
“The creator of my world?”
“You might know him as God. Although your depiction of him very much amuses us here.” The dark man giggled softly for a few seconds. “No, he is not a big man in the sky; he is just like one of us.”
“And what are you?!” I asked, hoping for a straightforward answer this time.
“Hmmmm, you would probably call us angels. God’s helpers would be the more accurate term. But after he created your world, he saw how much of a mistake he had made. He couldn’t bear to watch his own creations live in such agony. It hurt him so badly that he fled to God Knows Where.” He twitched his lip upwards, as if he had just offered a side-splittingly funny pun. When he saw how un-amused I was, his smile faded, and he pulled a blank expression over his face. “No we don’t know where he is now, but we took over the ruling of your world. It’s a difficult job, but somebody’s gotta’ do it!
“Now this brings us to the million dollar question. Will you live on your own perfect little island, or will you cease to exist. You have until your allotted time of death to decide. I hope you choose the option which suits you best. You will be presented with the question again on the 23rd October 2017, which was your original time of death. Good luck, I hope you enjoy The Camp!”


“Wait!” I had one desperate question to ask him before he left me to my lonely little lilo of isolation. “You say you’re an angel? What kind of Angel...?”
“Yes, yes, you have probably guessed, I am the Angel of Death, as you humans would say.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For telling me why it felt so wrong down there.”
“It’s part of my job. Things are different here though, you wait and see. I wish you all the best!”


Everything faded away, and I did not know where I was, but at least I had some vague idea of where I was going, and I also knew I had a difficult choice before me. Which option I would choose I had no idea, but I knew one thing: I was not, in the human sense, Dead.