Greater Good

GREATER GOOD
By: Nicholas Admiral



Dedicated to those who have passed away, and that they find their way to everlasting peace.




Prologue

Spencer walked into the bathroom where his girlfriend; Stacy, was showering. After he closed the door and started to brush his teeth, Stacy screamed. Spencer flinched and dropped his toothbrush in the sink as the scream chilled him to the core.

“Stacy?” asked her boyfriend.
She remained silent.
“Stacy?” Spencer asked again.

Nothing, but Spencer could still hear his girlfriend moving around in the tub. He decided to just join her in the shower and started to take off his clothes. When he got in the shower he noticed Stacy was sitting down near the drain, holding her knees and crying.

“Stacy? What’s wrong?” asked Spencer as he reached for her.

As he got closer to Stacy, she looked up and he stopped reaching for her. He looked into her glistening blue eyes, but she appeared to be looking behind him. Spencer continued his reach towards her, but almost had a heart attack; his hand passed right through her body.

His mind flashed. Stacy seemed to get farther away, like he was being sent backwards through the building and into space. Blinding light consumed his vision once more, causing him to blink and rub his eyes.

Spencer found himself standing on a building, looking down at an intersection. It was night, and there were very few stars in the sky, but the moon was full. Few to no cars passed by underneath him, and he stood there confused until something caught his eye; his car.

His old-fashioned blue car drove towards the intersection. His first reaction was to run down and see who stole his vehicle, but he stood in amazement as he saw it was him. He looked over the vehicle in astonishment, and his mind clicked; he realized what must be coming next.

A school bus was coming up the street behind Spencer’s car, and he watched as it caught fire. He looked down at his own car, and saw himself texting with his cellphone. He began to remember, and realized he had been in the middle of a text when…

The flaming school bus rammed into his car, crushing the rear end and sending it spiraling out of control. He watched from the building as his car spun around and his phone flew out of his car window. His car smashed into the adjacent building, and the school bus just kept moving down the street, catching fire to the roadside trees. The bus lost momentum and came to a stop an intersection away.

Spencer ran down through the building and onto the street. Instead of going to see his own body and wrecked car, he ran to find his tossed cellphone. It was lying on the ground with the screen smashed and it looked un-repairable.

Even with the smashed screen, he still tried to pick up the cellphone, and when he got a grasp of it, he picked it up. But he didn’t actually pick up the physical form of the cellphone; he picked up a “spiritual” version of the phone and just looked at it.

“What?” Spencer thought out loud.

He clicked a few of the transparent buttons on the phone and found the message he had been typing. After completing the message, he clicked send, and put it back its physical shell.

The sounds of sirens seemed to cause the blinding light again. This light did not come from his surroundings, but from inside his mind. Instead of blacking out, he whited out, and felt the sensation of free falling.

Spencer regained vision and noticed he actually was falling. Clouds appeared to whiz by him, but it was actually him who was speeding by them. The ground began to look bigger the more he fell, until he could recognize the surroundings. He was falling towards the hospital his body had been sent to after the accident.

The hospital “H” on the helicopter pad came rushing up rapidly and Spencer flew right through it, into the building. His fall stopped abruptly and even though he was in spirit, it still hurt.

He looked around the room that he now hovered in. It was the room he had been recovering in after the crash. He watched as a nurse touched his body while another wrote on a clipboard. The nurse that had been looking over his body whispered in his ear, something he could not remember.

A heart monitor quietly beeped behind Spencer’s bed. Which meant he was alive, but he couldn’t be. He was watching himself. He was dead. The monitor’s green line barely moved, and the sounds started to slow.

A third woman stood at the door. She wasn’t a nurse, Stacy, or a family member, and she was wearing a black hooded robe. But he knew her, and watched her watch his body. As the heart monitor became quiet, she left the doorway so the nurse could rush Spencer’s body out of the room on a stretcher.

Spencer descended to the ground and walked after his lifeless body. As he walked down the hospital hallway, the ceiling lights started to intensify. He sped up his walking speed, trying to catch his body.

He teleported to another location, still speed walking and reaching out, and almost ran off a hilltop. He scanned the area, but did not know where he was. Spencer spun around at the sound of voices and saw a lot of black-robed people standing in a circle.

The tombstones around the people gave away this place’s location; a graveyard. His graveyard. He saw his mother and Stacy standing in the crowd, and he chose to walk closer. A priest was making a speech as a coffin was being lowered into a hole.

The majority of the crowd was crying, mainly women. The coffin touched the dirt floor and the priest stopped talking. Members of Spencer’s family then took turns shoveling dirt overtop of the coffin. Stacy was the last person to add dirt on top, and the first to add flowers. Several other people placed flowers on the dirt mound and whispered to the ground.

He waited until the funeral was over and everyone was gone, and then approached his grave. He kneeled at the end of the newly placed tombstone and tried to rake the dirt with his fingers. He was not able to grab hold of anything, not even a handful of dirt, his hand just passed through. This gave him an idea.

He took a deep breath and jumped into the pile of dirt and moved right through it to the coffin. He grabbed the coffin, but could not pass through it. He tried again, kicking and punching, but nothing worked. The coffin seemed to be sealed off by something. He thought that maybe the priest’s prayer allowed spirits to leave and not return.

The ground below the coffin started to light up, spreading like vines on speed, creating a web around Spencer. He stood, his spiritual form in the dirt like it was air, and watched the vine-like light get closer and closer. Spencer lifted a finger to touch the one vine of light that edged towards him like a shy animal, and the ground exploded with it.

This time when he opened his eyes the light was still there – a little less bright – but still there. He looked around and noticed he was standing on a group of clouds. A big arched golden gate rose high above him, not too far away.

“Really?” said Spencer aloud, “Really?”
“Really, what?” asked a booming voice.
Spencer looked for the source of the voice, “This is the stereotypical heaven... I was hoping for something different than what I see on my television.”
“Well what do you see?” asked the voice.
“What do you mean, what do I see?” yelled Spencer, “I’m standing on bright clouds with a big golden gate over here!”
The voice didn’t respond right away, “It’s just your mind’s interpretation of death, and the afterlife.”
“My mind is rotting in a hole in the ground right now,” Spencer argued.
“Do you not believe what is happening right now?”
“Well… I do…”
“Then Spencer, try to understand. This is what you think the afterlife is, this is what you will experience.”
“Can I change it?”
“Do you want to? Do you want the real experience?”
“Yes,” whispered Spencer, “Yes I do.”