Peace.
The only time I truly felt at peace was when I was asleep, like right now. Although this sleep didn't quite feel like just sleep. They say when you die, your consciousness drifts from place to place, causing you to be in a constant state of limbo. Others say there is a judgment that follows between heaven and hell, and some even believe that you will be reincarnated.
I can't remember a time where I have thought consciously about what comes after death. In the last 3 weeks, I've prayed for it so much, yet I never stopped to think about what actually came after it. You'd think that for someone who wished for something so much they would naturally think about what comes after, but that was not the case. I simply couldn't bear the pain of being alive. Each day a torture that tore through every living cell and ripped me limb from limb. Every second, every minute, every hour, a painstaking reminder of what I was forced to live through.
Although it was strange that I was having these thoughts in a dream. Do you even have thoughts in dreams? If I couldn't consider it a thought, then what would I even call it? Why was I so conscious of everything?
Everything was peaceful and quiet, no echoes of pain of fragmented memories haunting me in the dark corners of my mind. Could it be that I really did die?
Well if that was the case, then maybe death wasn't so bad after all. A slow and steady descent into darkness is how I would describe it, at least for me that's how it was. I could feel and see everything, while simultaneously feeling and seeing nothing, definitely limbo. At least that would be the end of that physical torture for me and my daily prayer would have been answered.
So, this is what really comes after, just a perpetual state of being and existing, while ironically not physically existing anymore.
Could it be that you only truly traverse the planes of your mind and the universe at large when you no longer had a physical form and were simply just a floating mass of energy. I don't have a physical form anymore, the only thing that remains is my consciousness.
So, if I wanted to tap into any information, as long as the living me was aware of where to find it I could. If only there was a way to pass on this information, confirm to everyone what it was really like after dying, then we could solve so many different issues, stop some of the long-standing feuds on life after death.
There simply wasn't any.
Well considering I can see everything surely, I have to be able to see where I died. I don't know how, but I have to try. How else can I truly confirm unless I see it for myself?
If this is all a construct of my mind then all I have to do is will it, and I should be able to see it.
....
"Her monitor is flatlined, we have to pronounce her." That voice was so familiar, of course the nurse who looked after me all this time. So, she's the one that found me.
A pale, thin, cold and very dead me lay stretched out on the bed. All skin and bones, hospital gown crumpled in odd places, hair so matted a bird could make a perfect home from it. What an ugly dead woman.
It was definitely the most unique experience to be able to observe my body from outside of it. Seeing every needle prick on my arm, and ink stain on my fingertips. To see my closed eyes and stiff posture, completely lost to that world I was no longer accepted as a part of.
Only after examining every inch of me did, I look around to see that the room consisted of three people, none of which I knew, all vaguely familiar and yet indefinitely unfamiliar as well. The only male present lifted a recorder, and the second female present began documenting on her clipboard.
"Time of death, 4/5/35 at 08:40 pm. Cause of death Virus 1013...hmm. Trial incomplete, phase 3 is a failure." She continued the proper procedures making sure that the body, well me really, was properly sealed and sent to a morgue.
Those numbers also looked and sounded familiar, but I was so at peace I couldn't care to remember where I had heard them from.
Looking further I realized that my diary lay open on the desk beside her, all my markings and scribbles filling the pages. I couldn't even consider that notetaking anymore, what the hell was I even writing.
I must've been mad in my last few days because there is simply no other way to describe what was written there, it was a sad sentiment, yet someone I couldn't feel it, I couldn't feel sorry for myself or really feel anything at all, but I knew that I should be sad and the same weight rested on my consciousness, as if I were really sad.
How interesting death was. A complete paradox.
Having nothing better to do now that I was dead, I decided to follow this mystery nurse and to see who she really was or maybe even find out some more information about these phases I had been subjected to for the last month.
For hours she just sat there reading through my journal and noting bits she deemed important to her research, but not just my final one, all three of them. Here I was under the impression that they discarded them, but that wouldn't make sense either.
Keeping them would allow them to see inside the mind of someone who was ill up close and as a doctor myself, even I could see how beneficial that would be to research and helping to better understand and treat patients.
She kept reading though, unable to see me or even sense me, and I continued watching in bittersweet silence. If this was all there was then I would be forced to be on the outside looking in for as long as this lasted. If that were the case, I should definitely not have an issue with turning it all off, just like I had willed myself to see it in the first place.
So, I did.
While it would be interesting to watch and see where this was going and how much information I could gather, what would I do with all of it?
Nothing. I was dead after all so no matter how much I knew or figured out, I could never get the chance to impart that wisdom on someone in any way shape or form because the dead simply did not converse with the living. That thought alone meant being conscious in limbo served no purpose.
I could learn every secret of the world and still not be able to do anything with that knowledge, or change anything about what happens next, I could never impact or help another living soul and for the many hours I had already been dead, there wasn't another dead one around.
Surrendering myself over to the vast unknown was the best option. Flittering back into the serenity and peace that I had when I once got here. That so far has been the best part of my death. So I let myself drift slowly off into the nothingness.
As I did, I couldn't help but remember Rin and Ms. Iyla.
Were they still alive? Is this also what they would have experienced had they died? Did they have the same tranquility easing them into endless slumber, or were they filled with resentment and hatred unable to move on?
I really wish I had lived to see if they were alive again, to talk with them not only as a doctor, but as a patient who went through the same things they did, to live at death's door day after day. Not knowing it will be your last day, but hoping and praying that everyday is.
I couldn't help but also think about all the other people who must have gone through the same thing we did and possibly worse, the other subjects that must have endured the same torment that I did.
Now I truly did regret that there wasn't a way to talk to someone, anyone just to let them know what had happened to me, and possibly stop someone else from having to feel the same thing that I did.
I didn't believe in reincarnation and things of that sort, but this is definitely the one time that I truly wished I had the power to change my fate and make those assholes suffer for everything that they put others through.
Their complete disregard for human life and lack of empathy is a feeling that would traverse with me through the endless sleep.
Peace, that was what had brought me to the endless and that is the last thing I would like to remember about it.
The last of my thoughts finally settled as I finally inhabited true serenity.