by n.r.

No creative project completed. I tried to sleep to have my dreams tell me something. And they did. I dreamt there was a hole inside the ruins of a church that one descended into to feel what it is to die. You had to pay to enter. My mom handed me our Chihuahua and went. I was also expected to enter, but my excuse was the dog. I was afraid of it running off. So I did not enter. The fact that you had to pay wasn't humorous in the dream. The money was more of a donation and wasn't necessary if you didn't have it, but we all had the money. The brother I hardly ever speak to was in the dream. I had made it down some huge crumbling stone steps that were made for a giant to climb effortlessly, and when I reached the bottom, still carrying the dog, my brother couldn't make the final jump down and asked if he could support himself on me. I said yes and stood rigidly. He put his hand on my head and lunged off the stone. I felt all his weight push down my vertebrae and I cried, What the fuck, I'm never letting you jump off me again! My back felt awful, and I tried straightening my posture, feeling my back snap. Scornfully I watched my brother as he gave money to the woman seated at the hole. I didn't see him enter. He was just gone.

I remember how the hole had been described to me. I was told you'd see unbelievably terrible sights despite it being pitch black, you'd hear the wails of cloaked demons mourning your death, right next to you, and the origin of these sounds would be unknown. Full pain beyond any experience one could live through, worse than the arms being ripped off like an insect’s, pain ripping apart your soul -what allows you to perceive the beautiful, shriveled and crying- and your mind, disseminated -your thoughts ending as they are formed. The thoughts formed during your living obliterated- so that, in death, there'd be nothing of you left. What was most eerie was not that the description of the torments continued, detailing who you would fearfully encounter, and what you would see done to you. Not this. The unreal aspect of death was the return of your tortured self, unharmed, the You you had known yourself to be emerging from purgatory, somewhere, there, awake, beside the church, and you'd see the woman seated, accepting donations, from far away.