My consciousness doesn't go black, not all at once. Some people come back and tell you they saw a white light, saw their loved ones with open arms, I don't see any of that shit. I see an empty classroom with one of those old school TVs. I mean it's an actual school TV one of those big black plastic monstrosities, it's on the second shelf of a rolling cart with a viny strap running up over the top to keep it in place. I bet a few kids got crushed before that became the national standard. I saw the Challenger explode on that TV. Well anyway there it is. Only there's nothing on the screen. It's just snow. Then everything goes black. I don't feel pain, but I feel wet like piss and blood are running down my thigh. Then I'm real cold and wet, it's still dark but I feel a warmth in my chest like when you piss in a cold lake and the piss is warm from your body. I'm sorry about talking about piss so much that's just the way it is.
The light I see is not white. I don't see blurry orbs standing over me waiting for me to come to. It's more like a dim golden light, like when its afternoon and there are clouds. A gnarled hand pulls a device off of my face and there is a white albino, shaved head, peach fuzzed face, staring down with oversized almond eyes. The thing in his gnarled hand is like a fist sized river rock. He stares at the rock like he's reading it. I can see his lips moving.
"Last words?" A disembodied voice asks out of my field of vision.
The big albino faced dude groans, like he resents the question. "Go to Hell, Tom Streakle."
"Flush him."
The big albino shrugs and I'm lying naked on rough pavers. My flesh is pink like a newborn. I run my hand over my barren scalp over my hairless brows. Other than that my legs look familiar, my arms are the same size, my genitals aren't any different, for better or worse.
I get to my feet absolutely dry. There's been a shift. The light is the same, but the room is gone or maybe it's just expanded into infinity. Something bumps me in the back and there is another naked man in the same shaven state, and behind him ten, twenty, a hundred a thousand more. I turn back and a thick waisted figure with a flat ass is in front of me. I lean around the naked backside and see a line of bodies disappearing into the horizon. We are on a narrow corridor of stone with nothing but space on either side, at some point in the distance the stone path comes back at me, then cuts into the sky, then shoots back down doing an M.C. Escher space thing.
In a situation like that, you don't wait to get bumped again and you make sure you don't brush against the puckered buttocks in front of you. You just walk, carefully.
I walk that way for a long time until I'm sure I've gone up and down and back around a few dozen times, everyone silent, everyone looking around with a sense of eagerness no one willing to say what we all know.
Then one by one we fall. Like a lever was pulled and we all just drop straight down like dominoes in chutes.
This part is going to be hard for you to believe, but I'm sitting in a wicker chair a wooden palm desk is across from me and a kind of old English fellow with the stereotypical monocle is studying a report earnestly. He has a white pith helmet, a greased mustache, and an expression of concern, I know because of the crinkles beside his eyes.
I run my hand through my hair. So, things aren't going all bad. A big grandfather clock starts in with its solemn count. A window to its side is open with no glass just mosquito net strung out over it, nails in the corners, driven halfway into the palm beams.
I can sense that there is something in the dark outside that I don't want to understand. A kind of malevolent hostility is in the short buzzing of the bugs and the brushing of the trees far away.
The Englisheman smiles. "Well Mr. Roberts. You have a troubling case."
"Is this Heavan?"
He scrunches his face and shakes his head. "It's decidedly not anything like that I'm afraid. You see there are a lot of misapprehensions about this type of occurrence. I'm sure you understand."
"I don't understand."
The Englishmen sighs. "It's just you know how there are a lot of churches and there is a lot of uncertainty about the best way to proceed and there are constantly new movements with new interpretations of ancient religious texts? You know how there are firebrands who are convinced of their rightness, and they come to power and then after some time there is a new prophet with a better understanding? Meanwhile, there is a general apathy and a longing but no real verified sureness within the general populace as whole. Well, it's no different here."
"I see."
"Very good. Very good." He smiles.
I clear my throat. "So, I lived a pretty good life. I mean I helped a lot of people. I was in law enforcement."
"Ah yes." He fiddles with his mustache, cleans his monocle with a handkerchief.
"That kind of thing was important for a while, that was structural propensity. The idea that the life should be weighed by one's good deeds resulting in a pronouncement of everlasting bliss or eternal torture. That whole project morphed into reconciled structural propensity, then was remade as primitive modified grace, and then reformation, then post modified grace, modern symbolism, fixed synthesis. There have been a lot of movements that have come and gone since that point. I'm sure you understand."
"Will I see Genie or Martha again?"
He looks at his paper trying to find some relevant information. "Ah yes. I wouldn't think so. The probability of something like that is not strong. The chime of the grandfather clock comes to a stop.
"Ok so we will go ahead and approve your original disbursement. I'm glad I could be of service." He reaches to touch a tiny wooden gavel to a meager wooden block.
"Wait, just wait one minute. Just wait." I lunge out to stay his hand.
"Unhand me. You brute."
"Where are you sending me?"
A feral grimace spreads out from his gnashed teeth. "You're going to Last Words. It's a simple process, a streamlined efficient ordering."
"What is, Last Words?"
"It's your manifested destiny as outlined by the basis of your final saying."
"So. What do my last words have to do with anything?"
"For now, as things stand. They mean everything." Then the gavel taps the block and I'm in another room entirely.
