CreepyPasta

The Everlasting Screams

Do you believe in the afterlife? In the beginning, I was unsure of the whole idea. As I grew older, the idea seemed so positively ingrained in my head that I relished the thought of a world better than this. When I was growing up, I constantly felt the weight of the world crushing my shoulders. It was the year of my 17th birthday when I finally decided what to do.
I will never forget that day, for it was the day that it all changed. When I awoke that morning, I knew it was going to be my last day alive. The pills they gave me did nothing to stop the pain, and those doctors all told me it would simply get better. To them, it was just another day at the office, dealing with a screwed-up teenager who needed pills shoved down their throat in order to survive life.
What I did was quite simple, really. I woke up, waited for the house to be vacant, drew a bath, for I wanted to be clean for paradise, then swallowed what remained of my pills. It may have been simple, but it was effective.
As I sat in the bath, my body began to relax, and I simply fell asleep. I don't remember dying, but I do remember feeling completely calm. There was an overwhelming sense of peace, then nothing. I don't remember waking up in this new world, but when I did become conscious, there was a feeling of weightlessness overtaking me, followed by complete blackness.
I seemed to have floated around in the darkness for a long time. It wasn't much, but it was better than the hellhole I called my life. The darkness expanded on forever, with no sense of time, direction, or anything really. This was good, or at least I felt good. Eventually, a small pin of blinding white light appeared, and since I was unsure of my surroundings, I thought that maybe it was the next step of the afterlife. I willed myself towards it, feeling no sense of getting any closer to it, other than that it grew larger. Eventually, I was in front of it. I don't know why, but I forced myself into the light, just to see how far the rabbit hole goes. When I finally passed into the light, everything had changed. The sense of peace and the darkness were gone, replaced with urgency and a white, sterile location. I could barely make out where I was. My vision was hazy, and all I could hear was a faint static coming from both sides of me. I soon realized I was back in my body. I attempted to move around, to see if I could make out where I was. My body was rigid, and wouldn't respond to any attempts I made. Finally, a small voice broke through the static.
"She doesn't seem to be responding to any treatment. What do we do, sir?" It was a low, booming voice, one I didn't recognize, and I assumed that it must have belonged to one of the people who found me. Slowly, I put it together. I was on a gurney, being wheeled through a hospital. I tried to call out the paramedic, to tell him to just let me die again, but nothing would respond. I anticipated the response from the other, presumably more experienced paramedic, but all I heard was that everlasting static. Suddenly, the static became more intense, and I felt an odd sense of pain coming from the region where my head should be. Was this what the afterlife was, an eternity stuck in your dead body?
The gurney I was riding on suddenly came to a stop, and once again, a voice broke through the static. This time, it was a female.
"It's too late to save her. If she'd been found earlier, we may have had a chance. Did her parents find her, and did they give us a name to call her?" The voice sounded clinical, almost as if she had seen one too many incidents like this before, and just gave up caring about it.
Again, I tried to speak, but to no avail. So was this it, was I stuck in my body, waiting for the eventual decomposition and decay of what I once was? I wanted so badly to go back to the nothingness, to experience the peace and calm of nonexistence.
Finally, I heard the deep voice of the paramedic speak, "Her name was Rachael Smith, Dr. Frost. She was only 17".
This was the end. I got what I wanted, or at least part of it. There is an afterlife, but it is much worse than any religion describes it. Hell is not the eternal torture of damned souls, nor is it the fires everyone wants it to be. No, Hell is what happens when we die, and we all must face it alone.
My body was prepared by the funeral home, made to look nice for my family and the little friends I had who would be coming to my final send off. After the funeral, my casket was loaded into a hearse, and driven across town. At first I thought it was to the cemetery, but when I was loaded onto a moving assembly line, I dreaded what was to come next. As the casket approached the furnace, I felt an odd sense of fear, because I wasn't sure if my soul would feel the same pain of being burned. I wasn't alive, but I still existed within my meat shell.
As it turns out, although I could only somewhat see and hear what was happening around me, the pain of what happens to your body is amplified in the afterlife. I felt the heat as it began to cook my dead flesh.
If I still had the ability to shout, I would have been screaming my lungs out. I felt every inch of skin cooking, and felt my inner organs turn to ash. Time in this furnace seemed to stretch on forever, as if it was some sort of torment for the way I lived my life on Earth. I remember learning in school that the average cremation takes about 2 hours, but even after counting off sixty seconds, it felt as if I had been in there, broiling for years. Finally, the pain diminished, and when it disappeared completely, I realized my physical body has completely become ash. It was odd, really. I could still somewhat see and hear around me, but could no longer feel anything.
When they finished with the fires, I realized I was being scooped up and placed in an urn. Soon, after all this occurred, my remains were placed in a columbarium, and all was quiet and peaceful. That is, until I heard their voices.
The first voices I heard scared whatever part of me that still felt fear. They sounded closer than the static coming from outside, yet were still muffled. Slowly, they either grew louder or my sense of hearing increased. Eventually, I could hear them as clear as day. They were the voices of my fellow dead, and they were screaming. Some of them screamed for God, other simply for quiet. Even more screamed to return to the nothingness that we all began this new life in. The screaming never ended, and eventually, I joined in too.
I ask you again, do you believe in the afterlife? I warn you now, it's not what you'd think it would be. Your body may die, but you don't end up in a better place. Pray all you want, but Hell is real, and it's where we all go.