In a dark space without a shred of light, the transparent body of a man was floating.
In the face of death, what are we?
During my lifetime I had never asked myself this question, I preferred to avoid thinking about the end, I told myself that this would never happen to me, I reassured myself in an illusion of immortality and pretended not to see the truth in front of me.
I didn't know how long I've been here, at first I panicked, but I regained my calm several months later, I was floating in this space with no light, no sound, no sensation, my senses were non-existent.
The only thing I could do was to count the seconds and think.
My thinking was the only proof of my existence, it was all I possessed in this place worse than hell.
The philosopher René Descartes doubted everything in his life, reality and even his own existence, but he found a magnificent answer to his doubts.
"I think, therefore I am"
I became mad many times, but time got the better of my madness, I was also many times mentally broken, but time healed my spirit.
In this infernal place I could not go mad, I could not disappear, I could not fall asleep as if a superior existence wanted to torture me eternally.
Five billion two hundred and sixty nine million three hundred and twenty five thousand seven hundred and forty three.
It's the number of seconds that have passed since I started counting time.
I had no more desire, I felt horribly empty, but I had a faint hope of leaving this hell, a faint hope that dulled with time.
Perhaps the superior being who locked me up here was tired of torturing me or perhaps it was a saving grace from a god who took pity on me, but suddenly I saw the transparent body of a young man surrounded by a kind of flaming chain, but the body of the young man lasted only a brief moment in this hell before breaking and scattering, the flaming chains as if sensing the disappearance of the young man, froze for a brief moment before throwing himself towards me and tying me up.
The chains brutally pulled me forward towards a world filled with light, seeing light for the first time since an eternity an indescribable joy passed through me as my thoughts gradually faded.
At last I am free...