The darkness is warm and waxy. Ayana stumbles down the first step without knowing it's there.
"Careful."
"Thanks," Ayana says irritably.
She can't see anything until Trinity turns her eyes down onto the floor in front of them. It's a spiral staircase. The stairs are narrow and steep, and every step makes a hollow kind of noise like they're walking on a metal grate.
"What, is the magic elevator out of order?" says Ayana.
"It doesn't go where we're going. Besides, Darius likes opening the door like that."
"Not to complain too much--"
"You? Never."
Ayana ignores that. "--But are we there yet?"
"Yep." says Trinity, voice dripping with sarcasm. "This is it. Bye."
"Ha." says Ayana unappreciatively. "But seriously, how much longer?"
"This is a path that cannot be measured in human concepts of time or distance. . ." Trinity pauses for effect. "But a few more minutes, ish."
Ayana hears a sound from below them and far in the distance like slow, heavy rain. Drop. Drop.
Soon the ground becomes flat and solid again. As Ayana walks she feels it cave under her feet. She bends down to touch the ground, and feels soft moist dirt in her hands. The air is fresh and warm.
"Are we outside?" Still she can barely see.
Drop.
"Kind of. We're in the place of judgment. It's not an outside or inside thing. It's like its own world. Look around. Can't you feel that it's different?"
Drop.
"You know what's different? Death. I guess in all the different that's been going on I can't tell. Hey, maybe I would see it if I could actually see anything. Can't you make those a little brighter?" Ayana asks, pointing to Trinity's eyes.
"No," Trinity says, a little defensively. "Jesus. Can you whine a little more? I don't think you've done enough of it yet. Your eyes will adjust."
Drip. Drop.
Actually, Ayana is starting to see a little better. Something wet brushes against her shoulder, then her arm-- They're leaves. Slowly, she begins to see that they're surrounded by towering trees and leaves bigger than her head, dark and glossy with light reflecting off the small streams of water that gather in the middle and fall down in heavy drops. They're in a rainforest. Of course. Because what could be more surreal?
Over her head she hears the sounds of animals, frogs croaking and crickets chirping. She stretches her arm into the lush forest plants and rubs the water on her face. It's getting so loud she can't believe that back on the stairs she heard only dead silence.
"I was imagining more like a church. Or something with clouds," Ayana admits.
"This is where Adam and Eve were made. Where humanity started. Where the first sins were committed. Now, it's where they are judged."
Ayana hasn't read anything from the Bible since she was ten. She remembers thinking that Heaven for her would be walking on clouds made of marshmallows and riding horses with long hair for her to braid. And she remembers that Eve got blamed for telling Adam to eat the fruit with her, even though Ayana knew Adam was really the stupid one because Eve got convinced by the serpent, the master of evil and temptation, and all it took to convince Adam was just another human.
But those were just stories. And she didn't pay too much attention either; she was usually in the back throwing paper airplanes while the Sunday school teacher leaned over the good kids' desks and put star stickers on their nativity scene coloring pages.
So Ayana only prays when things are really bad or really impossible, or when a customer is really rude at work and it would be really funny if they tripped. And even then, she isn't sure she believes the prayer can do anything. Trinity said that most people go to Heaven, but Ayana's heard what sins are. She smokes, she drinks, she uses God's name in vain, she curses at her mom and sisters when they fight. She hasn't been to church since she was just a kid.
There's the other thing she's been trying not to think about. Her mom. Her sisters. Ashley. The other people who are apparently on Earth right now while she's dead. She doesn't want to think about them at her funeral, seeing her body. And what's her obituary gonna say? 19 year old girl killed in car accident. She is survived by her goldfish and her roommate Kat, who's mostly just mad she has to post a new Craigslist ad now.
Shit. Who's going to feed that fish? Kat's not gonna fucking do it. Kat's probably going to flush Bubbles down the toilet. Fuckin' Kat.
Ayana's still not convinced she's not gonna wake up from all of this. Everything is weird and offices turn into jungles. Thinking about her own death is so big and unreal, she can't really take it in. But if it is real…
She'll just do what she's best at and ignore it. Avoiding your own thoughts gets easier and easier the further into a random tropical rainforest you get. Moonlight glows luminescent on their path, and stars are scattered like glitter in the black sky. There's more than Ayana's ever seen; New York isn't really known for its clear skies.
"When you are judged," Trinity says suddenly, "You'll be in water. It's going to be really, really cold."
"Fun."
"After, someone else will take you the rest of the way."
"Not you?"
"My job's just to bring you from death to judgment. What happens after that is another department. I'm like your cab driver, and the next one you're passed to is the one giving tours."
"Those people always have terrifying smiles on their faces like they're about to eat you." Ayana points out.
"Yes."
They walk quietly after that. Heavy drops fall onto Ayana's skin and into her hair. They remind her of when she was a kid in the summer, when she'd walk home after playing in the park all day just as the big dark clouds rolled in, heavy with the promise of a storm after weeks of dry ugly heat. It would start with a couple of drops on her face, in her eye, and just as she looked up into the swirling sky, it turned into a downpour, sheets of water washing the grime off her skin and beating down on the concrete.
She remembers mourning for her childhood like everyone does, looking back and seeing nothing but carefree innocence, longing for a time that deep down, she knew had its own darkness she was choosing to forget. She wonders if when she finally processes it, that's what it'll be like being dead. Remembering coconut ice cream carts and stories told over and over again late at night, but choosing not to remember the monsters and nightmares, the powerlessness and how long every minute and every day seemed to take.
Remembering being with people and being alive, but not the loneliness and sadness, the dollar pizza and Kraft mac n' cheese that loses its taste after eating it three times a day for a few weeks because this month just joined the last two months in the Rent That Hasn't Been Paid Yet Club and there's a new eviction warning slapped on the door.
Ayana's homesick, for her mattress with no bed frame, for having a heartbeat, even for the stupid mac n' cheese. She even misses her mom. Oh look, there's that idealizing she was wondering about.
She's broken out of her thoughts when Trinity's arm reaches out to stop her.
"We're here," Trinity says, eyes glowing a little brighter.
In front of them is a river. It's wide and rushing, dark and loud. Over their heads, the moon and the stars are now gone, leaving the sky blank, like it's been filled in with jet black ink.
Trinity sees her looking. "They get in the way," she says quietly. "Now, there's nothing in the sky to see you but the divine powers."
Silently, Trinity brings her right up to the edge of the river, where the air is cooler.
"Go ahead. This is as far as I can go. Start in the shallow part. Keep walking until you get to the middle. Then, all you have to do is wait."
"How deep is it?" Ayana asks, looking at the river with what can only be described as extreme mistrust.
"Bottomless," Trinity says easily, "Like humanity's capacity for evil."
Ayana looks at her irritably.
"Kidding," Trinity says cheerfully. "But seriously, it won't matter. You'll feel as if there's ground under your feet. Now, go on."
Ayana dips the toes of her bare foot reluctantly into the river.
And then jumps back out, shrieking in a very dignified way.
"It's freezing!" she yells.
"I told you."
Taking a deep breath, Ayana puts her foot back into the shallow water. It's cold like ice, but scarier, sharper, like the feeling you get when your tongue sticks to ice and the cold might rip your skin off. But she takes another step forward.
It's not the kind of cold you get used to the longer you're in it. By the time she's knee deep, she already feels the heat leached from her entire body.
"Hey, I'm really hating this," she calls over her shoulder, "Could we go to a warmer river? Do you guys have like a hot tub we could do this in? I think I was baptised in a sink, so it should be fine!"
When there's no response, she looks back. But Trinity's gone. There's nobody there, as if Ayana had just walked up to this frozen river by herself in the middle of the night and decided to go for a swim.
"Hello?" she calls.
There's no answer. She looks all around her, but it's too dark to see very far. She's alone.
Feeling a little betrayed, and exponentially more creeped out by her surroundings now that she's on her own, she turns and continues walking into the center of the river. It gets deep fast. She's in up to her waist now. The water rushes with so much strength she has to fight to stay upright, the noise so loud it drowns out the sound of her own teeth knocking together.
"Cold, cold, cold," she mutters as she goes. She feels the breath knocked out of her lungs as the water climbs up her torso
When she looks back at the bank, it's much further away than she thought. She's almost in the middle now. She walks the last few steps and looks back again, and again she's crossed much more distance than she should've with those few steps.
She's up to her shoulders, gasping for breath, moving her arms in the water uselessly. The numbness in her legs and feet is starting to spread to her sides. It's really fucking cold.
"Hello?" she yells out, but it's more like a sad breathless rasp. Her teeth chatter as she tries to get her words out. "I did it! I'm in the goddamn river, okay? Now what?"
After a second, she adds on guiltily, "Sorry about saying goddamn."
Suddenly, she feels the ground slipping from under her feet, like sand on the beach when the wave comes in. There's nothing to stand on. She braces herself and gets ready to swim, but instead, she floats. Not awkwardly like you do when your older sister's trying to teach you to swim and tells you to float so you stay there with your feet sinking down to the floor and holding your breath in case your head suddenly goes under.
She floats easily, like something's holding her up, but there's nothing. It's just her, alone in a bottomless negative-five-hundred-degree body of water.
Look, the salt in the seawater makes it easier, it lifts you up kind of. If you're ever in the middle of the ocean, you can just float til you get to land.
Why would I ever be in the middle of the ocean?
I don't know, Ayana, jeez, just if you ever are.
Whatever. I don't want my face to go under while I'm breathing in.
But if you hold your breath the whole time, when you finally have to breathe out it'll move your chest too much and make you go under. You have to breathe normally, and take the chance you might choke for a second, or you'll sink yourself before the water can do it.
Woah. Where did that come from? Kim's voice and her own sounded inside her head like a movie.
Come on, kid. It's time to go.
No, I don't wanna go yet! Can I have five more minutes please?
I already gave you five more minutes. You know what, I'm leaving with or without you. Stay as long as you want, but I don't know how you think you're getting home by yourself.
After that, one memory breaks off into another without stopping, like a chain.
She sees faces from her life, ones she remembers and ones she doesn't. They play out like videos projected onto the insides of her eyelids. Are her eyes closed? She can't even tell, but she hears her sisters' voices, Ashley's, her aunts and uncles. In flashes, she sees her entire life.
She watches her father, who she hasn't seen or heard from in twelve years, lift her up and throw her into the pool. She feels the sting of the scrapes she used to get all over her arms and legs from tree bark and concrete pavement, and the hurt swelling in her throat when she got yelled at and sent away. She smells the perfume her mom wears, hears her family fighting in the other room, sees herself joining in--
Oh, those jeans are really cute. She should wear those more.
There's the time she fought that girl in high school for bitching about her, and there's Ayana losing, and there's Ayana getting it together at the last second and leaving the girl on the ground. She feels the bruises forming where she'd been hit, as she watches herself walk away, not wanting to look back to see if the other girl's bleeding.
She sees herself a few years ago, walking through the hallways in school like a ghost, and then just going to Ashley's most days because she couldn't imagine getting through another six hours in that place, and then just not going at all, quietly falling apart and disappearing. She sees the string of boyfriends who either loved her too much or not enough, and the sad apartment where her and Kat take turns sleeping on the couch, and the overnight gas station shifts that made her feel particularly like snapping and killing someone, just strangling the next poor fourteen year old kid to come in high out of their mind looking for the Honey BBQ-flavored Pringles.
Memories that have disappeared long ago come flooding back, like they were in hiding, and it's too much. She forgot them for a reason; there's not enough space in her head. She sees her own baptism, a tiny baby in a white dress surrounded by bickering but loving family members and a slightly harassed looking priest.
She starts to feel her skull overcrowded by her own life, and her lungs still in shock from the cold, which now has her entire body numb. Only deep in her chest, where her hearts beats, is it warm. There, she feels everything: pain, love, anger, regret. Fear. Loneliness.
The emotions are pure and clean, even the bad ones. This is what it would've been like, she thinks, to feel things as they were while she was alive. Not pushed down, not ignored, not muddled. It's terrifying. She wants it to be over, but the flashes of her life just keep coming. There's another cousin, another injury, another story.
Exhausted, she stops fighting it. She gives herself over to the dead heaviness in her limbs and the scenes racing through her head, and lets go.