In the middle of the night, an old man lies in bed, trying to sleep. He'd been having trouble sleeping the past few days, but it was fine. He had lots to do, and possible the fate of the world ahead of him.
He had led his country into a diplomatic crisis with the West in the past few years. A war in Korea, dividing the nation for what he knew would be a long while.
A complete isolation of Eastern Europe from the World to come. He would not live to see the end of this Nuclear arms race after all, even he knew that, maybe it would last 40-50 years, maybe longer.
He sighs, there was no point in looking ahead in a future where he would not live, rather he should focus on the current issues.
Finally, he feels himself tire more and more, as his eyelids feel heavier and heavier before drifting into a slumber. He wouldn't see the morning sun again.
Stalin woke up in a cold sweat, his hands and feet felt numb wnd he found that before long his eyes could no longer blink. A sharp pain pierces into his skull, he clutches his head as he twists and falls of his bed with a thud.
He tries to reach his hand out to the door to call for a guard, for anyone.However his arm is unresponsive, it wouldn't move. He tries to call out, but he's unconscious before he could.
In the morning, no one dared to open the door, after all, everyone remembered the last time Stalin pretended to be injured. The guards who came to him were hung on the spot.
A housekeeper, supposed to change his bedsheets long after he'd awoken, daringly enters. She expects to be executed, to be thrown away like each and every other colleague she'd had.
But, this wasn't the view she was expecting, the scenario she thought of in her mind would be the tyrant, shouting at her that today he just wanted to sleep in a little longer. Rather, she wasn't expecting to see the man sprawled out on the floor, breathing heavily and pitiful, unlike the man she was familiar with.
She calls for guards, who too afraid to even approach let alone touch him. They carry the pitiful man to a hospital.
2 days later, after dozens of treatment, and the preperation of a funeral, Joseph Stalin, finally passes.
While his body lay in a casket, his mind lay in a void, possibly the afterlife. He questions it all in his mind, he couldn't see, eat, hear, or breathe, yet he was still able to think.
Perhaps this was the afterlife, a boring void devoid of anything to do, leaving him with only his thoughts, as he's thinking, he suddenly feels cold, like the first snow of winter had just fallen and he'd layed down in it.
Then, he felt the flloor, before he knew it he took a breath. For some reason his breathing felt easier, and his eyes opened to see a night sky. This was a sight he only remembered from his home town, devoid of the pollution and light congestion of Moscow.
His body was layed out against what seemed like a marble floor all the way until the horizon. The way his body was laying reminded him of the Vitruvian man that Da Vinci had sketched out.
He sits up, one of the most obvious things was that he was naked. This wasn't the body he remembered, his body didn't feel achy nor painful and more like the youth of a man in his 20's. It was almost liberating, being in a state where it was easy to breathe and your body didn't hurt, he'd experienced the symptoms through his aging body for twenty years and now he was free of it.
That raised the question, where was he? There was no way this was Earth considering how it was only the marble floor and the night sky in his view.
He stood up, there was a small breeze against his back as he did, a reminder of the winters in Russia. The marble floor reflected slightly, he could make out a silhouette of what was his face. It reminded him of his face in his youth. He found himself staring at it for what seemed like an eternity. Time didn't seem to be the same here like Earth anyway.
"Is your reflection that interesting?" A female voice called out to him, he flinched and whipped his head all the way back to see a woman, blonde, beautiful and pure. Her body was cloaked by a robe that only showed part of her shoulder and head. She had 4 wings attached to her back like an angel.
"What? Speechless? I don't blame you, how has your afterlife been treating you?" The angel said out.
Stalin knew he had to be smart about this, the fact that this woman was obviously an angel conflicted him. Stalin had turned atheist early on in his life, he didn't believe in angels, but now that one was standing before him, he didn't know what to believe.
"I get what you're thinking, but don't get it confused, I am not goddess of the universe Earth resides in, rather I redirected you here rather than the afterlife."
"Wha- so…" He was going to need some time getting used to this new voice. But it did have a rather charm to it in preference of his old voice which was squeaky, he didn't like giving out speaches from it because he thought it hindered his image.