"Where the fuck am i?" henry exclaimed as he suddenly woke up in a different place than when he last fell asleep. He seemed to be floating in an endless abyss of nothing but darkness.
"What's going on?" he thought as he tried to look around for a source of light but was soon disappointed as he couldn't see anything but utter darkness.
"I must be dreaming," he concluded
As that was the only explanation for what was could be happening, the last thing he remembered was falling asleep on the couch in his apartment, while the sound of an alarm was constantly disturbing his peaceful sleep, but it wasn't just a normal alarm.
"Come to think of it, that fire alarm seemed have been ringing in my ear nonstop,"
But of course he ignored it as he was half way across dreamland already. But who could blame him, he was known to always be in quite deep when he sleeps, his subconscious completely unaware of anything happening around him. He even got the nickname 'sleeping ugly' among his colleagues when he was in the boarding school as he wasn't particularly part of the ones you could call average not to talk of the pretty ones.
"But this whole place....this feels a lot real." he said, still trying to figure out where he was
"Or perhaps a lucid dream?" he pondered, " ofcourse, it has to be. I read about it once and it's said to give a feeling so real, it could cause an effect to the person in the waking world."
"But if it was, i should have woken up already, cause I already figured I'm in a dream, unless...." he paused,with a horrified look on his face
"No it couldn't be!" he exclaimed, hoping it wasn't what he thought.
"Am i actually dead?" that when it dawned to him.
"But this isn't heaven"
Not that he thought he would make it, he wasn't the type you could call righteous, or unrighteous either. But he definitely was not a believer, so yes he definitely can't make heaven but still,
"This isn't hell either, so where the fuck am i?"
So it was rather safe to say he didn't know where he was and had no clue of what was going to happen next.
Normally a person who believed in rebirth would have an idea what would happen but he didn't even believe in rebirth or reincarnation even though he read a lot of books relating to them. So he just remained on the spot, lost in his own thoughts, slowly losing his mind.
"i can't believe I'm really dead, my life just ended in a pathetic way... I always thought i would die by getting hit by a truck or something." he sighed
"Maybe it's for the better, it's not like anyone would even mourn over me," he said as he thought of his past life that he didn't get the chance to see flashing before his eyes as he died a very miserable death.
"I think I'm lucky to have left that cruel world, it wasn't meant for me from the start" he thought, trying to comfort himself from the horrors and coldness of death, as indeed life hasn't been very fair to him from day one.
Henry never knew his father as he had died on the day he was born, his father's family had seized all the properties his father owned for themselves.
As a result, he and his mother had to live in the slums of the city and struggle to even get one meal a day.
His father was a very successful businessman who had lots of properties and was very wealthy even before he got married to his mother, it was going to be a perfect family, until the tragedy struck and he and his mother where forced to live a wretched life, well not until his mom died of an heart attack on his 10th birthday.
He was taken in by his mother's sister who sent him to a boarding school which was definitely where he spent the worst days of his life.
Henry graduated at the age of seventeen thankfully in one piece and was given an apartment by the government as an orphanage fund resort during one of those campaign periods, and he got a job at a supermarket as a delivery guy which didn't pay much but was able to afford some of his crucial needs.
A year later the owner of the supermarket made him a sales boy due to him having a thing or two for math, it was his favorite subject in high school and he was going to study accounting at the university,and one could say that he almost fulfilled his dreams. Almost.
Over the year, henry had been gathering the money for his tuition by doing all kinds of jobs, from walking dogs to mowing lawns to even engaging in some activities he wasn't proud of, as getting into a college wasn't exactly cheap in that era.
But it was all good in the end as he had even gained some 'street smarts' while working with some 'wannabe' gangsters and criminals in the downtown slum.
Finally trying out at a college a the nearby city, henry got accepted into the university to study his dream course, and he had gotten enough money to cover at least two years of tuition, then it happened.
He went shopping for some essential materials needed for his new student life, but when he got back someone had broken into his apartment and stolen all the money he had saved up, He keeping them in a box as he didn't have a bank account, he had to be at least 20 years in the country at the time, so all his saved money was always kept in the box at a secret 'safe spot' in his apartment, which was easily discovered by the theif.
His entire world came crashing down, and to make things 'better' he had already resigned at his place of work and had even been replaced, since he would be going to another city. He didn't know where to begin as he just fell on the couch, where he remained sulking till he fell sleep. And then the fire incident occurred, leaving him in his current situation; lonely,sad and possibly in a dream.
"Yeah i am definitely lucky, cause i would have ended my own life myself, this just made it a lot more easier and less painful,"
"Maybe i should have gone to church and been all holy, cause i can't just stay here floating endlessly in darkness, thinking about my wasted life," he said starting to feel uncomfortable and anxious, but then he remembered something.
"In those novels i used to read, i think I'm supposed to look for the light and head towards it or something like that," he said as he turned and turned but found nothing.
"it's hopeless." he sighed "i should just accept my new fate, at least it's not so bad. It's kind of peaceful and quiet." Maybe too quiet it was driving him crazy.
"Shit! Who am i kidding, this is much worse. I'll rather just be alive and sit at home all day than stay in complete darkness, this is torture," he said getting already restless in just the first few minutes he had been there.
"I would give anything to see even a speck of light again," he finally snapped as he learnt the value of life or maybe the value of light.
Some would probably be thinking of past regrets and all those second chance nonsense, or having the fear of being all alone forever, but Henry had been alone his whole miserable life, all he wanted at the moment was Light.
"Can't i just die or something... I'm losing it here," he sighed,
Then suddenly, a small pin hole sized light appeared at a distance which didn't go unnoticed by henry.
"Where did you come from?" he asked the light.
He immediately started to move towards it, flapping his hands in a motion similar to that of swimming, but to his dismay, he couldn't leave the spot.
"Fuck,even the after life is unfair to me" he said feeling defeated as he just kept floating in the abyss on a single spot.
But then almost immediately, the light began to move towards his direction.
And as it was moving,so was it also expanding until it was as big as what seemed to a star.
"Well looks like I'm going to die even when I'm already dead," he thought as the light kept getting bigger eradicating the blackness of abyss and spreading light in the area it passed.
It continued approaching henry and finally it got to the spot where he was rooted and envy him. The light was blinding and Henry had to close his eye
When Henry opened his eye, he appeared to be in a white infinite space, much narrower than the former dark space, and once again floating but this time he could move around, or perhaps he was been moved.
"Now where am i?... everything's so white, but at least it's better than endless darkness," he said
His body was traveling across the space slowly and vertically, in a falling pattern.
It suddenly picked up pace and became fast, and it was only getting faster. He was now being moved at incredible speed falling through a bottomless pit
"Or maybe not," Henry said as he started to get uncomfortable yet again with the endless swift freefall.
But during the fall, a bright golden light flashed through his eyes, quickly dissipating as fast as it came.
"Huh? That was weird." he thought to himself as he felt a kind of internal weakness.
He was now being moved even faster than before, it felt very frightening, but Henry didn't seem to mind as he was just thrilled at what would be at the end of the fall.
"Who knows where I'll end up next," he said, before his eyes became heavy and he felt like he was being put to sleep.
He hoped in his heart he wouldn't end up in another infinite purgatory before eventually losing consciousness.