If you ever ask someone what comes after death, they will likely give you some religious pitch. They may mention something about the reward of pearly gates or the punishment of fire and brimstone. Maybe they’ll feed you some mystical ideas involving an achievable transcendent state or reincarnation. A few pessimists might tell you that there is nothing, that death is the end and this is your only chance at life. The best and most honest answer you’ll probably get is, “I don’t know.” The reason I say this is the best answer is that any other answer, based on my account, is very wrong and nothing like what I experienced. If someone asked me what being dead was like, I’m unsure if I could properly convey that answer, but it would probably be what I experienced after I was taken from my family.

My experience had nothing to do with angels or demons. There weren’t any beautiful flying women to escort me to the gates of heaven nor did hell open its toothy maw to drag me into its fiery depths. I would have loved to experience nothing. Nothing would be nirvana compared to the absolute absence of existence that I witnessed. To say that what I experienced was oblivion would be a gross misrepresentation of the abyssal state of limbo. There just isn’t really any proper way to describe it and I truly hope my experience was unique. During whatever it was that I had experienced, I had no concept of time. If I could have had any coherent thoughts, I would have to say that I lacked existing there for what seemed like an eternity. There was one thing that I always remembered from my time in Limbo, despite the existential crisis, I remember feeling as though there was something there outside of the void that knew I was suffering and enjoyed it.

I imagine being born is nothing like what I experienced when I had first arrived. But when I was freed from my abyssal prison, it was as if all of my senses were turned on to their maximum acuity simultaneously in an erupting volcano. You might feel inclined to say that my explanation is some kind of an over-exaggeration, but I assure you, no words exist that can properly portray these feelings. However, I will try my best to do so anyway.

When I regained consciousness and opened my freshly reformed eyes, the searing light penetrated my hazel orbs like they were being pierced with molten hot daggers. It sounded like harmonic crystalline explosions erupted inside the canals of my ears. My sensitive skin pricked and itched as if it was being forcefully massaged by rough asphalt and bathed in a tub filled with broken glass and rusted hypodermic needles all at the same time. When I inhaled to let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain, I was immediately silenced by a flood of searing ozone that burned the insides of my lungs as if I was struck by lightning.

The next moment, my torture was over. The senses I had not used for what seemed like multiple lifetimes began to work once again. The extreme sensory overload I had gone through in my first moments had ended. The oppressive feelings immediately became bearable and I could then focus on my environment.

The first thing I noticed was faint twinkling against a void of black. But as my eyes adjusted I realized that I was looking up at a rough stone ceiling. What I thought were faint stars were actually small crystals that had formed in the dark igneous rock. I was hearing a low dull hum that didn’t seem to emanate from anywhere in particular, but it kind of sounded like I was on the inside of a seashell though without the sea. My body briefly shivered and I flexed my hands noticing that I was lying in a tepid pool. Weakly shifting my head to the side revealed that the liquid I had thought was water glowed with a pale blue light. The shallow puddle only came up to the backs of my ears and was only slightly larger than I was. When the fluid rippled due to my weak movements, the wavering shimmer caused the surrounding crystals to reflect it back in a gentle flicker. After passing through the crystals they let out a multitude of colors as if passing through a natural prism. The spectacular rainbow spread through the cave and painted the dark walls giving it the appearance of a chaotically formed glass mosaic.

The scene was serene and peaceful compared to the abyssal realm I had endured before. I felt my soul calmed by my surroundings despite what I had gone through only moments before. Strangely, all the past experiences from my previous life and the emptiness between then and now were starting to fade from my memory as if they were just some long vivid nightmare. Not quite the kind of dream one would soon forget, but one that would continue to linger at the back of the mind only conjured forth with the occasional nostalgic thought.

Before I could ponder more about my new existence any further, I began to hear a faint tinkling sound almost like the chimes of those small bells you might see on the collar of a kitten. With my head laying sideways in the shallow radiant pool, my eyes became fixated upon a tiny fluttering mote of lavender light. The purplish glowing ball in the distance was meandering slowly in my direction. Like a lethargic firefly at twilight, it floated aimlessly around the room skirting close to the basalt wall.

I traced the drifting glimmer with only my eyes as it roamed across the room. When I was forced to turn my head again to keep track of it when it moved out of my peripheral vision, for some reason or another, this reaction brought me out of my toporic state. I forced my weak and sore muscles to push against the smooth stone floor so that I could finally sit up. The luminescent watery liquid poured off of me back into the shallow pool. As it separated contact from my damp skin, the light faded until it looked like normal clear water. It was only around where my skin kept in contact with the liquid that it maintained its glow.

I had only lost the floating light for a moment, but it seemed once I had started to move it became a bit more frantic and zipped in a full circle around the room to just in front of me. It hovered to a point just out of reach as I squinted my eyes to make out the details of the little insect, and I was astonished at what I saw.