“Oh shit, it’s a truck going out of control!” I ran as fast as I could, even my arms straining as I dashed toward the street. I ran with an abandon which would make even Tom Cruise proud. My eyes were focused forward, and with just a glance at them, one could imagine the tragic scene I was hurtling toward.

“And cut!”

“That was good dude, we’ll get another one just in case, but it looked really solid. I especially liked that eye thing you did. You could really imagine the tragic scene you were hurtling toward.” “Thanks man, I’m really excited to see how it comes out. It feels good to be acting again, thanks for putting in your video. ”Of course!” My friend Faramir adjusted his Leaf Village headband and moved his hair tie to keep his afro swept back into his trademark Lenny Kravitz gone samurai hairdo. As he wrangled a stray curl out of his eyes and into the rest of the pack he said “Thank you so much Zach. Seriously, I’ve been trying to finish this project forever.” “Yeah, no worries man. Well hey, I’ve got to head out. Got work pretty soon.”

We hugged it out and I started walking out of the little park he always filmed in and back toward my ‘01 Jaguar that I bought for two grand. As I crossed the grass, I noticed a cute little kid playing way closer to the street than I was comfortable with. I could practically hear my dad saying ‘whoa buddy, don’t play so close to the road, don’t scare me like that.’ I was about to say something to the little girl’s mom when a loud sound drew my attention up the street. A gray van screeched around a corner and accelerated down the road, the driver glancing down at his phone and going way too fast.

Some people say that time slows down in life or death moments, but apparently, I get the opposite because the next few moments all seemed to blur together and happen at once. The girl stepped out into the street. The van driver looked up from texting and saw a squirrel, but not the four-year-old. The van swerved away from the animal and directly toward the child. I dropped my phone (embarrassingly that was the most surprising part of the entire jumble of events for me).

I felt myself running faster than I’ve ever run, my legs receiving an extra boost from my adrenal glands. I heard the mother scream. I felt myself diving forward. I reached toward Emily (weird that I subconsciously caught the name the mother screamed in all of that) and I felt her being pushed out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Mostly though, in all of that scrambled mess of timelessness, what I primarily felt was pain. Holy fuck did I feel pain.

The last thing I remember before the blackness took me was Faramir kneeling over me in his Spider-Man onesie shouting my name. Well, that and the pain, just... all of the pain.

Ok, what’s going on. I can feel my consciousness fading up. I’m in a large semi-empty white space but I can see translucent screens floating in the air playing back what looks like scenes of my life. Ooh! The time I got a pentakill my first time playing Kassadin. I got so frustrated that I just started mashing all the buttons and couldn’t even tell that I was still alive. Turns out I was dead and Zilean brought me back to get the last two kills. Good times, good times. Man, I say the word time a lot, probably like four times (heh) in the last few seconds. I really should learn how to say things different and gooder. Synonyms and shizz.

“Welcome to the In-Between.” A shining robe guy looking a touch like Family Guy’s idea of God said. “Also, I think I look more like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments than a cartoon. He responded. “Hey there mister, those thoughts are my private places. No looking where my metaphysical bathing suit covers”, I thought at him while imagining myself naked and covered in Vienna sausages. Might as well not waste energy talking if he’s just gonna be all up in my thoughts anyway. He visibly shuddered. Probably because I made all of the little mental hotdog guys grow arms and legs and faces complete with googly eyes and had them start breakdancing. The flashes on skin between the whirring meat people were disturbing to say the least.

The Moses looking guy waved his hands to stop me from thinktalking. “Well, you’re a bit of a what we call a ‘recording booth.’” At my look he explained “quiet on the outside but noisy as hell on the inside.” “No” I responded. “No?” “I meant, who’s we?” “Oh, my bad, I turned off my inner dialogue skill to avoid seeing anymore of whatever you dream up.”

“We.” “Well, we are the gods of the Earth.”

When I didn’t respond he continued: “we are the Elohim. You can probably understand us more easily by thinking about us as spirits or computer programs in charge of certain things.” “So kind of how the Greeks or Romans thought about the gods? Like, the gods are just super people with fancy jobs?” “In a sense you’re right, but in another sense you’re wrong. Perhaps it will be easier to show you.” He stood grandly for a moment and began to dim. Evaporating into nothingness and then coming back to fullness. Fading in and out like he was disappearing from the world itself. Well, at least that’s what I assumed he was doing, but suddenly he stopped. “Actually, let me just pop a book into your head instead. “Wait, what?” and then I popped out of existence.