Darkness. And then there was light. Not really. It was just a phrase he’d heard in a book once. He could hear voices, whispering that traveled through the air all around him. He opened his eyes and an interesting scene greeted him.

A figure cloaked in a black hood was floating in front of him, holding a scythe. Behind the hooded figure were a pair of gates that towered hundreds, maybe thousands of feet over both him and the figure. The area was suffused with dim lighting, of which he could not find a source.

He tried to walk forward and a sloshing accompanied his steps. He looked down and was startled by two things. First of all, his body was translucent, with a light blue glow surrounding where his legs should’ve been. Second of all, he couldn’t see or feel exactly where he was walking. He could tell it was water by the sound it was making, but to his eyes, there was only a dark void and even when he moved, the water that he could tell was there wasn’t noticed by his vision.

He was startled then, by a deep voice emanating from the floating figure in front of him.

“Not another step, mortal, unless you wish to pass on from the River of Death to the Great Beyond.”

“So. It seems that I did actually die during the surgery,” the dead man said with a sigh.

“Yes,” the hooded figure answered. “It seems you did.”

“Then, why do you stop me from going to the gates. Am I not to go to the Great Beyond?”

“That is not the reason I stop you. Normally, you would go right through, but it seems that you are to be given a choice. You can choose to do as you say: pass through the Gates of Life and travel to the Great Beyond. However, you have the choice to go somewhere else. Another place, another life for you to live. You would be reborn and live out your life somewhere else.”

The dead man thought for a moment and then asked, “What is behind those gates? I mean, what is this Great Beyond? Is it Heaven or Enlightenment or something else?”

The hooded figure didn’t speak for a second before it answered. “I cannot tell you that mortal. I apologize but I am not allowed to speak of what is Beyond the Gates. However, I know what fears plague you, but just know your physical disabilities in your last life will not follow you to the next.”

Fears that he didn’t know he had subconsciously thought about were assuaged by the hooded figure.

“Then I suppose you know what I choose to do.”

“Yes. I suppose I do.”

The hooded man finally moved, floating across the River of Death, as he had called it to come to rest in front of him. The scythe in Death’s hands moved and the tip of it came to rest on the man’s forehead.

For the second time, everything went black.

And as the broken man was reborn, he didn’t hear the hooded figure say, “And may the Heavens help us all.”