The echoing boom of artillery sounds around me as I keep my head low with shaking hands, ears ringing. Soft earth surrounds me, flying through the air, under my feet, and it’s the only thing keeping me grounded, funnily enough. The light is blinding, and a pain is searing through my brain from my legs and arms, and for a time things seem frozen in this moment, this moment of pain, of realisation.

Fight for my country? Was this what they wanted? For us to die like cannon fodder? Yes, yes it was. We were expendable for a gain of resources, that’s what this was about, what we were here to fight for, and what I was to die for. At a saddening age of 19, I would die because I had been fooled into a war I never should have joined. As my realisation ends and I lose all sensation in my body, one thought crosses my mind, What comes next?

Silence. Darkness. Nothing. There is no passage of time, nothing to let me know I’m alive. No sensation, no feeling. It’s peaceful in a way. Then a sensation surrounds me, like falling through air and thought begins to return to me. My family, my friends, I need to get back to them! My decision was wrong, so very wrong.

The sensation becomes thicker, as though there is resistance and now it feels like water, all around me and the sensation grows stronger. Finally after what feels like hours I hit something solid, I can’t move past it, and for a moment I am happy, excited even. Am I back? Am I alive? Was this an out of body experience like those I’d heard about? But then I realise I can’t move, and that I can’t see, though I can faintly hear something… almost like bubbles? Am I underwater?

Slowly, but surely, my senses return to me and I realise that I am lying down in an awkward position against something that is very much like rock. I open my eyes.

At first I don’t see anything but a bright blinding light, but my eyes adjust quickly and I see the sun above me. I’m alive! However as my vision refocuses I see fish swimming around me. I’m underwater. That’s nice… HOW AM I BREATHING!? The thought hits me like a truck and I begin to think rapidly again. How am I breathing? Why am I underwater? Was I chucked into the water because they presumed I was dead? Was this the afterlife?

As I try to gasp for air, I realise that I’m not breathing at all. This must be the afterlife. A sense of calm refers to me as I sit myself up and there is more resistance than I expected, even though I was underwater. Perhaps I’m not intended to fly here.

I begin to walk across the sea floor and although it astounds me I’m struck with a sense of awe and surrealism, the way the light is filtered through the water and shines around me, birds without wings gliding gracefully through the water, and the fact that I’m walking underneath it all. For a time I lose myself in the walk, simply looking around me and immersing myself in the beauty of this afterlife, but after seemingly 20 minutes I begin to grow concerned. What do I do here? Is this it? If this is the afterlife why am I the only one here? Then I see what seems to be a rise, directly ahead of me. Perhaps this will lead to the surface where the others are?

The climb is long, but once again I am surprised to find that I do not feel any discomfort or lack of stamina, I have no need to breathe. When I finally climb the mountain, I find myself standing not on rock but sand, and in front of me I can make out feet and legs in the water, a shoreline. I pull off the seaweed that has managed to latch itself onto me as I ascend further.

Perhaps this is where I will get answers? I wonder what the people of the afterlife might be like, perhaps like me? Actually now that I think about it I fought in a war, why am I in the afterlife, or the good one anyway? Finally the water parts as I raise my head above the water and look out across the glimmering mirror of the salty ocean. It’s as beautiful above as it is below, and it doesn’t look like there’s a cloud in the sky, and there shining bright against the night is the moon.

I must have been standing there for a while but it didn’t take long for the people I had seen across the beach to spot me. I could hear them shouting at me but I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying so I decided to walk closer, but as I neared them their faces contorted in horror and suddenly the occupants of the beach ran in the opposite direction, all of them yelling words I couldn’t quite make out.

This answered my question, clearly this was not heaven, or if it was, it was a very strange one. Why are they running? I stand still for a while, the sea water lapping at my legs, as I ponder why they ran and where I am. Could it be that I have been reanimated as a corpse? Like in one of those books? As I ponder I am interrupted by one figure walking towards me. Unafraid. I look down at my hands, and in the moonlight I see it, the glint of metal, the orange brown rust, my hand is made of metal.