Long after the sensation should have faded away, I still felt the lingering warmth from my mother’s last kiss like a burning tattoo permanently imprinted on my forehead. At first I thought that it was just a simple fantasy manufactured by my imagination to act as a barricade against the flood of misery erupting with every beat of my broken heart, my heart which only seemed to fracture more heavily as it finally dawned on me that I had to leave my mother’s side in heaven and go back on my own. Was my mind somehow trying to preserve this final kiss as a memento of my time in heaven? Was my subconscious making one final attempt to hold on to this precious moment?

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t even realize that the kiss which was the subject of my ruminations was no longer just staying warm but was actively heating up, and very rapidly at that.

By the time I noticed what was going on, the kiss had transformed into a searing hot ball of energy. It rose up to soar above my head at which point I finally got a good look at what it looked like: oddly enough it didn’t look anything like an impression left behind by a set of lips. Instead, it looked like an orb that was filled with a swirling mass of half-pitch-black half-shining-white liquid. It looked like a three dimensional version of that most famous oriental image, the one that symbolizes the balance between two opposite forces, the yin-yang fish.

The mysterious swirling orb didn’t look very stable as it shuddered and convulsed like a living being. Even the black and white liquids that were inside seemed to get agitated. They started revolving rapidly, chasing after each other like two animals trying to nip the tails of one another. Before long, the inside of the orb was nothing but a grey blur, but even that didn’t last long because the orb then collapsed upon itself before exploding into millions of tiny golden sparks. The sparks transformed into tiny strings which then wove together to form an inescapable net around me. Before I could react, the net constricted around me and I was violently yanked out of heaven.

Just like that, I found that I had left my mother’s embrace and was now falling down a dark passageway into a most peculiar place, a place that I couldn’t even begin to describe using the feeble capabilities of human expression. It was neither dark nor light. It was neither hot nor cold. It was neither loud nor silent. It was neither here nor there. It wasn’t past, present or future. Whatever adjective I tried, it just didn’t apply to this place.

The best way I could explain the phenomena I was experiencing was to put it into context with the rest of my life: it was like before this moment, I had been forced to experience the universe through a very narrow hole. All my perceptions and thoughts were shaped by this hole and I couldn’t even envision there being anything else. But now, for the very first time, I was seeing reality without any filters. Deprived of my body, I realized that my five senses weren’t essential to my being. In fact, they were more like shackles holding my spirit back, and with these shackles finally removed, I could freely interact directly with the intangible, ethereal, and the indescribable. My disembodied soul happily fluttered around like an excited little bird in a garden full of flowers in full bloom. I melded and mingled with pure concepts, abstract ideas, and even the most basic laws that governed the universe. I felt my spirit grow and strengthen with every sip of nectar from this garden of knowledge. Ambrosia! This was Ambrosia of the gods!

Alas, I was an intruder in this wondrous garden, an interloper that was only passing through. The golden net around me constricted once more, pulling my disembodied spirit into the material world and forcefully stuffing it into a shriveled up lump of meat covered in black soot.

Knowing the terrible state of my body, I knew that I was in for some suffering. I braced myself for the pain I knew was coming, and it did not disappoint. The unbearable agony that I felt when I died returned with a vengeance, but the seemingly all-encompassing anguish and misery that tore through my very being was suddenly eclipsed by something much much worse.

All the memories I had of the events after my death started to fall apart like sand in the wind. The memory of my time spent amongst the serene white clouds with my mother and my journey through the wondrous garden slowly faded away until it became colorless and illusory like a half-forgotten dream. I desperately sifted through the rapidly vanishing memories to find some indisputable evidence of their authenticity, some subtle clue that would prove that it had really happened and that it wasn’t all just a figment of my own imagination, but it was like trying to grasp at smoke. I frantically flailed for that one piece that might give me hope, and miraculously, I found it! It was a smell! A very unique smell! I stubbornly grasped onto the memory of that last whiff of lilac perfume and baby powder mixed with the natural scent of my mother. I held on to that memory even when searing pain unlike anything I have experienced before started nibbling away at my consciousness. It allowed me to struggle against the rising tide of weakness that threatened to overwhelm me, at least struggle enough so that I managed to make some noise before passing out again.

* * *

The next time I gained awareness of myself, the all-consuming pain from before had vanished without a trace. Instead, it had been replaced by a cold numbness accompanied by heavy fatigue and light headedness, a combination that made me suspect that I was under the effects of anesthesia. In this slightly fuzzy state, I could vaguely hear the voices of several people speaking nearby, but they were talking in hushed voices so I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. I tried to open my eyelids but they seemed to have been glued shut. Despite this, I wasn’t willing to simply give up, so with a positively herculean effort, I succeeded in cracking them open. Unfortunately, what greeted my newly opened eyes was a burningly bright beam of light that forced them closed again.

“Damn it Tim, quickly turn down the lights! The boy’s eyes are still sensitive from what happened.” The voice that spoke from my right sounded familiar but my mind was very foggy, so I couldn’t quite remember who it was. This in itself was a very strange and disorienting experience for me since my mind and memory were usually crystal clear. It was the second time today that my supposedly “eidetic” sensory memory had failed me.

“Jesus Christ Jerry, where did you find him? How did he survive all this? How is he still breathing?” Jerry? So the first man was called Jerry? Even knowing the man’s name, I still couldn’t figure out who the first voice belonged to. As for the man who answered him, unlike the first man whose voice I could vaguely recognize, he was completely unfamiliar to me. He had a very distinct high pitched voice and spoke with a thick Indian accent, something I would have remembered even in a drugged, semi-conscious state.

“I pulled him out of the rubble at my church.” The church! I finally put it together, the first man was the priest from the church! His voice might have been tense with worry, but I finally connected that numbingly monotonous voice with the image of the slightly rotund middle aged man who gave our sermons every Sunday.

“And his family?”

“He was alone when I found him. Maybe his parents lost him. Maybe they will come looking for him.” That comment made my heart twitch in pain. My father was deployed to Ukraine right after my sister was born and he was killed in the first of three wars later dubbed the Silent Wars. As for my mother and sister, I personally witnessed them get turned into ashes in the wind.

“Are you kidding me? Do you think there is anyone left alive out there? Look around you, this bomb shelter was built to house the entire city and the surrounding areas in case of a nuclear attack. Everyone knows where it is because of the mandatory drills we were forced to take for the past three years. Do you know how many people actually made it here? Two hundred and seventy-two! Only two hundred and seventy-two people made it here!” As the man with the Indian accent continued to speak, the pitch of his voice got higher and higher until it was almost painful to listen to.

“You have to calm down Mister Patel. We are all frightened by recent events, but we will get nowhere by panicking. Keeping that in mind, Mister Patel does raise a good point. Whatever is happening out there, it is still an ongoing event. There are some periods when it stops, but it is too dangerous to go out to search for people during these narrow windows of time. We have already tried to contact the military and the police, but it seems like all communication networks are down. As much as it pains me to say it, if there are people still surviving out there, they are on their own, so instead of worrying about things we have no power to change, we should try to resolve the problems we can do something about. Doctor Karp, what are the statuses of our injured?” This third voice that joined the conversation was calm and authoritative. I could tell that he was someone used to ordering people around and having his commands followed.

“There were fifty-four people who made it here with major injuries. Seven of them were already dead before they made it to a bed. I treated the rest with regeneration salve but forty-five have already died from internal injuries. Sir,…I…I am not a qualified doctor. I am just an intern! I am not trained to handle something like this!” The one speaking this time was obviously female and she sounded very young and frightened.

“Do the best you can for these two Doctor Karp, you are the only chance they have. We have already brought them here to the medical scanners. Doesn’t that help?”

“Sir, I have something to say about that! The medical scanners are for essential personnel only. They are not supposed to be here.”

“Shut up, Tim! If you say another word, I will take that gun and cram it down your throat!”

“But sir, my orders…”

“Screw your orders! I am the highest civilian authority in this bunker and I say that the injured people get whatever treatment they need. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

I still couldn’t open my eyes to see what was going on but I could infer a couple of things after hearing them speak. It seems that I was brought to the local bomb shelter after Father Rodriguez found me in the church. I also concluded from the previous conversation that I was one of only two people surviving from an initial group of fifty-four injured. Logically speaking, as a boy that was barely ten years old and not in possession of a particularly robust body, I should have been at a disadvantage compared to the other injured people, but it seemed that, not only had I beaten the odds, but I was even healthy enough to be aware of myself, however tenuous my grasp on consciousness might be.

I couldn’t help but remember the strange dream I had about meeting my mom in heaven. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all. Maybe my mom was looking down on me from heaven and protecting me.

With that comforting thought in my head, I didn’t feel scared as my tired body forced me to pass out again.