I Saw God

I died. 

 

I remember driving my rattling piece of shit car back home from a family gathering. Aunt Cassie rambling on about the recent affair her husband had with a secretary., Mom and Dad fighting in the kitchen about food preparations or some useless shit. They wouldn't be together if it wasn't for my 9 years old little sister.

They've been fighting since I myself were 9, and I'm 24 for fucks sake.

I guess they thought that by having Lily they could fix their relationship. Grandma was pretty loud in her opinion about my parents' marriage. And oh what a shitshow ensued afterwards. Not to mention all the screaming beta-human cousins running around.

Anyway, that family gathering was a disaster, just like every year.

 

Back to me dying. I was driving on this little sideroad leading to the area where I lived. It had already been 5 hours of just driving, and I was fucking sleepy.

At one point on this road there was an old, wobbly wooden bridge. Old rotten wood and practically falling apart, going over a river with an extremely strong flow. This being such a remote area, nobody’s even thought of fixing or just making a new, safer bridge.

About halfway through the wooden monstrosity, a beam fell in front of me. Wanting to avoid any damage to my car, I quickly turned the wheel in an attempt to dodge the wooden beam. Of course, instead of aiming for the oncoming lane, with no traffic in sight, I instead veered to the right, where the railing was. This is why you should avoid driving when your eyes barely stay open. Your brain won’t function when you’re sleep deprived.

 

When I realized my mistake, it was already too late. The momentary jolt of energy I got gave me enough time to actually see and process the fact that I was falling to the rocky rapids some 70 feet below. I instinctively closed my eyes right before the impact and…

That’s that.

 

When I opened my eyes, surprised I even could, I thought to myself ‘did I fucking survive’.

But as my eyes were fully opened, it was bright. Extremely bright, like a flashlight straight to the face. After my eyes got adjusted to the sudden brightness, compared to the nearly pitch black road just moments ago, I quickly looked around myself. I was not in my car.

I saw a white field, spanning infinitely to the horizon wherever I looked, filled with a golden sky full of clouds with a golden glow and golden sunbeams from every and all directions. I looked down and saw a fuzzy, soft and hazy ground. I was standing on a cloud. I was standing on a motherfucking cloud.

 

“Welcome” said an angelic voice behind me, startling me. I looked towards the person, and saw this androgynous, bald person wearing a white thobe kind of robe with golden seams and white gold embroidery, reaching over their feet. They were floating towards me from somewhere above.

“Welcome, to the Garden” they said with a soft but clear, chiming voice. “The garden?” I asked, my voice raspy as if my throat was full of salty water and shards of glass.

“Yes, the Garden. You, my friend, have deceased” the floating person, with some sort of weird energy flapping behind their back, said.

 

“I’m… dead?” I asked, voice still a bit sore but getting better. “The Garden, is this like heaven?” I asked, still processing what I had just heard.

“Yes, many call this heaven” the person with a perfectly symmetrical face, perfect white teeth, perfect eyelashes and perfect voice said.

I took a deep breath and said “Well fuck”.

“Come, follow me” the floating person said, the energy on their back flashing briefly, reminiscent of some kind of wings.

 

The, clearly an angel since I was in heaven, slowly floated forward ahead of me as I followed them. They occasionally turned to check on me, and I noticed they did this by turning their entire body, not even moving a muscle on their neck. Slightly unsettling.

Suddenly they stopped. The angel turned around to face me, staring at me, never blinking, as I slowly approached them. “We’re here” they said, as I finally stopped next to them.

“Where?” I asked, scanning my immediate vicinity. 

Then I started hearing a deep rumble. A huge wall of the same cloudmass or whatever it was that I had been walking on, rose right in front of me. A portion of the cloud wall before me started to dissipate, partially turning into solid golden beams. In a moment, there was a large golden gate in front of me, revealing a slightly more solid, but still cloudy area on the other side. A solid, almost marble-like block rose a few feet behind the gate, which now opened with loud and resonating clanking. More and more of said blocks appeared, and as the gate had been fully opened, they formed a staircase. 

I looked over at the angel with asking eyes, and they, without changing their expression, without blinking, nodded. The only time I saw their head move independently.

 

I approached the stairs, and after I took my first step on the stairs, the gates behind me slammed close. I turned to look and the gate was gone. So was the cloud wall and the angel. In fact, everything was gone. Only space. My heart sank. Pressure on my chest. Only the stairs floating in vast nothing. There were stars in the distance, but it didn’t look like the normal night sky or the space you see in movies and tv shows. The stars were changing, snapping around in different locations, changing in size and colour. 

I continued climbing the stairs, constantly looking around, seeing various bright, intricate shapes of soft cosmic clouds dancing around me, like they were alive.

 

As I reached the top of the staircase, all of the space clouds amassed in front of me, forming a humanoid figure. “Greetings, child” the figure says with a deep charismatic voice, taking the shape of an elderly black man. “I am God, and you have been transferred to my care, as the realm you were born into is unable to care for you anymore” they continued.

 

I died falling from that, can I say, god forsaken bridge. Now I was in heaven, talking to God.

I’ve always been apathetic towards religion. Raised an atheist, I never really thought about religions, didn’t much think my actions would have a grand consequence. Didn’t believe in any higher power, since everything in the world and in my life had been so rough. Why would that happen if God existed, if he claimed to love us all. Why would bad people exist?

Well, clearly I cared now, since all these thoughts were running through my head. 

Did I know this was actually God, that this was really happening, or was I just in a coma and dreaming all this.

 

I didn’t know whether to be angry at God, standing right there before me, or happy. I didn’t know if I should ask questions, accuse him of being a bad father or to hug him. So I just stood there, staring in total silence.

“I know this might be a lot to take in, but I assure you…”

“Take me back” I blurted out without a thought, interrupting him.

“I’m sorry but I can’t do that, it would shock those around you, figuratively and literally, even more than your sudden death” he said, slightly stern.

“There’s nobody around me, the road was empty and there’s only old people who are already asleep, living near me” I said without hesitation, not knowing what I’m trying to achieve. “I am deeply sorry, but I still can’t do that. It’s against all that is natural” he said, crossing his arms and looking at me with simultaneous frustration, care and concern.

“But you’re God, you can do anything!” I frantically shouted out. “I have a date with this cute girl from the coffee shop in the city next Monday. My pals are coming over for beers and to watch the game with me this weekend!” I said as I started to weep. It then started to settle in me. I was in fact dead. Every chance I would have in life were now gone. Getting a job that didn’t suck and that could actually pay my bills, gone. Getting a girlfriend, a dog or a cat, is never going to happen. Never seeing the friends I love again. Never seeing my little sister, Lily, again. I broke down, fell on my knees and started crying.

 

My tears rolled down my cheek all the way to my chin, where they then, one by one, fell into the infinitely beautiful cosmos below me. They would keep falling for eternity, or until they eventually hit one of the unbelievably magical stars. 

God sighed. He reached his hand out to me and I grabbed it with my wet hand.

He pulled me up and embraced me. He didn’t feel human. Hugging him felt like I was engulfed in zero gravity, deep underwater but still wind blowing through my hair, but the wind wasn’t linear, it swirled in multiple directions. My fingers, when taking hold of his garb, didn’t feel like touching fabric. It felt velvety, but slimy. Gasping, I pulled back.

Behind him I saw an endless ocean of angels. All with blank expressions, just floating. Never blinking an eye, head always perfectly inclined with the body. All with varying, but still perfectly symmetrical features. 

 

With the sensation I got from touching God in mind, I asked “What are you”.

“I am everything” he answered. “By presenting you what I truly am, I will able to grant your wish, but it will come at a grave price. Are you sure you want that?”

I stood still for a short moment,contemplating my choices. The choices were never really laid out before me. Before I got my thoughts together, I had already said ‘yes’.

“Very well”.

 

With deep ringing in my head, my eyes started to shake. Everything I saw was distorted. I watched as the angels warped and merged together. My vision split like a kaleidoscope, and I screamed in agony. The space around me started to frantically tremble and ripping itself. 

The angels were now balls of light, with rings made of different coloured eyes circling it, like those astronomical rings. Occasionally wave or a pulse coming from the ball, creating a distorting ripple around them, that at points had rips in it with various different worlds and galaxies showing through them. One world with a moonlike surface, but floating metallic balls with an ominous red glow peeking through the cracks in them, and another with brown grassfields and massive mushrooms with moving tendrils hanging from them, and a large scaly bird with more than one set of eyes flying past the rift.