Zen, or Whatever...

The afterlife is a huge place. No matter how many people die, there's plenty of empty space to go around. So very much empty space.

-1-

Zen, or Whatever

Endless dunes of shifting blues and purples stretched for as far as the eye could see, torn at by a relentless wind that barely existed one moment and howled the next. She'd freeze up here if she wasn't dead already, Chloe had to assume. Hiking listlessly through empty terrain, she climbed the tallest nearby bluff and looked out across the expanse for anything at all.

There. Whether by mirage or miracle, a point on the horizon. She prayed for a closer one but found her prayers unanswered. 'Mysterious ways and stuff', she thought, and she began walking.

The blue wisps of terrain under her feet felt like nothing. She sank in to the ankles or so and was simply supported. Occasionally, a plume of white rose above the floor itself similar to a bush and she kicked it, watching it swirl around her leg and then dissipate.

The day passed and the point on the horizon was still there. At night a little point of light appeared in it's place. Someone lived there. As the sun came into full light above her the terrain became mountains of blinding white and grey. In the evening, the world was briefly a beautiful mix of yellows and oranges, then reds just before it went pitch black.

She curled up on the floor of nothingness and looked at the stars. That constellation is the little dipper. That one is the big dipper. And she never learned to spot any others so she attempted to sleep, but achieved little more than aggravation.

The days passed slowly at first, then more quickly. She tried anything she could think of while travelling to the point in the distance to move faster. She couldn't slide on the surface below her, it would simply grind her to a halt once she touched the ground. She couldn't fly or 

even really jump any higher than normal.

And she never slept or ate. Only walked.

Her socks got holes in them, then her jeans and t-shirt. They didn't smell, they just wore down over time. Her chucks were doing pretty good or a while, but one day the sole started to come apart from the fabric and she had to toss them aside. Walking in her socks felt weird, so she left them behind as well.

She made up stories about what the dark point could possibly be. Afterall, if there was nothing here, what could it be made of? She hoped it wasn't made of clouds. Maybe it was literally just a mass of people clinging together in the middle of nothingness.

She missed seeing her face in the mirror.

There was no food to enjoy, nothing better or worse than anything else, and she tried to masturbate, but when she tried to think of something to masturbate to all she could think of was her unlived young adulthood, her frustrating life and the endless sea of f*****g clouds.

Chloe had nothing but time to think while she walked. She relived her whole life from start to finish, at least the parts she could remember. She considered things that had happened from other people's perspective.

The lack of stimulation here was causing her to do unusual things. She forgave people she carried negative feelings toward.

Basically everybody.

She mourned the loss of her friends and family, as though they had died instead of her. She'd have traded with them in a heartbeat. Afterall, they were always going on about the kingdom of Heaven. It's what they would have wanted.

She attained Zen, or whatever.

Eventually, she arrived at the dot. When she had started her journey, the dot had been a perfectly round point, but as the months passed it began to definitely appear taller than it was wide. Before long there was something sticking out of the side of the rectangle. She had speculated for a long time about it.

The rectangle was a door, and the thing sticking out of the side was a lantern hanging on a little wrought iron swirl.

Chloe tried the knob, but nothing. Not locked, not anything really. The door was simply immobile. She kicked it as hard as she could, but it felt like trying to kick a hole through a mountain. There was simply no give, and hardly any sound at all from her efforts.

She walked around behind it. Just a door standing in the middle of nothing. It was made of decent enough looking boards. The lantern was electric, made of metal and glass and sort of looked circa Pottery Barn.

She reached out and proceeded to spend the entire day molesting every surface of it. The texture of being able to feel anything was incredible in it's own right. There was a little knob at the bottom of the light where you could turn it on if you wanted. She flicked it a few times, got bored and sat down, leaning against the solidity of the wood.

"I love you, door" she said. At least she'd have something to masturbate to tonight.

Chloe laughed for the first time in ages and the sound creeped her out.

Later that evening, as she leaned against the pointless door in the middle of nowhere, it suddenly opened and she fell through the doorway onto her back.

A cloaked figure looked down standing above her head and she looked into it's face, frozen stiff with fear. The orbits of it's eyes were black and empty, way too long. The face was a deep brown and painted for battle, the teeth a mash of awful yellow bits. It screamed at her and she screamed back.

Across time and space and a desert of clouds, she had once spent three years as a Karate student and her training from Sensei Mike all came back at once and she kicked over her head at where the things balls should have been.

Whatever it was, it apparently did have balls and went down slowly as she jumped to her feet. The door was open still. She shoved the thing over and pushed her way into the entryway.

A short, black haired woman carrying a tray of cakes came into the room and screamed at Chloe standing over the supine body of her husband barefoot in what amounted to rags, looking like nothing but trouble.

Chloe stopped and stared, "Are those f*****g cupcakes?"

The woman frowned, "No, sweetheart. They're just cupcakes."