Cocoon

a messenger of doom

Cocoon (A Metamorphic Journey)

On this earthly plane, I am known as Sam. Soon, in a matter of days, that life will finally sever its ties to this mortal coil.  For the past five years, I was in a deep meditative state, or according to my caregivers, a coma, either term is valid. If you want to know a little more about my backstory, then I urge you to read

Dr. Antonia Leoni’s description of our last sessions together. It was an award-winning novella, “Nexus: The Forbidden City”. An excerpt was featured in the Volume 6 February issue of The Frenzy. That should get you up to speed.

 

The Nexus Continuum is a dimensional portal hub of sorts. It’s a type of multi-universe way station. Billions upon billions of souls pass through this hub daily, many only temporarily while they pass through the City of Dreams. The City of Nexus proper consists of five city-states: The Forbidden City, Purgatoris, Hell Mount, the Underworld, and the City of Dreams. I’ve been judged and admitted to The Forbidden City, but only after my death. If you read that novella, you’ll know why I didn’t die, but elected to stay and work for the Underworld.

 

Time flows erratically in the Nexus Continuum. It has different time flows and depends on which area one is in. In my weighted state, I was assigned as a skip tracer (something like a bounty hunter) for the Hell and Purgatory gates, and time flowed much slower there. However, close to five years passed in my coma state, and five hundred years accumulated in my assigned areas. You can imagine how I was looking forward to my mortal death, where I could finally rid myself of the physical state that weighed me down from entering the Forbidden City, also known as Heaven’s Gate.  My wife and daughter patiently wait for me there. I only hope they accept me for who I’ve become.

 

…..

 

Enough of telling, now for a little bit of showing. It isn’t easy to show actionable events when you can’t see the written word, but I’m confident those who read these words will open up their imaginations enough to fill in the blanks.

 

Being technically still alive and carrying the weight of one, I was given the most difficult tasks to prove and justify that I was worthy enough to enter Heaven's gate upon my death. I was tasked with retrieving escapees from Purgatoris and Hell Mt. As hard as that was, I had to terminate the Hell Mount escapees to oblivion and the Purgatory's one to hell. I was given the power to do these acts, but in some cases, they were heartbreaking. I had to obliterate and send souls to hell who pleaded for mercy, but I had none to give.

 

Most of the escapees either fled to the Dreamlands or the dimensional hubs. Some took years to find, other minutes. Below are two examples of the ones that shattered bits of my heart.

 

Using my weight gun, I found Agatha, a purgatory escapee, hiding in the dreamlands. She was sent to purgatory due to her indifference and exploitation of the unfortunate. In her dream, she was a nun praying for salvation and feeding the poor and needy. She was trying to atone for her sins in her way.  I grabbed her while she was feeding a starving baby.  She screamed when she saw me and pleaded with me not to return to Purgatoris. In Purgatoris, she was one of the unfortunates and felt that punishment didn’t offer salvation. I told Agatha her request was granted; she was not going back to purgatory. Her look of joy pierced my heart, but I let the misunderstanding go on for a while. As she kissed my cheeks in gratitude, I gripped her wrists and said, “A final judgment has been made. If you only did your penance a little longer, you were slotted to go to heaven. Due to your act of defiance, you are now sentenced forever to Hell.” She screamed and fainted in my arms.

 

It took years to find the Nazi, Dr. Josef Rudolf Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death” for his experiments done on Jewish prisoners held in Auschwitz, a German concentration camp. His crimes against humanity sent him to the darkest corners of hell.  He fled to the dimensional hub and hitched a ride on one of the dreamers whose dream ended. He found himself on a planet similar to his own, but a few hundred years behind in technology.

 

He became the father of medicine. He introduced new surgical techniques, introduced superior diagnostic tools, and identified and had curing remedies for many diseases. He saved countless lives in this world and was hailed as a saint. I found him in a small village doing a kidney transplant on a young boy. He knew many doctors in hell who supplied him with advanced medical knowledge. I took the needle out of his hand as he closed up the opening in the child's chest. He looked at me with horror. He fell on his knees and begged not to go back to hell. Dr. Mengele said he was a changed man on the road to salvation. He saved countless lives, more than he killed in his last incarnation. I told him he was not going back to Hell. He cried and gave me a hug that twisted my heart. I said, “Hell is no longer your destination, you’re beyond any salvation, and you’re sentenced to Oblivion, but not immediately. You will lose yourself inch by inch till you disappear.” He puked as I threw him into the abyss.

When I finally died and found myself at the gates of heaven, they refused to open. My soul turned hard and demanded to be sent to Purgatoris to purge it of its darkness. Being with my family would have to wait. Irony is a b***h. I should have asked the underworld bureaucracy for a clerical job.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

let it rip