The Path

The room was cold. I stared down at my own face, seeing the y-shaped incision that the coroner had left across my chest. I’m not sure why I was worried about the coroner’s cut on my body, it wasn’t worse than the gunshot wound to my head that had ended my life. I vaguely thought that they both would leave horrible scars, but then I remembered: I'm dead. And the room I was standing in was a morgue. And none of that mattered to me anymore.

I tried to remember my last moments before I was unceremoniously shuffled from the mortal coil, but all I could do was look around. That’s when I saw the body on the table next to me.

Being dead is a weird feeling; I was used to my body having weight. I didn't even have to move my feet to bring myself closer to the other table.

Normally I would have been filled with terror at the sight of this man's face. Even though he was in much the same state I had been, with a gunshot wound to his temple, I knew him. I knew this man who had abused me – cut me down with his words, isolated me from my family and friends, beat me, stalked me, and finally murdered me. This man who had used love and belonging as a weapon to terrorize me during my life.

I had lived in so much fear. But now there was nothing. There was still nothing when I noticed that he was floating beside me. Death brings a lot of clarity and erases fear. What is there to be afraid of when the thing you’d clung to for so long was finally gone? It wasn’t like he could kill me again.

"What's happening?" he asked, his voice echoing in the emptiness. He was afraid.

It occurred to me that I should have felt smug. I should have been happy that he was frightened. It would have served him right to let him experience all the fear that he'd inspired in me. But the smugness never came, nor did anger or sadness. I simply felt nothing, probably a symptom of being dead. Emotions were for the living, and the damned.

"Where are we?" he continued, that same panic in his voice. "Why am I outside my body?"

"You're dead," I said evenly. I didn't look at him. I’m sure if I’d been alive, his panic would have been exhausting. Any emotion he’d displayed when I was alive had been exhausting, but without the blanket of fear, they felt more tedious.

"Dead?" he managed.

I did look at him then. “Don’t you remember?” I asked. “You shot me and then killed yourself.”

He seemed alarmed. Perhaps being dead had allowed him to start to shrug off the madness that had gripped him when he’d been alive? Not that it mattered anymore. He couldn’t change what he’d done.

"Well, what happens now?" he asked, his voice small.

I shrugged. Truthfully, I didn't know. Maybe a light would come for us, or maybe we'd just fade away, like when you fall into a deep sleep. Or, maybe, we'd stay just like we were. None of those thoughts bothered me.

"You will come with me," a voice said.

We both turned to see a shadowy, hooded figure standing before us. It bore a resemblance to a grim reaper, its face covered by a hooded robe, but it didn’t carry a scythe or have bony hands. It also didn’t seem to have a gender; its voice was not really male or female, and I don’t think I heard it speak so much as I understood its words in my mind.

"Who – who are you?" the man demanded, his voice quivering. "Are you him? Death?”

The figure laughed. "You've already experienced Death," it said. "I'm just a guide."

The figure waved its arm, and suddenly we were no longer in the morgue. Before us stretched two pathways, leading away from each other. They mirrored one another at first, with yellow gravel and thick, green shrubbery along the edges, but eventually each path began to change as they led closer to their distant ends.

"You will go that way, dear," the figure said to me, pointing a normal-looking finger. Its voice was gentle, as if acknowledging all the pain I had experienced in my life. "At the end, you will find rest."

I followed the motion, seeing that the path ahead was bright and airy. I thought I could see others on the path, but I wasn't worried. I found that I longed to go, but I paused.

"What about him?" I asked, the first hint of emotion in my voice. The anger felt far away, but it was finally there. I didn't know if I could rest without knowing. This man couldn’t be allowed to get away with what he’d done.

"Don't worry," the figure said. It motioned the other way. "His path is that way. And there, all he will find is retribution."

The man stepped away from the pathway. It seemed harmless at first, but dark clouds hung in the distance. A feeling of anticipation hung over the gravel, and it would have made alive-me shiver with dread. "I don't want to go," the man said, his voice shaking.

The figure turned toward him then, crossing its arms. "Remember this fear," it said sternly. "Know that it is all your victims felt before you hurt them. What you have given in life is what you will find on the pathway to your final ending."

The man continued to resist, but it didn’t last long.

The figure waved his hand and suddenly the man was pulled toward his destiny. He flailed and screamed, but I felt nothing for him. No pain, no sadness, not even vindication. He had earned what he would receive, just as I had earned what was coming to me.

I nodded to the figure as it turned to me. I didn't need any more prompting as I turned into the light, feeling the warmth of summer on my face. As I walked, I thought I smelled the scent of my grandmother’s perfume, and the first of the people on path began to materialize before me.

“Welcome home,” my grandmother said, her face becoming clear in the bright sunshine. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

My heart swelled with a happiness I hadn’t felt since before that man came into my life. Finally, I was at peace.