If one were to ask what death felt like, what would be the most common answer?

  ‘It would feel cold’.

  ‘It would be ugly and horrifying’.

  ‘It would feel like losing all of yourself as your lifeblood drained from you’.

  All perfectly acceptable responses. While, yes, they were basic and a bit plain, bordering on obvious, there was nothing wrong with someone saying that. However, those came from people who never experienced death. Not truly. If they had, how could they have told people what the feeling was like? Were there telephones in Heaven and Hell?

  So, while the premise of saying those things was fair, the only issue was…

  They were all wrong.

  A person only experiences death once — it’s one of the only things someone can only experience once. So, when it happens, it’s not uncommon to have an oddly vivid image of the feeling, partially due to the severity of it, but also due to the rarity of it.

  It felt like something that made your life worthless.

  William Eld felt that way, as he bled out on the floor with his back pressed against the rocky alley wall. The cobblestones beneath him were slick with rain that had cleared up ten minutes ago. That torrential weather was also the cause of his sorry state.

  His pants that were a size too big with the thin suspenders, his wrinkled and unwashed white shirt that was stained with everything from sweat to dirt to, now, blood. As well as his ugly boots that were clunky and sore to walk in, and the dusty old cap that smelt of his father that lay on the ground just out of reach. All of his possessions were soaken and seemed to refuse to dry.

  “Huff… shit…” William’s words were sparse, gurgling from his hoarse voice like a dam withering under the weight of a tidal wave slamming into it. His hair that was a light blonde — as far as his muddy thoughts could recall — fell just over his eyes, the fair strands softly tickling his eyebrows. His eyes, blue like an ocean storm, wavered, his heavy and bruised eyelids on the verge of closing shut.

  Yeah, if that happened, William doubted he would have the strength to reopen them. After all, he had been bleeding out for the better part of ten straight minutes now. He released a breath that came out in a puff of mist. He looked down at his side, where his two shaky hands were pressed tightly to the open and running wound. His shirt around that area was lacerated and stained dark red, as the same colour ran down his pant leg.

  If only I hadn’t been an idiot. If only I hadn’t run into that gang of random street thugs. If only I hadn’t started running my mouth. If only I had dodged that knife…

  William hissed in pain, clenching his teeth with both the numb ache that permeated his whole body, as well as self-deprecating hate.

  God, what an idiot had I been?

  The hatred for himself built like a flame being stoked with more fuel. As he felt his blood pouring longer and longer from his body, as he felt his body close up and shut down like a carriage gone out of use, the more his resentment grew.

  Then, the resentment grew larger, beyond just for himself. Those bastard thugs, the ones who made him end up a dying teenage boy in a decrepit and barren alleyway. They were to blame too. They were the ones who stabbed him after all. William remembered there being three of them, though only his soon-to-be killer kept a recognisable face in his murky memory.

  Taller than him, broader than him, and scarier than him. He seemed like a wolf of a boy, not even older than William’s age of seventeen. The broad assailant was stinking with cigars and alcohol, clearly having divulged himself in secret, away from any adult supervision that would reprimand him.

  Ah, who am I kidding? Actual adult supervision, in Ashwater of all towns? What a joke…

  William shifted slightly and cried out as his wound flared with burning pain. Not much longer now…

  Dammit, when the hell did I become so complacent with death? Did I forget what I was saying it felt like before? Like it would make my life meaningless?

  Well, William hasn’t changed his perspective — the feeling of death wasn’t like any other stab or gunshot wound, but rather a feeling deeper in his soul, a draining thing that sapped away at his already lacklustre will. And without his will, he was nothing. After all, it was his will that had gotten him this far…

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  He started crying before he even realised. Wet, hot tears ran down his face. They were the only things that washed the muck from his skin. The city had taken so much that only his own sorrow could clean it up.

  “Oh, I’m dying…” he whispered to himself, reality setting in at that moment. His mind flashed with a great many things as he noticed just how cold he felt, how warm the blood seeping from him was, how he couldn’t move anything from below his neck anymore.

  In his final moments, the boy thought of the city of Ashwater, the city on the coast, boarded on the east side by the sea that kept a constant fog rolling in day after day and night after night. He thought of his situation, how he never had anything, always scavenging around for hours, looking for just a comfortable stone to sleep against, or a particularly nice-looking piece of moldy bread that he’d have to make last for two days.

  In his final moments, William Eld cursed the damned city that ruined his life and any chance of a way out. He cursed the city that gave his mom that incurable disease that took her when he was just seven. He cursed the city that had his father beaten to death for a false accusation of stealing, right before his very eyes, when he was just ten. He cursed the city that forced him to look after his younger sister for so long, starting from such a young age.

  “Lucy… I’m sorry…” William breathed, then he breathed his last, as his body shut down. Those were his last words before he felt cold, then felt numb, then felt nothing.

  *

  “What exactly did you expect, boy?”

  The voice William heard was one he initially believed belonged to God. Or was his scavenging for survival in Ashwater enough to condemn him to Hell to spend his life under the boot of the Devil?

  No, this isn’t God…

  The voice wasn’t filled with the expected warmth of some fatherly godly figure, but rather a coldness attributed to some other existence that wasn’t exactly trustworthy, but who wasn’t entirely suspicious either. William groaned his he felt a burning sensation in his skull, as if a firework had been set off in his brain. All he could see was white, which contrasted with the pitch darkness he could’ve sworn he’d only seen a few seconds prior.

  Or was it more like minutes? Or hours? Maybe an eternity? The effects of having just woken up made William groggy and drowsy. He also felt a soft warm wind press against him, his hair ruffling slightly in the breeze. And, after what felt like days, he finally opened his eyes, suddenly sharp and awake with a certain clarity.

  He realised he wasn’t just seeing white because it was like there was a sun behind his eyes — it was that the surroundings were just entirely white. Another three things came to him all of a sudden, like a train. Firstly, it was as if he was floating in midair. When he took a step, the shifting mists below him acted like a floor, yes, but while standing still, he felt like he was on the edge of tipping and falling off a high cliff. Second of all, he was naked. His pale, thin, ugly body was on full display. He noted there was a lack of dirty or grime or scarred skin, unlike his precious ‘version’ in the real world.

  The last thing he noted was that he wasn’t alone.

  Another person — if that was the right word to use — was standing about five meters away from him, hands clasped behind their back and looking at William with a nonchalant and clam look, chest up and shoulders back. William figured out almost instantly that the ghostly presence had to have been the one who spoke those words earlier. What had he meant by what William had ‘expected’?

  William looked at the figure properly, noting that it was indeed a male, but also coming to another epiphany. The ‘man’ was a rabbit.

  Exactly as it sounded, the figure that was fully revealed to him, was an anthropomorphic rabbit man, standing on two legs and having the same baring of a particularly-graceful man. His fur was a sandy grey, with a tint of a greenish hue. His eyes were big and bulbous and buglike, inky black with no other color to differentiate. His nose was black too, and its long ears stood tall with one drooping slightly. The hare person wore a pristine suit, tailored with a sable black for the pants and blazer, while the shirt beneath was crisp and like snow in color. The tie was a deep burgundy, even the slightly altered hue vivid through the blinding white of their surroundings.

  “Who the fuck are you?” William spoke with a still-hoarse voice, his tone mixed with frustration and bafflement. He was either dreaming, or going crazy in his last moments on Earth.

  “Hm, so you use vulgar language towards me and won’t even answer my first question? How insubordinate.”

  “I-insubordinate? The hell did you say?”

  “Might I recommend calming down? There’s no need to be so infuriated over nothing. You are dead, might I remind you?”

  William froze. He felt his throat constrict and a heaviness set deep in his heart. The figure was right. He had died.

  Immediately, William came to the assumption this was either Heaven or Hell. He hadn’t even truly been a devout follower of any of the numerous religions that spawned from the residents and communities of Ashwater, the foggy town by the sea. However, he had believed in some form of higher power. After all, he attributed his surviving so long with only his wits as nothing short of divine intervention.

  He looked again at the rabbit man, mind buzzing with confusion. He almost wanted to shake his head with disbelief. How insane? How surreal? How… scary…

  The rabbit man’s nose twitched slightly. The weird similarity to an actual real-world rabbit made William shiver, despite the press of the soft warm wind against his nude body. Oh, right, that too…

  “Hey, jackass,” William seethed suddenly, flexing his jaw and twisting his hands into fists. “Where the hell are my clothes gone?”