Out of every feeling Arthur had ever thought of experiencing, death was perhaps the weirdest one of them all. He had thought it would have been painful or he would feel cold, like he had seen in documentaries about people who came back from the brink of death. No, instead what happened was one minute he was staring down the muzzle of a pistol, and the next, he finds himself in what he could only describe as an abyss.

  There was no floor, no sky—just a slow drift through darkness so complete it felt like falling through ink. He couldn’t move, nor could he speak. Hell, if he were being honest, he wasn’t even sure he still had a body since he couldn't see anything. Even though he was floating in what he was beginning to think was purgatory, he felt strangely calm, like this was just any other day.

  Just as he began to wonder if he actually had brain damage or something from the gunshot and it was affecting him somehow, light began to appear from above, and the darkness around him dissipated. Quickly, he found himself hovering above the snowy ground as police cars and ambulances surrounded the gas station he had just in.

  Red and blue lights pulsed across the parking lot, cutting through the haze of snowfall. Officers talked to one another, paramedics pushed through the cold with stretchers, and yellow tape was already being rolled out around the building's front door. Arthur floated above it all, watching in silence as the gunman was dragged into one of the nearest police cars. He was deathly silent as he was shoved inside.

  It was weird watching his killer be driven off to what he presumed to be the police station on 24th. He had fully expected to be seething in anger and wrath, but instead felt just a mild sense of confusion as he found himself drifting to the ground.

  His feet never touched the pavement; instead, he floated a few centimeters above it as he walked toward the gas station. The glass doors were shattered, the inside lit only by the flickering glow of police flashlights and overhead bulbs that buzzed like dying insects. He phased through the yellow tape without resistance and beheld the scene inside.

  Inside, time seemed off. Slowed if he had to describe it. The medics moved like they were underwater. The broken coffee machine hissed steam in a constant loop. The tile where he’d fallen was smeared with blood, dull red in the white light. His own body lay crumpled just feet away, zipped halfway into a black bag. One officer knelt beside it, taking notes on a clipboard. Another stood watch, unmoving as he stared at the corpse.

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  Arthur knelt next to the officer with the clipboard as he looked at himself, or rather, what used to be him. Kinda like what he had been expecting, he had a bullet hole smack dab in the center of his forehead. A small trail of blood trailed down his face and past his neck, where the body bag was hiding everything else. His skin was pure white, whiter than the snow outside. It almost looked as though he had been drained of blood.

  Staring at your corpse was…something…to say the least. He felt a weird sense of detachment, like he was looking at a wax figure instead of what used to be a person, much less himself. Maybe it was the lighting. Maybe it was the shock. Or maybe, now that he was dead, it just didn’t matter anymore; he frankly couldn't tell anymore.

  He sighed as he stood up slowly, the floor beneath him started to fade into a pale mist as he did so. His weightless body began to rise, drifting upward with surprising ease. He felt a gentle tug pull him upwards as the broken lights and blood-slicked tiles fell away beneath him. The gas station shrank, swallowed by fog and light, until even the snow outside became just a white smear in the distance.

  Arthur exhaled, or thought he did. It felt... good. Calming. Like taking a deep breath after holding it too long. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was what came next.

  “Heh,” he muttered to himself, voice barely audible as he began to drift above the clouds. “Can’t wait to see Saint Peter and the pearly gates at last.”

  A soft glow pulsed in the distance above him, growing closer with each passing second. It wasn’t overwhelming or divine-looking—just warm, inviting even. He could already begin to imagine the place it would lead to and how good it would be. For the first time since the gun went off, he felt okay with being dead.

  It was only when the light was about the engulf did something changed. Just as its warmth brushed against him, close enough to feel on what should’ve been skin, a sharp crack split the silence. The glow above rippled, like a stone dropped into still water. Arthur blinked. The calm drained from the air in an instant. A second crack followed, then a third, like glass under pressure.

  From below him, the sound of metal grinding against stone echoed. He twisted in the air, trying to look down—but there was nothing. Just a big, black pit. It looked like the darkness he was in just a moment prior, but as he stared into the darkness, something shot out from it.

  It moved like a serpent, barbed and rusted, coiling through the air before snapping tight around his ankle. It was a chain, and Arthur didn’t even have time to react before it yanked downward, hard enough to wrench his body out of alignment. Another was wrapped around his wrist. Then his chest. His neck.

  Within seconds, the light that had been so close to encompassing him was gone, now replaced by a place that had no bottom and no sky. The cold returned, deeper this time, like it was sinking into his bones. The chains tightened, pulling him faster, and all he could do was scream into the nothing as the last traces of him were ripped away from this world.