The sound comes to me first, like the crash of a lightning strike being stretched endlessly. A rolling thunder of billowing fire that just as quickly as it came, begins to fade as my other senses come back into the fray. I am on my knees in a grassy field, the bright colors of spring blooming across a grassy knoll. I can feel the spines of grass dance between my distended fingers as I sit there dumbly, arms limp at my sides. Thousands of flowers blanket the ground around me, their sweetness mixing with the aroma of fire. As I raise my eyes I’m simply awestruck. 

There is a wall of writhing smoke, fire dancing between the blackened plumes of death, circling the clearing. It undulates as if it wants to move but is trapped in space and time. My body refuses to move, still sitting on my knees languidly, I sweep my eyes upward and am painfully blinded. Squeezing my eyes shut I try to process what I am looking at. 

It is the pinnacle of an explosion, it's a red hot fireball frozen in place like someone miniaturized the sun and placed it directly above me. Keeping my eyes from looking too far up I begin to notice shapes, fading in and out in of corporeality, of other people also sitting on the ground scattered randomly.

I have now seen enough, drawing in the outlandish scene in front of me, and decide I should get up. The rumbling of the smoke wall around me fades in and out like a down-pitched fuzz from TV static. I move my arms forward to slide my center of balance forward then upward but it feels wrong, like I’m trying to push my way through cellophane. Then I realize nothing actually moved. I don’t think I can move. Panic sets in fast, as I struggle against my unwilling body, set there like a statue.

Move. Anything. Come on, even a finger! I can hear my breath echoing inside my head as it grows ragged. Neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, toes, ankles, knees. I try to move each joint, going through my entire body. Nothing. I can’t move. At the end of my line and getting increasingly desperate, I try to scream out only for my throat to tighten, catching it before it leaves my mouth. In fact I can’t even tell if I can move my face. Inexplicably exhausted, I give up.

In defeat, I let my mind wander. Have my mind separate from the body, because it’s not exactly bringing much to the table at the moment. Is this what people talk about dissociating? I drift on the cloud of my thoughts, feeling weightless in the heaviness of immobility. Is this the afterlife? Come to think of it, there’s others like me stuck here. This is definitely not what I imagined. Actually, I ended up here after Lauren pushed me into that green field. Why did she do that? Did it transport me here? Why did she apologize? She kissed me!

I futilely try to shake my head to push these thoughts from my mind. So much has happened but staying flustered will only get me killed. I need to think about this logically. Piece by piece. I was pushed into the green field, and ended up here. I don’t think that I’m dead, even if I am a passenger to my own fate right now. Alright, so….

...What is that? Movement in the corner of my eye pushes me out of my headspace once again. With everything so still in the flourished hellscape, even the slightest change in my peripheral vision is enough. The swish of fabric. Green and gone before I can make out any more. I try my hardest to move my head that direction to no avail. Come on, just let me look! Whatever you are, just move a little further left! A pit in my stomach drops. There is someone or something moving about this place and I can’t even move enough to look at what it was. 

And just like that, everything was still again. My grasp on time has become entirely out of whack and it could have been seconds or hours, but for me it was an eternity; the feeling that something was stalking me while I had no way to defend myself. I couldn't freak out and scream and I couldn’t calm myself down. And just like that, the source of my discomfort gracefully ambles back into my breath-taken sight. 

Even at this distance I could see that she had the face of every beautiful being; what once was, what currently is, and what is to be. She towered over the prostrate forms of others like me, on our knees unmoving. Barefoot, her olive skin reflected the fiery globe above in warm tones of sepia, like the earth molded and carved into art. White chalk lines arced gently across her canvas, spiralling into vague shapes, across her immodestly covered body. Simple green cloth accented by embroidered gold covered what little was left to the imagination mimicking the grand mantle upon her shoulders. Intricate patterns of different greens swimming along lines of gold and white laid upon her shoulders and flowed down her arms and back. Upwards further there were antlers, unfurling forward in majestic arcs resting upon her head, a crown that was cradled by a mane as fiery as dawn.

All that she was is contrasted by the unnerving staff she held in her left hand. The sinewy curvature of a spine ensheathed in the gristle of carbonized flesh. Melted bone and flesh melded into a blackened spire of horror. The hints of other body parts fused into the spine peek through in the form of other body part’s bones, yet there was that seemingly ever present iridescent green crystal poking through as well. The scene of the army men hitting the ground with burned blackened skin pierced through my mind with a violence enough to force my eyes shut. Within my immobility, I feel my stomach churn like it did then. Atop the staff was a crystal skull, tilted like it was placed there as an afterthought. The other end tapered off into a gruesome crystalline spike that glowed brightly verdant. This otherworldly woman is definitely the harbinger of death and this is definitely the afterlife. 

Of all the grisleyness, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it and of her. They moved and it was like this entire world moved with them, like a centerpoint in a snowglobe. With sweeping motions full of purpose, she grabbed a man closest to her with her free arm. With little effort, she pulls him up until his feet leave the ground. The height difference is so much more apparent now.

Without much care, she lifted the scepter up and slowly pushed the spike into his neck. With the man’s back to me I could see the tip of the spike push through the backside of his neck. The crystals in the spine brighten like a kaleidoscope. Beams of light shoot out among the facets in the crystal. It envelopes his entire body as well, hugging his shape with an iridescent shimmer. It moved slowly at first before it moved enough for me to notice, but his body began to shift, flesh moving like underwater currents beneath his skin. His body shuddered and spikes grew from his shoulders and spine. They pushed through his clothes like blades. Then he vanished. Mist slowly rose into the fireball above from where he once was. She moves onto the next person.

Each person changed differently as this goddess slowly winded through the group of people unwillingly kneeling before her. Each one of their forms shimmered and shifted before poofing out of existence. With each person she is getting closer to me. I can’t move but I must run. Adrenaline made white noise in my ears and in my mind as a panic slowly blanketed any thoughts I had. 

Five people before me.

Four people.

Three.

Two.

One.

That’s it. This is the end. 

It was like sitting on the edge of the eye of a hurricane being able to see the wall of clouds above swirling menacingly. Their winds are waiting just a few more minutes in peaceful silence before they finish ripping everything apart. Perhaps, if I could move, I could keep moving along with the storm to stay within it’s eye, but instead I am staring up at this wall of death. I could feel a pull towards her in my chest, like my soul was being pulled towards her. I instinctively try to wiggle out of the discomfort but am, of course, unable to move. That moment of distraction is enough for me to miss her bending down towards me. 

Her large palm covers my entire shoulder and the pressure inside me doubles. It pushes against some invisible wall inside of me as if it was trying to claw its way to her hand. A moth to the flame. 

Crushing pain. Each finger tip digs into my skin and I swear I feel my collar bone bend slightly as she grips down onto me. The pain sends shockwaves through my body. If I wasn’t immobile, I’d have collapsed. Another crushing sensation and I swear my collar bone just broke. Air pushes through my lips involuntarily as I mentally scream in agony. I can feel her lifting me up, my knees straightening out as my feet drag off the flowered ground. Unceremoniously, I’m simply dangling.

Face to face. My eyes dart for anything to save me before locking right onto her face. Her eyes. They were the dark empyrean canvas of space dancing with the stars, amorphous constellations effervescing within the night sky. Yet as deep as forever that her eyes delve, they were just as piercing. I could feel her pulling deep within me as I gazed into the oblivion within her. I felt that if I kept looking onto her eyes any longer they would pull out my soul and consume me. I have to look away. Now pulled within eye-level, I could see her more fully. Even within my own fear, up closer her strange divinity seems more all the more apparent. On the sparse clothing she wears, I can see the glimmer of gold interwoven into it, like its dancing between the fibers. What were just white lines in the distance that decorate her skin is actually hundreds of small drawings of animals, like cave paintings, running their course in patterns. 

This goddess regarded me with a languid tilt of her head. 

“Another one,” her palidly sweet sing-song voice echoes off of itself. It resounds throughout my entire body, and into the air around me. It was as if the entire world rebounded along with her voice. It continues repeating as its echo fades with deeper and deeper resonance until it was inaudible. “Rare that ones can perceive. Yet so many so soon.”

“A will to see, but not to act.” She lifts that horrible staff in her other hand up and around to my neck. “Shame.”

I’m going to die. I am going to die. I am going to die!

I can feel the adrenaline push its way through my mentally drained state, the fear burned within my head, and my pulse pounding within my head. Pinpricks of pain electrocute their way across the skin of my neck as the jagged tip of that abhorrent spear inches forward. 

The pressure that danced within my chest before is compressing. It almost tickles before as it turns from butterflies in my stomach into a nest of hornets, then into the swelling heat of lava. I can feel it bubbling and swelling like a boiling caldera. It was filling me entirely, as it reached past my chest into my hips, my shoulders, my arms. It fills me.

The staff pushes further, and this strange convalescence in me coalesces. A violent twitch of my hand. An echoing yell and a swinging forward of my arm. My hand closes around the sharp blade trying to eviscerate my windpipe. And everything went white. The pain is unimaginable, it fills me entirely and consumes my mind. My eyes fight a losing battle on rolling into the back of my head. Muscles flex and loosen quickly out of my own control. A dull thud vibrates through me up from my knees. 

I hear screaming…

As the pain fades slowly, I can feel the hoarseness of my own voice. I was the one screaming. I’m curled into a sweaty ball on the ground. The pain filters out of my body, soothing its way out down into my right hand until all the ache is centered solely in it. I grabbed that staff thing, right? What did it do to my hand? 

There is a long gash down my palm. But no blood? I can see the flesh cleft open, but that also wasn’t what hurt. The pain is deeper, like it’s in my bones. My whole hand looks kind of off anyway, like grabbing the spike had drained the vitality from it. It looks frailer and just straight-up thinner than my other hand. 

Curious, I spun my hand around to look at the other side and recoiled. My fingernails were the same green as that spike. They looked more like crystal and less like, well, fingernails. The closer I looked, I could see the faintest of glows following the fingernails into my hands. It creates a faint trace of the bones in my hand through my skin before fading at the wrist. Did grabbing the goddess’s staff replace my bones with that stuff? The goddess did this. Goddess.

I jerk out of my stupor and wrench myself off the ground. I did not have to go too far to find her. She had been crouching over me, and is now standing looking as startled as I probably did right now. 

We stare at each other for a moment. Then it dawns on me that I have been moving. 

“I can move now?” Of all the things to say first, that’s what I ask. Clearly I am a conversationalist at heart.

“Your hand,” her voice echoes with a pregnant pause. Not that she seems to fare much better, apparently. “Is it alright?” 

Why does she care? She was just walking around nonchalantly murdering people. 

“Throbs. Has a giant cut on it. Is glowing slightly. What’s it to you?” 

The distance between us is covered in a single bound by her, as she reaches down for my hand. Mixtures of fear and awe keep me from pulling away, but her oversized hand holds mine gently. She traces the green glow beneath my skin with her thumb softly. Goosebumps rush up my arm. 

“This hand has taken the gift greedily. Life as fuel to become more. It will consume you,” she says softly, “You are the last of this closing pocket. Hand or fire,” she gestures to the strange fireball above us, “one or another will be your end if you do not leave.”

She’s speaking in riddles but I think I understand her meaning. I look up towards her celestial face. 

“How do I leave then,” I ask, my calm voice betrayed by the crack of nerves. 

“With a seal like the others. I promise it will not hurt.” 

She was sending them away, not killing them? Should I believe her? If she was really just killing them then she wouldn’t be concerned for me right now, right? Death, or believing her. 

“Okay. Do it then.”

I close my eyes. I can hear her moving back to her staff and pulling it back out of the ground. She grabs my chin and pushes my head up, yet again gently. A pinprick on my neck, and once again everything fades into an emerald oblivion.