All the Light in Heaven
I don't breathe like a soldier, but I am one.
That's all I can say for myself, clad in armor, pulling myself from the grave. You think you see me? I see straight through me.
Talking to myself, forgetting that anyone else even exists at all.
I am Dead.
But, I am not alone. It takes a third turn, a crook of my neck (of silhouette bones) to see the shadows flitting out of all the ground. The black earth turns, but only from the tilting light of the moon. We are not physical. We are whispers. We are all dead.
I can fly, and I move without thought. I move without effort. I am caught in a vast stream: and I am existing, but without propelling myself. This great stream of ghosts, we, are one form and flow. I recall the river (too elemental to forget!) and wonder if the water feels this way.
No, of course not. The water feels nothing.
But then, do I?
I am Dead. I am certain of a certain sentience, a sentence of thought. I can think, at least. That I am upward bound.
It takes a long time for me to realize we are heading for a mountain. I am so lost in my thoughts. But they are not even thoughts: just the whims of air. I fall into air, and come out, tussled, and yet there is nothing there.
Outside of me, there is.
There is the mountain. And above the mountain, something else still.
I remember God. But this is not God.
Can I be certain? Can I be uncertain whether God is good or evil, but be certain that that black thing above is not God? I believe so. I believe in something at least. I am Dead— if I exist again, then even God is more certain than I am. "I"- hesitate to even capitalize.
The River is more real than any of our supplemental parts, but I (i?) am still certain of my corresponding existence. This form, of the soldier, exists. There, to my right, a smoke-lined monster rides a horse. It is different. We are separate. One will unites us, yet we must necessarily be different. Different appearance, different form. And it looks ahead, and it does not doubt, as I do.
Yes, I doubt.
There is a town below us. I wonder if I lived there. I must have, if I was buried in the boneyard beside. But nothing is certain, is it? If death itself is not certain—
I do not know my name, even, and yet certain principles remain stuck in my head. The arms of the clock have been removed, yet the gears still turn behind the face. The universe still exists. The world is real. I died, and the world continued, and I rose again.
Should I not be more afraid? That black thing above is the End. If I am Dead, then what is further? Who is It? What is It? Did the beyond have a form, a personage? A sneering face, carved evil?
We are up the mountain. We are approaching. And I want to pray, but I am not capable of it. Surely, if I was, I would not be here now. I would not face the supreme darkness.
Was I a bad person? Was I a faithless person? Why am I here now? What is the use of this punishment, if the punished cannot remember their sin, and come to understanding, that THAT is the reason we have come to such a dark nightmare. That THAT is why we, the mortals with free will, ended up from some loathed choice to come face-to-face with—
My thoughts die away like the flame from the wind. There is only mounting cold, and ice fills my mind. I do not have the flesh and blood, the bones and sinews and pumping organs to feel physical terror. I have only the diamond of the mind, pierced with the vision of doom, it fractures into millions of reflections and scatters about, becoming me.
Is God watching? If God permits it, (some part within whispers), it must be alright. God, Jesus Christ, my savior—
The others dance madly as they are swept into the black grasp. Stretching, shrinking, tumbling about, whisping, waving. The ice within my fractures, and the burning of the cold becomes the burning electricity of movement, inducement, madness. I, too, following, will—
Dance! Incorporeal energy! Dance, dance, like my limbs do not exist, (no, they do not!), flailing magnificently, gone, gone, heaving ocean of ice bursting brilliantly in the sight and sound and surround of darkness. Terror and ecstacy mingle— we are the All!
Up and over, and into the flames that boil beneath, and we are gone in flash. I thought this was Death, but, no, Death is—
Waking in the pale morning. My robes ruffle as I fall awake, eyes blinking starkly in the cold. It is not yet dawn.
My brothers are moving, singing. I can hear their hallowed hymn outside the tent. It is the sacred hour, on the most holy day of the year.
I emerge in short time, incense waving, flowing into the others. In the peeking blue mist of the forest, we are Community.
The nightmare fades away with each step. I am alive. I am alive. The sun breaks upon the hills.
The long night is over.