 I should have looked before crossing the road. I didn't though, so there's that. I'd done it so many times but today I was in a hurry. I had a date or a meeting or something. It's funny. I remember urgency and a feeling like this was a big and definitive moment in my life. Now that I'm dead, the specifics seem to just float away. All I know for sure is that I wanted to get somewhere quick, so I rushed down the stairs of my apartment and right into the road. I remember the van colliding with my right side and the feeling of being thrown into the air as my bones cracked and contorted. Then I was somewhere else. It smelled like old books, poor shit and rain. It smelled like half melted memories. It was dark too but not like you think of dark. It's sort of gray in a way I can't put words to. The floor was hard and dull looking, the ceiling was much the same save for wide spaces letting in light more powerful than any shadow. No one had to tell me I was dead. I'd done fucked up. There were chairs lining the wall in front of me. They were empty. Except they weren't. When I tilted my head I could see the shapes of beings made of fire or wriggling snakes or darkness itself. They sat in those chairs as much as they could be said to sit. They watched me with cold and infinite eyes. There was a doorway smack dab in the middle of the wall. It felt like a black hole ought to feel. It was a bitter and sucking nightmare thing. I knew without being told that there was something hungry behind it. The angels watched me from their seats. They produced a noise like a nuclear bomb of television static. It was a question that demanded a complete and irreversible answer. I flashed back to being a child in Catholic school. When it came time to confess my sins there was no room for refusal. I'd get so nervous waiting in the pews I used to laugh and some permanently frowning teacher would stare daggers into my skull. When it was my turn I'd march right up to the old priest in his little room and tell him of my masturbatory habits or stolen candy or cheating on a test or whatever it was. I'd cry. Sometimes I'd shit myself a little bit out of fear of hell. I'd leave feeling sick but relieved to have passed on my shame to a frail little man in God's employ. Now my sins came pouring out like vomit after a night of shitty cocktails. I told them about the time I hit my mother as a child. I told them about the time I set a slur when drunk. I told them of all the nasty unforgivable things and they laughed and laughed and laughed like the demons which were their cousins. The angels saw me as the pointless and pathetic thing I was. It was unbelievably freeing not to matter. One by one the heavenly beings departed. They just faded away like images on decaying film. Now I'm alone in a room which reminds me of every half remembered dream I ever had but is somehow so unremarkable it's painful. This must be purvatory. This must be where they cook away the sin and wipe off the shit of life from the asshole of your soul. At least that's what the Catholic part of me thinks. Other parts of me are just freaked the fuck out. Maybe I'm still dying sprawled out on the pavement. God is coming. At least that's what I'm calling it. I can hear it. It sounds like rushing water. It's in the doorway now. Help me father for I have sinned.