Death was a confusing topic. Normally when humans died, their worries ended there, and what was to happen after their death was nobody's business except that of the human's who actually died.
What waited for them beyond death was unpredictable. Faith played a big role in what was to be expected in the afterlife, but despite common, or uncommon beliefs, life after death, or even the absence of life after death was a tricky topic.
Winston and Lydia were sucked into a black hole, so life after death for them was all the more unpredictable. At one point they felt frozen in time for what felt like thousands of years, and as their lives, the very sparkle in their eyes was drained out of their bodies, extremely slowly, through the process of spaghettification, any glimmer of hope they had for a dignified death was out of the equation.
At some point, life after death seemed fictional to them, impossible even, because the sweet relief of death damn well took its time while they were in the black hole. But thankfully, life was not infinite, not even in a black hole.
Throughout a long stretch of time that felt like thousands of years, they finally died. The sweet relief of death was so strong, that it almost felt like it bracketed their long, painful experience, and pushed it away, and out of the black hole itself as if it had spat their bodies out.
After their long-awaited death, it was as if they never suffered to begin with. Much like the human brain automatically forgets long, and very tiring traumatic experiences, their pain ceased to exist.
At least, for a little while. But then they opened their eyes again. This, in its nature, was quite paradoxical, as dead things were supposed to stay dead, and yet they opened their eyes in the midst of an uncomfortable darkness!
"What the fu…" Winston tried to speak, but he was overwhelmed by this overwhelming, burning sensation on his throat.
Instinctively, he tried to reach out for his throat, only to find out that his arms were restricted. His arms hit a wooden board of sorts, which made him guess that he was now trapped in a tiny space, somehow?
This experience was perhaps even more terrifying than being sucked into a black hole. He had no idea where he was, he just knew that he was supposed to be dead.
The pain on his throat insisted otherwise. He was not dead. He inevitably felt some sort of liquid dripping out of his throat, and when this liquid was paired with the pain he was feeling, he managed to put two and two together, and come to the conclusion that someone had slit his throat.
"How?" He grunted, only to feel another ache.
'I'm being buried alive, aren't I?' He thought, and this only served to make him even more confused. 'I'm supposed to be dead… how would anyone even recover my body? I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure I was sucked in by a black hole.'
Winston was pointing out the obvious at this point. He even guessed that he had finally slipped into hell, which would be one theory, considering that he had been an atheist as long as he could remember.
Which was why he thought, 'If Hell is real, then I'm probably in it? Makes more sense than somebody snatching my body out of a fucking black hole!'
This was a good theory, but then, his throat started to heal up. He figured that demons would heal their victims just to torture them again, this was the first thought that ran in his mind, but made him fail to convince that he was in Hell, was the fact how surreal this situation was!
Winston could feel every muscle, every bone on his body. In the midst of the darkness, he even felt his breath shooting back up to his face, which led him to believe that he might just be alive, rather than in Hell.
"If I'm alive then this is a very sucky situation to be in," He finally uttered out a full sentence as his throat healed, completely. "So someone managed to retrieve my body, slit my throat, and throw me in a casket? Fucking nonsense!"
The more he spoke, the more he realized that it was getting harder for him to breathe. This made the situation he was in feel even more real.
Since his throat was healed, his next assumption was that he was running out of oxygen. He didn't know how he was still alive, but he'd rather not suffocate within a restrictive, unsettling darkness.
So, he started struggling, pushing his forearms against one side of the casket, and his bottom against the other side.
Breaking free seemed impossible, but he was still willing to give it a try, because as far as he was concerned, he was buried vertically, instead of on his back, which didn't really make a lot of sense to him. He used that latter fact to fight for his life, but then he felt another pain that he somehow had ignored!
"Why does my ass hurt?" He asked himself.
That sentence triggered something within him as if it was a sleeper agent. In a way, his butt-pain unlocked memories, as if he had pushed a button deep inside his rectum!
Two sets of memories, memories of two lives stormed his brain for ten whole seconds, overwhelming him beyond bounds! One set of memories consisted of his own life, and he recognized them, but the other set of memories felt foreign.
Memories of magic, castles, stone cities, and monsters rolled into his brain. He knew that these weren't memories that he could call his own, and yet, he instinctively knew that they belonged to the body that he had taken hostage, in a sense, or the body that he had taken over as if he was the demon that was sent from Hell.
"Great…" He sighed, "Dying wasn't enough, and now I probably have to fight a fire breathing dragon? What is this sci-fi bullshit?"
Pissed off, he added, "So many damn memories, it feels like someone shoved a USB Stick up my ass."
Afterwards, he moved his hips around a little bit, and grunted, "Wait, no, that's an actual stick. Someone shoved a real, thick stick up my ass? Smooth too, like… a very well crafted stake? Where the hell am I? In the castle of a knock-off, Count Dracula?"
Winston's concerns were valid. Someone had slit his throat and shoved a stick up his ass, and he was somehow alive to ponder over that fact, which was a real headache, but his main problem was the fact that he was running out of oxygen very quickly, so he could not afford to get distracted anymore, regardless of what was else was going on.
For that matter, he started pushing his body against both sides of the casket again, and ignored his butt-pain. This was the only idea he could think of, so he had to soldier through.
After half a minute of struggling, he started throwing his hands around in frustration. He couldn't move his arms, but his hands were practically speaking in sign language at this point!
These hand movements triggered something within him, in two very literal ways. First, he felt a sensation coming out of his hands, as if all ten of his fingers were bleeding, which was odd because he didn't feel any cuts, just strong pressure, even though he wasn't actually touching anything with his hands.
Secondly, he heard a loud pop, a thud, and then an instant sense of relief, as if a great burden had been lifted off of his shoulders!
In this case, a very painful burden had popped out of his butt-hole, and broke through the back board of the suspected wooden casket that he was in!
"Haha!" He celebrated, "Can't believe I'm farting my way out of trouble!"
As a string of fresh air started slipping into his casket, he took a deep breath, and got all the more motivated to break free.
For some reason, his fingers were burning as if he had dipped them in boiling water, so he involuntarily cooperated with that fact, and started flicking his hands around as to shake the heat away.
Just there, he did believe that he was in hell because of all the heat on his fingers, but then, the back part of the casket shattered into pieces, and a mild ray of yellow light shot out past him, hitting the front of the casket, or specifically, where he was staring at.
Winston could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The only difference was that this light wasn't here to take his life.
Better yet, the pain on his fingers was rapidly fading away. The relief he felt once he saw the light, somehow tamed whatever sensation that had been burning within him, the same sensation that had been affecting his fingers.
Nervous, and yet happy about the fact that he broke free, he then slowly backed up, and turned around to have a look at his surroundings. He wanted to figure out where he was, and hopefully make some sense out of the weird situation he was in.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" He grunted, upset that he found himself surrounded by many other poorly built, wooden caskets. "What is this? Some sort of sick game? Are the Gods messing with me?"
As he ranted, he heard a familiar, feminine voice calling his name. This shook him to the core, because the one thing that scared him more than being locked up in Hell, was being locked up in Hell with a familiar face. A face he loved.
"Winston, is that you?" Lydia called out for him. "Help me, please!"
No matter where he was, her voice was one that he could never forget in a million years! He sunk into deep panic, and started frantically knocking on the seventeen caskets that were lazily placed together around him in this big, muddy ditch that they were in.
"Lydia, where are you?" He kept panicking, "Knock three times so I'll know how to find you!"