Ghosts playing God

The temporal room

”I escaped!” I shout, being the first thing I manage to say after I recover from the shock.

I confess from my own experience: being dead is horrible. You don't see anything, you can't touch anything, you don't smell anything. It's like you're brain dead. You are nothing but a vegetable unconscious of its own existence. It was just that I was aware... I was probably the only soul capable of perceiving sensations... the most diverse sensations that it would be impossible for me to explain now, when I returned to my mortal body, with a much too limited brain. But I believe that I must start with the beginning. Or with the end... the end of the world.

I was in 2025 when I was killed. I had just turned 25, but the situation at that time forced me to mature much too early. While the main activities of a young man my age could be studying, having crazy s*x and alcohol parties, and maybe a job, I was far too busy running away from demons. Me and another 8 billion people.

Just imagine: wild animals invading large cities, fires caused by short circuits and power outages, and buildings collapsing brick by brick. All this due to the fact that there were no more people to keep the planet under control. We were all too busy running away from the demons who wanted our souls to send its to Hell.

I did not understand at that moment where they came from, who invoked them or what their true purpose is. All I knew was that they started appearing in 2020, one by one.  Initially, they did not show themselves, they were peaceful, they even tried as much as possible to hide from us. In reality, they were doing nothing but coming from Hell and regrouping on Earth. They waited for as many demons as possible to gather in the armies, then started the war.

They hunted us like wolves. There was a kind of sick pleasure in the way they tortured, then killed every person they caught in their clutches. And their appearance was even sicker. Black silhouettes, shadows, without a face and without any features that could have humanized them in any way. They were like some glitches matrix.

I still remember very clearly the desperate way I ran through the narrow streets on the outskirts of the city. God, how stupid I was when I thought I'd get rid of them if I ran away from the center. Well, it was just the opposite. All I did was fall into their trap, between their black and cold claws. Surprisingly, I resisted more than most of my friends and acquaintances. At least that's what I found out before the internet and telephone networks went down. Tragic, I know. But my only priority was my own survival. I didn't have time to take care of others. The most terrible was when I saw my family slaughtered in the most grotesque way. I try to forget, but it is impossible for me, and because of this I am afraid to sleep. The images reappear in my mind every time I close my eyes.

But of course, survival could not last indefinitely. It was enough for a small group of demons to catch me to make my death. Running didn't help me, so I tried all the other methods that came to mind. I prayed to God, I said how many prayers I had time, I tried every religious variant, but nothing worked. It's like God left me in the most critical moment of my life. In fact, He left us all... He left us prey to the creatures of darkness.

From the moment I was killed, I don't remember anything visual, olfactory, tactile, auditory or gustatory. In other words, as soon as my soul was disconnected from my body, I lost access to the five earthly senses. Anyway, I only remember the sensations that a spirit could feel during a journey... miserable. I don't know how to describe the events that followed without auditory or visual images, but I can try to tell, very briefly, what I remember. 

After I was killed, my soul was sent to hell by demons. However, I was lucky not to go through the "eternal torments" that society keeps telling us since we were born and until we get to where I am now. Basically, I was locked in a kind of soul store, a waiting room. There were probably too many of us already, and the demons responsible for us were already too busy. I feel like laughing when I remember. But at that moment, all I wanted to do was find a way to get rid of the "judgment”. I was shaking like an electron, among billions of other electrons struggling just as frantically. But I was lucky to find the "nucleus of the atom”.

Eventually, I managed to escape. I searched as far as I could for an escape hatch and found a door. But it is far from the door I would have expected. 

When I came out, I thought I would get anywhere else: either to the main hell, or somewhere else in the cosmos, or directly to heaven, maybe even to God. But the place I arrived was nothing like what I would have expected to see. First of all, it was extremely quiet. It was nothing but an endless vacuum. I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go. I would have liked to seek heaven, but something told me I would not find it. If no one helped us when we needed it, it is clear that no one would have helped us even when we were already dead.

So I chose to stay and carefully research where I was already. Only now do I realize how lucky I was. Not only was I the only lucky "electron" who managed to get to the core, at the heart of it all, but I managed to spot a trigger that had the ability to change everything. 

Finally, I realized that I was in a "temporal room”. I shouldn't have been there. No human spirit would have anything to look for there. But somehow, I have no idea how, I succeeded!

I didn't think for a second. I pressed the shutter, unsure of what was going to happen, but knowing it was the only way to change something. And I changed everything ...

And now, here I am at home, in my bedroom, in the house where I grew up, in my family's house. I still haven't recovered from the shock, but at least I can think of something clearer now. I'm lucid enough to figure out what the purpose of that "room" was.

I go to the mirror and analyze my features: sand-golden hair, orange eyes, unusually bright and fine, pale skin. I look a little younger now, but it's normal. I just reset the time! I'm back in 2020, before all the madness begins. I look intently in the mirror, making eye contact with my own reflection.

”My name is Theodor Martin and I only have five years left to stop the apocalypse!”