I WAS IN A RIVER. THICK, black viscous water, like oil, surrounded me. Swimming wasn’t easy. I knew I had to swim one way—the way of the light, but the current kept pulling me backward into the darkness.
One gate flashed by while I was pulled underneath it. The gate itself was ornately decorated with cherubs and angels on the one side, and demons and ghouls on the other, meeting in the middle to portray a fight between an angel on a chariot and a monstrous beast.
I passed under the gate, and the current grew stronger. All around me was darkness, which made it all the stranger that I could see the gates. The river was black, but above me, the sky was equally as black, now and then lightened by a thunder bolt flashing through the clouds.
The afterlife. The River Styx.
Panic consumed me.
