Substack Penitence
I don't know how it happened, your last thoughts run away from you. The instant your final wheezing breath slips from your lips and the spirit leaves the body is not itself a thought, but a reality, a vision of the rest of life-- not life anymore, but something more eternal and made of stronger stuff than this weak grasping we participate in now. I don't know how I died, but I am certainly dead. The way I know is the feeling. Though I may be able to stand upright next to my lifeless body and look down on it in a cold curiosity, this doesn't assuredly tell me that I'm dead. I am instead certain that my life is over by the feeling which washes over me. It is like a dream but I am hyper aware. Things are spotty and there is an empty dark black full of warmth which fills up the glowing blue figure of my invisible body standing next to the meat that was once me. I am searching around for other ghosts but I don't see any. Odd, I think, I assumed there would be plenty in the afterlife but it seems solitary and empty, almost. As I am looking, without turning my head, as ghosts do not need to move to change position or squint to focus their eyes, I feel a string along my back. It is delicate and light, almost itchy but more of a tickle than anything else. Still, the sensation goes deeper than what I've felt before. In the past I may have felt a sweater run up along my back or a bug crawling down it and it would give me an itch or a tingle. But this is different. The sensation is much crisper, much more real, much more potent like my senses have been dialed up to 11 and I finally know what a real tingle is, what a real itch is, what it really feels like to be tickled rather than the imitation of the sensation I have felt for the past 23 years of living. The sensation of pins and needles with a spiraling twitch has dug into me, it runs from the root of my body just above my legs and below my tailbone up and up and up along my spine in a perfect line to the tip of my crown where it feels like I'm wearing a hat now. I begin to laugh as I'm jerked up from the ground like a yo-yo and through the skies and through the firmament and through the oceans of abyss that no one ever sees into some heavenly white and with twisting and bulging orbs of plasma, like stars, perfect stars.
Heaven. I can not ask anyone if that's where I am but I am sure that's what this is. Radiance and gold and dread infinite to make my feet and fingers feel coagulated almost with tingles. Like the blood has gotten twisted and stopped running and I almost feel sick.
Before me stands a small decade of angels. They each bear swords, flaming, engraved in runes and glyphs I can not read and should tremble at the might of. Their armor glistens and morphs and seems to change colors which each passing second, even though we are still outside of all time. Like a tie-die, the blues shift and wave into greens then reds and pale orange. Icelike, almost see through and pallid with each color, not bright but still beautiful beyond words. Their wings are spread tenfold across the plains of clouds we stand on and are metal, glistening and sheening like steel in a flash of light. Their wings are at least three times the size of their bodies and stretch out far beyond their arms could. Flat and almost like a drawing. Their faces are calm and friendly, not a stern look from any of them. Pale and glowing. Thin lips and open eyes, hearts seen through those eyes like the hearts of many an expressive person I knew, manic and passion seen through those eyes, but still gentle and silent. Their majesty inspires terror and awe in my heart and I almost fall to my knees in humility before these ancient beings of light, these primordial terrors of the wind, these beasts of love and purity.
But what sits, enthroned, before me puts all the majesty of this flaming legion to shame and shadows their light dim in comparison to indescribable Almighty Power. He is Lord of all and is seating, Titan-like, on a flat and even throne of gold and light. He is form of forms, all man from Him and of Him and in His image He sits.
Next to him, rightside, sits the Son. Though He is in power as much as the Father, His energy is far less of that Might so radiated by the enthroned One, and more that of a home. A soft heart and a outstretched hand, a drink for the thirsty, a meal for the hungry, clothes for the naked. In His eyes I see all the chances I had at Love's service, all the good in my own life I have done in obedience to Him, and that I shunned away in cold remorse now for an eternity of regret in my own transparent heart. I see in His eyes the knowledge of a lifetime of service and meekness I may have known if I were to be perfect, now out of my reach forever as I stand before these figures, engulfed in flame, ready to be rightly sentenced. Yet there is in his Judge's eyes, no judgement, no harsh condemnation or punishment already thought of and brooding over. There is only a warm remembrance and joy in even one time I was seen to do the Will of Heaven on earth.
The Master unbinds a giant and shimmering Book, a huge voluminous tome bound in silver and gold, from which a sterling music and vibrating constant tone, like a mantra, emanates from. The Book is open and I know in my being that at the foundation of the world, this book was written and at the world's doom it will be read; every word, every syllable, every phrase and punctuation that could ever be written by the world's greatest poets or writers will be wind and like jokes compared to even the opening of this Great Book.
The Book, now bared open and angled only towards the King of Kings and hidden from all the others round him. He speaks, as a bellowing wind in a storm, deep and yet calm:
"Child. You are sentenced to ten million years in purgatory for your crimes against humanity and the Law of the Lord."
My heart sinks as I look to the angels now advancing, slowly like a mudslide to me with chains in their hands. In my immense fear I manage to get one phrase out to cry at this orchestra of power and might:
"What did I do?!"
The angels halt their advance as the Great Being of Light, the LORD, ponders my question for just a moment before giving me His answer:
"You, in your arrogance, not only made a substack and posted your inane writings on it; but your actions are directly responsible for inspiring every other idiotic substack created by a multitude of other, now lost, souls."
I tremble and my knees buckle as I fall prostrate in my humility, sorrow and repentance.
"P-please. I-I didn't m-mean to-"
"SILENCE!" cries the Founder of All-Things.
I tremble in silence, justly ordered of me, as I listen for the marching footsteps of the angels to come and bind me in chains and subject me to my eons of punishment. But instead, I hear only one soft and sandaled pair of footsteps approaching me. I raise my head ever so slightly half in fear and half in amazement and see the Son, the glorified Jesus Christ approaching me in a calm and piteous tone. he speaks:
"My Child, if only you had called out to spirits more, screaming like an absolute maniac and writhing on the floor. That's what I told everyone to do, you know? Haven't you read the Bible? I said for everyone to scream and cry out to spirits and call angels down from Heaven."
I look up at the living Lord with a mix of confusion and love and reply, curious:
"B-but what about helping others? What about being honest and self-sacrificing? What about believing in You above all else?"
Jesus smiles and says, looking down at me still:
"Oh, that? Yeah that was all just filler. The main thing I wanted everyone to do was definitely call out to spirits. Also to play around with venomous snakes. Some day you'll get it."
Scarcely the words leave His mouth before he is passed through, like a wisp, by the ten angels rushing towards me in vigor. They bind me tight and drag me from the throne room of the Living God to the pit of gray and shivering fire that my soul must pass through for ten million years in order to be purged of the immense weight of my sin: writing substack articles and inspiring others to write substack articles.