You can be a king or a street sweeper,
- If you had the shortest attention span in the world, hell would be an eternity of the Discovery Channel, followed by Animal Planet and BBC News in a spiraling infinity of forever. If you are a murderer, living off the blood spill and scared faces of your victims, hell would be a world full of children and nice old women with immortality. If you are a teacher… well, your life is already hell, so I suppose you’ll never get retirement funds.
I myself, Akito Gokurakuin, am a simple, Japanese teenager, with an unfortunate problem of having the people closest to me dying. I don’t know why exactly, but within the span of a year, my mother (kaasan), my sister (Sakurako), and my boyfriend (Makkura) all died. I don’t know if I just have really shitty luck, or if I just only know people with said luck, but it’s what happened. I’m not sure if my subconscious made me do it, or if I was just too distracted in my self-pitied thoughts to realize what I was doing, but from what I can tell, I was hit with a car on my way to school, and since I am in an empty abyss right now, I am going to say that this here, is purgatory.
I get random flashes, random moments, where I am back on Earth, the world of the living, and I see my friends, sometimes they are at my grave, placing flowers on the sacred soil above my coffin, and sometimes I see them in their daily lives, living happily. I’m not sure why I get these flashes; perhaps it’s some sort of punishment for my sins, or some Christian bull like that.
My thoughts keep me entertained in this black hole of death, I haven’t seen anybody else dead around here, so I am guessing either it is infinitely big, or everybody gets their own personal purgatory. This is what I get for not listening to my psychologist, “Move on, life will get better, you’ll find love again…”
Wait, no, she was a total crackpot, I loved my mother and sister, I can’t get new mothers and sisters (well, I can, but to hell if I want to), and my boyfriend… well, I suppose in all truth I could have gotten another one of them. Call it high school hunnies, teenage crushes, or even true love, they always say you can move on, but be damned if I did. It’s the principle of the matter, everybody I loved, be it temporary or not, died. What was the Christian rule for getting into hell? The seven deadly sins? Ironic, I only know them because of Fullmetal Alchemist, but I guess it’s the same concept.
Gluttony, I hope I was never accused of being gluttonous, because no matter it Shinto, God, or whatever the ******** else these people come up with, I am not going to accept that. Nor will I accept sloth, I may have been a tad lazy at times, but everything got done on time, that’s what is important if you ask me. Pride – I can accept that, but I’m not going to be happy about it. Okay, I was proud whenever I came out on top (especially with Makkura), but hell, what human being isn’t? Let’s see… what were the others? Hmm, well, I suppose I could be accused of envy too, I envied people who had more money then me, although I know they were on the verge of murdering me when I got a date with Makkura. Sucks for them really… Now greed is the first of these sins I really think I have a bit more then I should, I’ll admit, I love money. My female relatives, a ton of material possessions, Makkura, and straight-up yen are all I could really ask for in life. Lust… heh, yeah: guilty as charged.
Wrath.
Well, I suppose Makkura’s father could answer that better then I could. You see, he’s the b*****d who killed Makkura, beat him to death to be specific. Now, one could say that I might have killed him, sent the body out to see, and casually went on with my life. Well, one would be telling the truth… what can I say? The lawyers ******** up their jobs and didn’t get him locked up with the ***** and child killers, so I sent him out to live with sharks, you can’t really blame me.
Okay, so I guess I am sinful… but what can you do? I’m not nearly as sinful as most people, so I don’t see why I should go to hell. It’s probably full anyway; I mean, come on… think of all the government officials who have died. Filled. To. Capacity.
Hmm, well then again, since when have the Christians ever been right? They think that there were two people who just appeared on Earth and started mankind. That is just so improbable, especially after Darwin and all that, that I don’t see why anything else they say should be right.
Let’s see here, maybe I’m just on the waiting line for reincarnation, checking my karma stats or something. Or is it dharma? I don’t know exactly, it’s one of those things that calculate my good deeds and appreciation for life, something like that anyway. I guess I appreciated life… well, no, I might have committed suicide subconsciously, but up until then, life rocked. As for my good deeds, well… you know how the human race is; I’d say I’m average. I’m not a saint, but I’m not Reagan, so give me something, will you? Wonder what I’d get reincarnated as… if it’s done on that basis… I’ll probably get reincarnated into a human being of a lower class or something… or maybe some endangered species.
Or maybe it’s like one of those other religions that think you’ll get reincarnated into your “inner creature” or something like that… My inner creature, eh? What do you think? I read something about spiritual people, werewolves and s**t like that, who think we all have a “were” creature, hidden in our disbelieving spirits, waiting to be unlocked.
My inner creature… I don’t know, maybe something like an alligator… or a ferret. A ferret might be cool… or a panther, or a crow. I could accept any of those. Or some sort of giant vicious man-eating creature, that would be the best.
By saying that, I reckon I just lowered my chances of getting anything cool, so now I am probably doomed to a lifetime as an antelope or something. Something doomed to be eaten, what a sucky life I’m going to leave.
I don’t know, the entire concept seems stupid. What is the point of reincarnation if I’m not even going to remember everything I’ve done in all my previous lives; I mean, I could have been one of those Chinese Emperors with a hundred men and women in my harem and fifteen wives while I was at it. I’d like to know about these things.
Well… maybe I’ll come back as a ghost. That would the best ever, in the world of all things ever, because… I could drop anvils on my enemies. Pure and simple, I would come back to do nothing but drop anvils on those I hate.
Unless I was one of those sissy ghosts who couldn’t pick anything up, then I guess I’ll be stuck scaring the s**t out of government officials during important speeches. Or maybe I would go haunt schools or something; I don’t know… being dead is going to get boring after a while, no matter what I do.
I mean, think about it, I could be sitting their in hell getting tortured with gruesome images and sharp-pointy things in some flaming death hole, but it will still get a bit old sooner or later (actually, if Makku was the one with these point objects, I might make a few centuries into it without getting bored).
Oh, is kinkiness a sin… I think it might be, or at least a more severe degree of lust. Ah to hell with it (yes, I realize the irony in saying that), I might as well just presume I’m doomed to some semi-horrible, but not absolutely horrible, reality for the rest of my afterlife, and there is nothing on this Earth that can change that. You win some, you lose some, and at least I didn’t die a virgin.
Hmm, I wonder if afterlife ponderings can affect where you end up, because if they do… I’m more screwed then I was before. How long have I been here? Last time I saw one of those random and useless flashes, one of my friends was at his grandchild’s birth… Kami, it must have been fifty or sixty years since I died.
… Okay, I think all my friends are dead now, what the hell am I meant to do to pass the time now? Where the hell are they? Aren’t they going to be stuck somewhere here too, or am I just special?
…
…
…
Kami, I’m bored. Oh look, another random flash… of my life? What the hell is this? Am I going to get my life flashed before my eyes when I am dead?
Guess so. Oh well, why not… good times, good times… Is that really the most appropriate thing to show, I mean, that was one of the best times of my life, but not really… I dunno, PG-13.
A bright light… aren’t we meant to see those when we die too? Ah well, let’s just see what happens…
but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.
