Excerpt: Savoring Eternity

A lovely 26 year old soul arrived in the Midnight City, poofing into existence without warning. Her black, shining hair swooped perfectly around her shoulders and swung behind her back when she walked on a shallow layer of air, as if floating. All about her looked like destruction; this was not heaven. She wondered if this was because she committed suicide. The church always seemed to imply that there was a special hell just for those who committed suicide. But it was for her baby. She didn’t care if she got punished. Now she could be with her child forever and raise it as she wanted to. Though she hadn’t given a thought that maybe the afterlife wasn’t going to play by the same rules she thought it ought to play by. This wasn’t heaven after all. It wasn’t clouds OR fire that surrounded her, but what looked like an arrangement of a few houses that were of completely different design, with giant junk piles in between. She couldn’t remember her name, but she remembered shooting herself in the head. Everyone would be so upset at home. All those people. Oh God (if there was a God) what had she been thinking? She realized how stupid that was now, but she kept walking. Too late now. No time to argue.
It didn’t smell of anything here, but she could feel the cold. It wasn’t a breeze, and it wasn’t the temperature. It was such an internal cold. How odd, seeing as she’d asked to be cremated, shouldn’t she be warm? These thoughts clouded her head and she wished that her soul could look cleaner than it did. Her black hair was still shining as though she’d just combed it out with care but clots of blood were lining the side of her face where she had pulled the trigger to. She continued floating along the black dirt that resembled ashes—or a clear midnight sky full of stars...