Introduction to hell

[NaNoWriMo Day 10]

[Warning: This is poorly written and completely unedited. I just want to get a novel written soon.]

It was dark everywhere. Raul was cold. He rubbed his palms against his arms to stay warm. It didn't help. He was shivering violently, verbalizing the shivers.

"Dai," asked a little girl who he handn't noticed before. "Dai, did it hurt to die? Does it hurt when you are about to die? Would you have cried because of the pain, if you could have?" she asked him. He hadn't noticed, but she was bawling -- her cheeks were red, her eyes drenched in tears, her hair loose and messy. She had been crying for a long time.

"It's okay, it's okay, everything will be fine. Nothing will happen," he tried comforting her. Wait, what did she mean when she asked how dying felt like? He looked around. This wasn't any place he had been to before. There was a thick grey fog everywhere -- he could barely see his feet, and he didn't know what he was standing on.

"Oh shit shit shit, bad dream, bad dream. Have to wake up, have to wake up, this is not real, this is not real," Raul told himself. He had moved away from the girl: she was sitting on the ground, playing with large blocks, and still sobbing loudly. "You left without telling anyone, everyone was crying so much. Did you know you were going to die? How did it feel to die," she asked again.

Raul couldn't control. He burst into tears. Just a dream, just a dream, he kept reminded himself, while sobbing. He stopped to breathe in a lungful of air, and sobbed louder. He wiped his nose with his right arm, and covered his face between his hands and wept. This is just a dream, this is just a very bad dream, I am going to wake anytime now, he reminded himself, as he kept crying. He sat down. The ground was soft and cool, like a thick carpet of just-tried moss. He paused. He swallowed. He looked around. It was dark and cold, and the girl was gone now. He looked at the sky, and screamed, till his voice broke. He was tired. He kept crying.

He got thirsty. He needed water. He had to go somewhere. Even if he was dead -- he reminded this was a dream, he should try waking himself up -- he would still need water. He got up, and closed his eyes. He spun around till he got dizzy. He started walking as straight as he could, while keeping his eyes shut. I don't want to make a choice, he thought. I didn't choose to come hair, I wasn't asked. I won't choose anything logically, I won't be responsible for anything. This is not my world. I don't belong here. They may have brought me, but I won't comply. I will fight, until I disappear for good, he thought. Even if this is a dream, he told himself, I am going to win. He kept walking, eyes closed.

He came across a shallow stream of pitch-black liquid. He carefully touched it -- it felt like water; and tasted it -- it tasted like water. He scooped in a few handfuls, and drank. The water was cold, but not more than the air. He crossed the stream, maintaning the straight path he had been walking. His pants and shoes had dried quite fast, he noticed. That's because I'm in a bad dream and nothing matters, he reminded himself. The thought didn't particularly help with the cold. He kept walking.

I'm not dead, he told himself. I can't be. The last thing he remembered was coming back home drunk from the meeting. He must have gone to bed and slept. He couldn't be dead. Even if he were dead, it would be a strange place to be in, he considered. Why would the human mind waste so much energy to create such imagery and hallucinations when it should be using up energy in more important tasks, he asked himself. Dying is swift, not this bullshit, he told himself. But what if, a different part of his brain asked, I'm actually dying, and these are deathbed delusions of a pre-mortem mind. Like Mullohand Drive, but more boring.

More boring. More boring. Raul thought for a bit. If someone were dying, their dreams would in fact be simple and boring. The brain is trying to preserve its sanity, hoping for a miracle to revive itself, so it's distracting the conscious with these images. Since it can't afford a full-color bollywood song-and-dance drama with interesting storyline, it's cheaping out by presenting a low-resolution environment. Like this one. Where everything is black and grey, and nothing interesting is happening. Because my body doesn't have the energy or blood or whatever to be able to generate such complex thoughts. Shit, shit, shit, Raul thought. I really hope I'm not dying. I'm not ready to die yet.

He stopped short. So what if he _were_ dying. He had had a good, not unhappy life. He hadn't had a wife or a child, but he hadn't really wanted to anyway. Childhood had been good, college and later years in America had been great, and the years back in Nepal hadn't been terrible. It was unfortunate he was just starting a new life and a new career, but they hadn't been part of the plan anyway. Suddenly Raul felt his heart weighed down by a heave stone. His parents. And siblings. And extended family. They would lose it. They had just only started counting on him again, and it would be all for nothing. Shit, shit shit, he thought to himself, I really hope it doesn't look like suicide or something stupid. Dying because of alcohol poisoning or related choking would be embarrassing, but it would absolutely kill his parents.

"Huh," Raul told himself, "If this is all a dream, and I somehow make it out alive, I'm going to make sure my death is going to be a respectable one." He would rather become a martyr, or even die in a plane crash or car crash, rather than die a pathetic loser's death. Area man chokes up on his own godfucking drunk dammit vomit, dies, neighbors notice after thirteen days of the smell of rotting flesh. That would be bad. Somehow, the fear that he was dead had gone away from Raul, to be replaced by the fear of having died in an embarrassing manner.

"HEYY! HEYYY!" shouted Raul, to no one. He turned around, and shouted again. He looked at the sky, and shouted a few times at it. If the gods or demigods show up, he told himself, readying, I'm going to punch them; fight them. He considered that for a moment. They'd have tridents and bolts of light and what not: he'd be an inconsequential bacterium preparing for a spar against an incoming nuclear missile. No, I'm going to put up a fight, he thought. If one of those tiny dots of ants can cause pain before they die, he could surely put on a fair game. It didn't matter if he'd hurt them or not, he wouldn't give in to the fact that he'd just given up to those beings who had him killed for no good reason. Ohhh, he thought to himself, they are going to be so sorry for the time and moment and space they decided my time was up, he told himself, his spirits suddenly rising.