Published 4/27/25
https://bloodestate.substack.com/p/burnt
A hot summer breeze, teasing and exciting her daily walk. Rust spills and abounds, a cacophony beneath the brutal sun. Staring at the ground, the sun beating heavy, as thoughts race. Absent-mindedly she starts crossing the street. There are plenty of things to do but very little time.
A to-do list longer than her arm, she is a captive of the daylight, attempting to assuage her hunger for brilliance. Has such a time already passed? Mozart started as a child, her teens and twenties have come and gone. Her brain lies heavy, caught between burnout and chronic fatigue as well as reminders of inadequacy. Attempts at mindfulness only go so far, accepting one’s self just gets harder and harder as one gets older.
She made it halfway across the road when it hit her. A holy realization she’d chased for so long. The endless pursuit led to no dream, no escape, no ephemeral stream. There couldn’t be heaven as the world we live in is so hellish. Each day is wasted with pursuit of material aims hindering liberation, but this realization was cut short with the screeching noise of a truck’s brakes failing as it turned the corner, following a collision course into her frail body.
———
The truck’s sole cargo was flowers, and the last thing she saw before fading away was a glimpse of dozens of roses flying in the air, covering her body as she lay there unconscious. The noises of the machinery that rendered her incapable swelled as her consciousness bled, and faded as she slipped away.
Now she stands in front of a door.
Looking through the doorway, she saw into many expansive rooms, with a multitude of doors, each guarded by a different doorman. The ones closest to her eyes she skeptically. “Are you sure you’re dead? You only look half dead.” “Dead?” she thought, What a concept. Life on Mars is a death in its own; arguably, any isolation is a death. Pushing a rock up the hill is death. Everything and nothing is death, so how can I accept that this is death? “I’m not,” she murmured, out of both disbelief and necessity. “You must be there,” the first doorman said. Her vision improved slightly, and she took in the massive figure that stood between her and the door. Not only was he hugely built, she then realized the figure in front of her resembled a tree more than a human, and was tethered to the door.
If you say so, she said, to the dismay of the doorman. The doorman replied, saying, “There are two choices you can make. You can either try your luck down my corridor and have the potential to reach endless bliss, or you can win your life back. If you fail, you get sent to a life of pain and agony, but if you choose not to attempt, you will be sent betwixt heaven and hell, to a painfully medium place. Nothing good happens there, but also nothing extraordinarily bad. Of the three, it is somehow less fo a life. Also I must warn you, there are two dozen doors after the one I guard, and each gets more difficult than the other. If you fail to pass through one of them you will either be sent to purgatory or be trapped here as a stone statue, repurposed, and serving as a guard against future attempts.“
Her hubris and humanity dictated her answer. To pass through the doors seemed extraordinary but how could she not imagine the possibility of existing as an exception? “I’ll do it,“ matter of factly, “how does one pass through the doors?”
The features of his face hardened, then loosened, and shifted. “You are free to pass through mine now, I am simply the gatekeeper and am meant to give you the option. But you must be patient and wise on your journey. “
—-
She passes through.
—
The following room was a radiant white, so glorious that all that remained as a reminder of the room she passed through before was the shape of the door. The new room was empty, and there was no doorman. Over the door in a multitude of dialects were enscribed leering figures who seemed to question the brave.” Are you sure? There is no going back after this.” Upon closer examination of the room, she saw a notebook. On it there was a table half filled out. It was titled ”Why should you live,” and had categories open for hobbies, people, goals, and failures to be fixed. She started filling it out and then saw the door was starting to close. She ran and barely slid through the doorway before it closed.
The next room had a giant chess set. She finished filling out the journal and then dropped it, assuming the position of the queen. Appealing to the universe or any greater power is pointless, and serves only to muddy the process. The battle must be fought more directly, and in taking the Queen’s mantle, It occurred to her that this journey was most likely modeled after her person – she was a shy and humble person who never would have accepted such a role in her previous life. And while the pathway to success through appealing through the notebook was questionable at best, the alternative seemed guaranteed. The game was partially in play already, the kingside bishop was overextended and the king itself was cornered; it was mate in one, by virtue of lack of escape. She boldly lept to victory, resulting in subtle, haunting fanfare. This can’t be that hard, she thought, as she passed through the door to the other room.
The other room was outside, somehow, but limbo never makes any sense anyway. It was a bus stop, and she waited patiently for the next bus to come. She waited hours, as bus after bus drove by, passing her seemingly invisible corpse. Every time she asked when the bus was coming, the predictive timer went up. It had started at 5 minutes and was now at an hour. It was seemingly impossible not to ask, as it seemed as if the bus would never arrive. Everything will continue without you, and the means of deliverance slip through your grasp if pursued through ordinary means. Growing impatient, she found a button that requested a bus to stop. Instantly, she was transported to the next room. Patience is a virtue, but we must also always stay alert, rather than blindly subjecting ourselves to endless patience.
The next room was the most visually surprising of the rooms thus far. As she entered it, she realized quickly there was no gravity in the room, and she quickly floated to the top, like a newly filled-up balloon. How different from her former life. The walls were covered in different styles of trim work, starting in more ancient Greco-Roman styles, and developing into the soft dark wood that characterizes modern minimalism. As she floated across the ceiling, she noticed the door was on the ground, seemingly out of reach due to her gravitational pull. Her body was detached from the current struggle, and the room contained many items as well, some useless and out of reach, and some of seemingly magnificent purpose. How helpful or necessary a tool anything could be, however, is strange to consider when there is no conduit for liberation other than one’s self. The room was so disorienting, and all logic ceased to exist, as she struggled to focus on the end goal. There was a large piece of black charcoal that she assumed she could use to propel herself, without any reason to think so. After a slight hiccup with flame, almost resulting in grave error, she realized that the hardest part of this room would be to propel herself towards the door without getting stuck in midair limbo, as that would maroon her already lost body. Fastening the charcoal to the ceiling and a rope, she attempted to make her way to the door. It occurred more easily than expected, but the door was not open.
She saw now that it said, “To pass, you must trust, and surrender.” Realization hit, and she decided to hang herself. Even though it was zero gravity, the rope around her neck started to deprive her of oxygen. Loud machinery noises began to swell in the room, as her hearing started to fade away and her body began to twitch. “You pass,” a loud voice boomed, and with a shock, she fell to the floor, seizing, ripping the rope from around her neck. The floor opened and swallowed her carcass.
The next rooms consisted of similar paradox, disillusionment, and confusion, although to a lesser extent. With each one, she longed to live less and less, but feared the pain of being eternally condemned.
One was a series of mirrors, with false reflections, making it impossible to determine when you are going. She struggled here for days before finally resorting to a childish genocide of destruction, resulting in her liberation.
She approached the final room.
Whereas the other rooms had sported unique and complex, otherworldly nature, this final room consisted of blank white walls, so blank you quickly found yourself getting lost in the space. And whereas the others had lacked doormen for the most part, here she was kept company by another figure, a short, brutish, stump of a man, who looked as mean as he did ugly. The only item left in the room was a gun with one bullet. “It’s your choice,” he said, and a cartoonish bullseye that dotted his face manifested itself in her eyes. “You can shoot yourself or shoot me, but you need to pass through this door to reach your deliverance.” He went on, “If you choose to shoot me, your soul is not ready for what is next; you must shoot yourself to prove that. However, if you shoot yourself, you have no way of passing through the door. You have five minutes to decide what to do.”
“I have to do both,” she quickly thought. She ran toward the doorman, who asked if she had decided. “Yes, open the door and I shall make my choice.” He obliged, and she quickly put her finger to the trigger, the gun to her head, and her head to his; simultaneously blowing both of their brains out.
Everything went black.
She awoke in a room where an old man with a beard so long it seemed far too easy to trip over, and quite hazardous, was talking to her.
“You have made it,” he muttered, “but where will you go now?”
“Home,” she said quietly and elegantly, although she was mentally tormented.
“Are you sure,” he pressed, and she returned an answer of approval.
“I will send you back,” he said, “but there’s something you should know.
This is heaven, and you made it here, but you were not coming from the real world. The hell you died in is the only purgatory that exists. This was to test you, as you were eligible for parole, and a place away from the flames, but it seems you are not ready yet, as only a hellish creature would choose to go back to that world.”
She started to protest, but he heard none of it, and finished saying, “I wish you luck the next time around, I shall now send you back.”
She awoke in the street, with the taste of burnt asphalt on her tongue, remembering nothing of the encounter but feeling lucky to have survived the car accident. She was lucky, or so she thought, as she could now resume her life of monotonous misery. The bitter smell of roses and the prickling of a thousand thorns teased this realization, and she remembered the existence of her epiphany, but it escaped her now. The somber rush of life hit her, but it wasa facsimile. Relief rushed into her limbs, but was not fully realized as she struggled to remember. Liberated into the ultimate freedom of triumph of survival, she was trapped; she would never believe in heaven, for as long as she was in purgatory.