Towards Hell

I woke up. Quite suddenly, instantly returning to a state of full consciousness. As if the years that had separated me from my last blink had been merely a failed attempt at sleep.

Consciousness went hand in hand with full awareness. When a person wakes up, they automatically ask themselves where they are, what they are doing there, and what awaits them. Only then, after sorting through all the information, are they ready to act. I was ready from the moment the thin curtains of my eyelids, no longer serving their purpose, lifted, crumbled partially, and fell to the bottom of the coffin.

Darkness surrounded me. For a moment, I lay still, preparing to make my first move in so long. My body was a log that had long since lost its elasticity and resilience. While I couldn't speak of fear, I felt a kind of anxiety before moving my hand. Were my muscles, frozen in deathly stillness, eaten away by the merciless worms that crawled in the darkest recesses of the human being, ready to serve me again?

The darkness seemed limitless. Before I moved, I didn't know if I was five centimeters from its edge or perhaps half a meter. The edge of darkness for me was the undefined lid of a coffin. I knew it hung above me, and on it rested tons of sand, and above them... life...

Busy insects, oblivious to my presence, circled my face, devoted to their endless duties, crawling, unaware of the humiliation of existing on the periphery of life, at the musty end of the food chain. But this is a purely human perspective – based on the concept of dignity, freedom, and the splendor of life. On the comfortable, optimistic illusion of life on the surface, cut off from everything deep within, hidden, repulsive with the stench of shocking naturalism.

The worms that roamed my body were devoid of illusions. I felt them burrow into my ears, crawl across the roof of my mouth, their short legs scurrying across the dead skin covering my motionless hands—if I even had them anymore.

I was no longer disgusted. I lay still, gathering my strength. I felt no terror, far from panic, even though I knew perfectly well where I was. But that was all I knew then. My world, with all its knowledge and associations, with memories bleeding from the sun and joyful laughter, all enclosed in a wooden box, in the cold earth. This world teemed with a different life than the one I remembered. But instinctively, I seemed to realize that I was now only part of this world, among friends feeding on my remains. That was all that remained of me, I knew it from the first second of waking. This was all I had at my disposal; I was defective, I was repulsive, I lived again in the incomprehensible madness of nature. I could no longer have desires. For a split second, I felt relief. Had liberation only now come? Was this paradise?

I felt the movement of an earthworm, slithering leisurely across the lower edge of my eye. I could no longer despise it. Her subterranean existence, devoid of light and hope, didn't disgust me. How did it differ from my current situation?

So who was I now...?

This question didn't occur to me until later, but it was the greatest frustration of my new incarnation. It haunted me, just as the disgust at my new form haunted me.

Only among the worms did I feel good.

But the time had come to escape the coffin. Lying there could drive a mortal to madness. The claustrophobic atmosphere, the proximity of death, and perhaps even more so, the loneliness and awareness of awaiting a slow and agonizing demise.

I didn't feel it. All I remember was a sense of mild irritation and surprise. Could this be the next stage of life? Does everyone wake up one day or one night (inside a coffin, it doesn't really matter) to exist as a living corpse, a freak of nature, for centuries in the darkness, in the company of various insects, spiders, and other cursed and accursed creatures? Perhaps this is what believers call purgatory? Or perhaps hell.

Yes, that was the only time I felt what in life is called a cold sweat. But the state didn't last long. The decision to take action proved to be an effective antidote.

My lack of fear can also be explained differently. A person who has already died no longer fears the threat to their own life. Because they are dead. They have a greater distance from their death, perhaps a bit cynical. They don't truly believe in it—after all, returning to life is reason enough to doubt what they once believed. I only noticed this pattern later. That's how I explain it to myself now—the fact that I felt no fear when people hunted me like a wild animal. Perhaps I consoled myself with the fact that they were far more terrified. In a way, I fed on their fear. The lack of fear after waking up could also be explained by the detachment that a first death teaches you.

Besides, I never believed in hell.

Until I reached the surface...

I moved my hand. The darkness seemed to tremble as my brain, which I still hoped for, sent a signal to my muscles.

My first attempt, however, was unsuccessful. Then I doubted whether I really still had my hand. However, I drew strength and faith from a source unknown to me (if you can even talk about faith six feet underground, in the cursed earth saturated with death).

I concentrated for a long time before my second attempt. Now I see that it was probably too long. But I postponed another confrontation with my own body for fear of failure. I didn't know what I would do if it turned out I couldn't control any part of my body.

I didn't yet know how I would rid myself of the earth piled above me, how I would lift the coffin lid under its weight. I tried to push that obvious question away from me, keeping it at bay for as long as possible. I even partially succeeded.

I had no idea how long I'd remained dead. It could have been days, then the hope for my body's resurrection was quite real. I could also have been dead for years, I could have been nothing but an inert mass, incapable of anything, left to wait for the Apocalypse to come. And it could have been a very long time. The only consolation seemed to be the fact that I felt okay, basically. I didn't feel anything, but that meant I wasn't in pain. Only later did I realize I couldn't feel anything at all. I was no longer cold, nor did I feel the pain of someone slashing at my face with a cleaver. Well, that had its advantages and disadvantages.

I remember a thought that amused me as I gathered my strength for another attempt to stimulate my muscles. I thought I was in no hurry—I had plenty of time. Luckily, I didn't have to breathe...

In this almost decadent mood, I decided to make another attempt at animating my hand.

I moved it.

I felt my fingers gently lift, the muscles flex.

It's hard to express my joy at this realization. It gave me the enthusiasm to continue trying to reanimate more and more parts of the dead body.

I succeeded. Sometimes on the first try, sometimes on the fourth. But overall, I could say that for a corpse, I was quite capable. The only pain I felt was the memory of myself, of my first life. I was renowned as the epitome of good form, the pinnacle of physical fitness. Now I had to come to terms with my own pathetic body. Reconcile my mental agility with my terrible, repulsive appearance – the image of a decomposition process halted at an inopportune moment.

However, it took a long time before I felt more or less in control of my body. I strained every muscle, forcing it to exert itself thousands of times, before I concluded that eternity couldn't be wasted on earthworms.

Now I was to emerge from the soil where I had spent an indeterminate amount of time. Driven by some unknown force, likely the one that had brought me back to life, I yearned to stand on the ground once again under my own power. But I no longer felt human. I didn't even know what I was supposed to feel like. During the few hours I lay inside the coffin (it's really hard to keep track of time after death), thoughts swirled ever faster in my head. They accelerated with every minute spent in this death trap during my new life. The original peace began to transform into increasing irritation and existential uncertainty. And the greatest mystery seemed to be what awaited me outside. Should I return to life? How? Or perhaps the time had come for something I'd never believed in—perhaps I'd lived to see the Apocalypse. What if, by some malicious whim of nature, I had returned, to haunt children at night as a monster...? Perhaps I was the new Jason or Freddie. The thought seemed even amusing. However, I felt increasingly uncertain about my situation, and mentally I was beginning to suffocate inside the box where, according to the original plan, I was supposed to spend all eternity.

But it was still mostly curiosity about the world. Disappointment, and then anger, would only arise at the top.

Fortunately, I had enough room to bend my elbows and position them perpendicular to the bottom of the coffin. This was the only way to balance the lid.

So I braced myself and positioned my hands as the two levers that would free me from this increasingly irritating place.

I began to push. For the first few seconds, the lid of my sarcophagus didn't budge. For the next few seconds, neither did it.

I momentarily lost my strength. All I could hear was a deep, rasping sound emanating from my worm-eaten core. I felt tired, but it wasn't related to any muscle pain. It manifested itself more as a lack of strength.

I was surprised by how little time had passed since my first attempt, in which I had poured all my cadaverous energy into being fully strong again. I hadn't realized then what inhuman power was stored in these remains, in this unspecified body that would now serve me.

I made my second attempt almost immediately. The waiting and uncertainty became unbearable.

This time I rolled onto my stomach, which was nearly impossible in the cramped coffin, especially since I had been a fairly well-built man in life. It took me a long time to overcome my own body's resistance, to roll onto my side, and then onto my stomach again. "Why does it all have to take so damn long," I blurted out into the darkness. And then, for the first time, I heard my new voice. Before, I hadn't even considered its sound, hadn't even considered whether I was still capable of uttering anything resembling human speech. "How many more mundane things will surprise me in the next eternity...?" I thought. The voice that echoed through the rotten coffin boards seemed as rotten as they were. While the individual words were distinguishable, the overall sound seemed quite understandable. However, at first, the voice I heard seemed to be a mixture of drunken gibberish and the sounds of someone with sand in their mouth. Added to all this was a sharp, rasping sound, likely related to the damage to my larynx. "What am I now..." I thought again, my anxiety mounting. Instinctively, I remembered myself as I had been before death. A tall, well-built man with a boyish smile and a thick mane of dark hair. However, the premonition that my body was highly likely to degenerate and deform was becoming increasingly stronger, on the one hand stripping me of what I had previously called faith, and on the other, giving me the strength to confront my second life with the reality waiting for me somewhere above...

I fell silent, no longer wanting to listen to the corpse's rattling. I braced myself with my hands and feet, and pressed my back against the rotting coffin lid. The wood turned out to be in decent condition. At first, it seemed an insurmountable problem. Only after a while did I discover a glimmer of hope in it—a chance that my stay underground couldn't be that long. Perhaps, then, I hadn't lost so much. Perhaps I truly was destined to return among the living—perhaps friends, family—everything I had left behind would be mine to regain. Illusions filled my mind.

They laid me under an old birch tree—I remembered that. So perhaps, when I cross the layer of earth that separates me from life, I will see a blue sky above me—just like the day I died. I will see green leaves stirred by the spring wind, dancing in the cool, pre-spring air. I will smell the flowers, the orgy of awakening life. Perhaps, along with the entire world, I, too, was meant to return from the dead. Maybe I hadn't died at all. It was just a mistake that cut me off for a moment from the springtime lushness of the grass. But in reality, the sun still shines on the earth where I rest, and you can hear the birds on a lazy Sunday morning. People sit in the park nearby, talking. Children's laughter fills the air—fresh and cool, full of oxygen and color. Strangers passersby exchange joyful glances, strangers chat in cafes, and nearby, a couple makes love by an open window. All this under the same sky under which I rest.

If, in the hopeless situation I seemed to be in, it was possible to still rekindle hope, then that was exactly what I felt in the darkness.

Looking back, it seems incredible how little it takes to awaken an illusion in a person—a vague outline of chance, to which they cling like a piece of wood in a raging sea, only to sink with it once again. And conversely, what a beast a human being becomes when hope is completely gone.

Yet two meters underground, with the feeling of humanity returning to my parched veins, I couldn't afford to distance myself from myself—from my desires and hopes. I was human again—a plaything of my passions, a leaf in the wind of my own illusions and aspirations. Now I see how pathetic humanity itself is.

In a sudden, naive surge of energy, I braced myself and pressed my back against the coffin lid. Gradually, I increased the pressure, and with it, the pressure on my back increased. But I thought I felt movement above me.

I gritted my teeth and, with all the energy I could muster, not yet knowing how great it actually was, I pressed my back against the rotten wood.

Suddenly I heard a rustling. I felt sand, damp soil seeping into my cramped reality through the growing gaps between the coffin and its lid. The lid was lifting; my efforts were having an effect.

My strength, however, was running low again. I collapsed onto the floor, wheezing and spitting out my guts. Or maybe it just seemed that way. In any case, I was dead tired, if I can even use that cliché adjective anymore. A dull thud made me realize that the coffin lid had fallen right behind me, pushing a considerable amount of soil in front of it. It was getting tight. I couldn't stay like that. Now I had no choice. If I ever had one. A person waking up inside a coffin, after an indefinite eternal rest, has no choice. Nor can they move, because no forces can pull them from the underground. Unless, of course, they're no longer human. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

More seconds of helpless lying there. No energy, but full of satisfaction. I managed to move that damn lid, and everything pointed to a real chance of reaching the surface. Damp sand filled the surrounding area, and the worms embedded in the black cemetery earth spilled out like grain, attacking my face. This forced me to make another effort to shift onto my back. Worms were worms, but the discomfort of my new incarnation was slowly beginning to weigh on me.

It took me a few moments to rid myself of the bothersome insects, including spitting them out and removing them from my eyes and ears. It was incredible how many worms were embedded in every kilogram of sand. Especially in the cemetery, the fauna seemed exceptionally abundant.

It was time for another attempt. The lid had fallen, but I could feel with my fingers that it no longer fit as tightly as before, no longer covering the coffin the way the funeral home workers had probably done that autumn day. Lifting it now required only a tiny bit of force, far less than the force I needed to dislodge the wood from its original position.

Running my fingers over the coffin's surface, I became increasingly convinced of its good condition – which only further convinced me to fight. I was beginning to realize that the strength I possessed wasn't typical of even an athletic man in his prime. There was something more to it, and I wanted to find out what it was as quickly as possible.

This time, I intended to try it on my back. I braced myself again and, with one powerful push, attacked the heavy lid.

It gave way immediately. An even stronger stream of sand began to force its way into the confined space provided by the coffin. The feeling of being buried alive was unpleasant, even for a corpse.

So I pushed harder. The lid rose, tilting and then positioning itself vertically against the floor. More and more sand followed this "constructed" battering ram, steadily finding every empty cubic centimeter, burying me once again in the cold soil.

But the lid was clearing a path to the surface. I could feel every muscle pulsing mercilessly beneath my skin, but I couldn't stop my assault any longer. I felt that fresh, clean, living air was now within reach.

Sand covered my face, my mouth full of moist lumps and moving, disoriented vermin. I began to rise in the coffin, to my feet, even as the ceiling collapsed around me.

But the resistance was diminishing. Good, I thought, my muscles no longer had the strength to fight; they would give out at any moment. I teetered on the edge of endurance, driven only by iron determination, pushed from the bottom by the terrifying prospect of spending eternity beneath the cold blanket of cemetery sand.

I felt I wouldn't move even a millimeter upward. I stopped, and in my position, that meant returning to my starting position and the loss of all illusions. Forever. My legs were stuck in the freshly turned earth, immobile. My arms were weakening with each passing second, my back was giving out. I felt myself starting to shake. Despite all the effort and the distance I'd covered, the surface seemed unreachable. Whether it was centimeters or a meter and a half of black sand. The distance was insurmountable, I felt myself starting to tremble. My legs buckled at the knees, my arms gave way at the joints. I only hoped that the earth, which was about to fall on me with double the force, wouldn't break my neck and take back the life I'd just sacrificed. Or maybe that would be better…

I was falling. I was sinking into a state of physical and mental stupor. My muscles ignored the commands my brain desperately screamed. Everywhere, only sand. Millions of weightless grains, compressed into a sinister mass, covering my resurrected body. But worse than the grinding sand in my mouth was the bitterness of defeat, forcing me back underground, where I clearly belonged. Fighting the windmills of death was destined to be nothing but a corpse's antics.

Until the pale blackness of night enveloped me in a blinding light.

For a moment, I saw nothing. I felt only heavy, cold drops running down my face. I knew I was already on the surface. The rain washed the damp clods of earth from my body. It occurred to me that it had been raining for a long time—the earth I had just broken through was soft and wetter to a depth of over a meter. Only now did I connect the dots; previously, I had been unable to focus on anything but my own inhuman effort. I realized that if it weren't for the rain, I might never have broken through the hard, packed soil. After all, that was why she was beaten so badly – ​​so that the dead would never be able to return to the living.

Above me, I felt the roar of falling water from the sky. I turned my face skyward, never opening my eyes again. I wanted to feel, to feel once again as a human being, saving visual stimuli for dessert. Cold droplets flowed down my body, and the roar of the downpour grew with each passing moment into the roar of a waterfall, like the wrath of God descending from the sky onto the apocalyptic earth.

It seemed to me that I could now hear every sound, the footsteps of every spider slinking through the night, every distant sigh, the rustle of individual leaves in the nearby trees. I found myself in a state of true intoxication—drunk on my success, on my return. Standing in my own grave, my hands and face raised to the black sky, I felt chosen—one for eternity, given a chance, a true chance to break free from the unshakable shackles of eternity. For those deliciously long seconds after escaping my own grave, I was even inclined to believe.

My body, bathed in the cold, heavy rain of that as yet undefined season, was being cleansed by the touch of every drop of water. The filth and humiliation in which I had spent a fraction of eternity now flowed from me and seeped back into the black, primeval soil. You failed to control me, I thought. It's funny how quickly one forgets humility...

I felt my skin come alive. Every square centimeter of frozen tissue now swelled and swelled—with life. My fingernails, unnaturally long due to postmortem growth, now took on vitality and a new elasticity. The same hair, also longer than at the time of my first death—long, matted tufts, now cleansed of remnants of earth and vermin by the revitalizing, crystal-clear liquid.

I felt as if I were floating. My body was gaining elasticity; the water seemed to penetrate my muscles, joints, and dried-out veins. It flowed down my throat, spreading through my recently dead body, reanimating it with its energy, restoring strength, faith, and hope.

I was certain, one might say I truly believed, that I was a living person again. With one foot still in the grave, buried knee-deep in death-saturated soil, I felt euphoria—a state of happiness I had brought upon myself, inciting a spiral of naiveté in my newly revived mind.

And yet, no one had promised me anything. I had not been deceived, I had not been cheated.

I had been given only hope.