The Pool Of Death

When the angel appeared in my bedroom night I shrieked, "No! Not again!" But there was no resisting. A vision was coming.

As always, I felt the exhilarating rush as we flew by the unseen colors of the universe. There's so much to share if only I could share! Untapped dreams. Rivers of life. Shores of imagination we've yet to reach. Then much more beyond even that. But who can make deaf ears listen or closed eyes see? So it comes through me and dies in a smelly back alley of abandonment.

When the angel stopped we floated above a vast pool whose end I could not see. How to turn my eyes away? I wondered. What benefit is truth?

As my eyes adjusted I could see figures under the water.

"Who are they?"

"Human souls."

"What's keeping them under water? They'll drown!"

"Free will. They keep themselves under."

Then I saw bodies float upwards, dead and drowned. "I don't understand! This is madness."

"You do understand: it is madness."

"Then I don't understand the madness. Why stay under water until you're dead?"

"Because they can until they can't."

"That's a tad myopic."

"We always enjoy your sarcasm."

Then one came to the surface alive. I heard her say, "They told me this was death but it is life. I can breathe! I'll never go under the water again. What stupidity!"

But those still under the water were moved to anger, grabbed her from below, and drowned her.

"How can anyone live?" I asked. "It's death either way!"

"Breathing is not death."

"It is in that cesspool!"

"That's a tad myopic. Those who refuse to repent, who falsely see a future holding their breath will eventually die off. In the end can only be those who choose to breathe."

"But everyone wants to live and breathe. This is just mass suicide. I can't stand to see this."

"From where we are we see it in inescapable perpetuity. They give each other hollow honors for the "glory" of breath-holding until death. They maniacally mock anyone who expresses a desire to breathe as "weak and traitorous". A culture of perversity has developed insisting life is death and death is life. Laws were even passed to declare breathing as "sinful". We watch only in broken-hearted agony."

"I've had enough. Can I go back now?"

On the flight back I much more understood my guilt. These angelic beings cannot disconnect from us even as we vainly try to disconnect from them. What torture we must provide! I barely noticed my arrival back in my bedroom when the angel spoke.

"You must be scared."

"What makes you say that?" I asked knowing full well it to be true.

"You're not breathing."