章 2: Afterlife X Garden
Chapter Two: Afterlife X Garden
An unknown amount of time went by, and Hudson reopened his eyes elsewhere.
'Hmm?'
The first thing he saw was a clear blue sky, and it seemed to be a cool afternoon.
Blinking as his vision cleared, he sat up and looked around him. He was disoriented, and his thoughts were disorganized.
'Bruh, did I just have a strange dream? I feel like I did,' he thought, but upon drinking in his surroundings, he added, 'Am I having a strange dream?'
For as far as he could see, there were purple flowers neatly arranged in concentric circles, with their height increasing the further out the circles went.
The ones at the forefront stood at about a foot, the next tier being almost 2 feet, and the ones at the end reaching an impressive 3 feet tall.
The view looked like something that required not only dedication but passion to maintain, and the colorful butterflies that flitted back and forth amongst them were the icing on the cake, making the view seem "complete."
These purple flowers were called irises. At least he believed so, having seen something similar to them in a romantic movie he once watched with his wife.
'...wife.' As that word echoed in the depths of his mind, all the memories that were a bit fuzzy started to resurface, floating to the top of his consciousness.
It didn't hurt physically, but all the joy and pain he had experienced, from the moment he first met her, he experienced them in the span of a few seconds.
He felt like his mind was on overload, about to explode.
Once he reached the final arc of his life, seeing the politician's wife... He had yet to see what she had done to him, but he already knew... Felt, in his non-existent bones, that something distasteful and negatively life-changing was about to take place.
Once he had watched his life up to his last breath, a lot of emotions threatened to erupt from deep within.
The turmoil simmering underneath his solemn exterior was something that threatened to scorch the world if allowed to erupt.
He had to put a lid on it all, he figured. He was dead now, that he was sure of. He was now in the afterlife and would be unable to meet his family again... If the afterlife was anything like humans and their religions believed it to be.
Even as he sat there, he could tell that he no longer existed as a human or possibly a physical entity.
He felt neither skin nor bones, neither lungs nor a heartbeat, or anything at all that he once had.
He had feelings and senses, but they were indescribable... Something that one trapped within the confines of a physical body would be unable to comprehend.
"Hey, you."
With a start, he shot to his feet and turned to face the source of the voice.
'Since when was there a tree here?!' he was internally shocked.
With his new perspective, his senses were no longer limited to his eyes. He could sense an entire sphere around him - which meant that he could see above, below, and behind himself.
There were no blind spots!
Or more like...
There should have been none!
Initially startled, the first conclusion that came to his mind was that the tree had been the one to speak to him, but he was thrown off guard again when the voice reached him for a second time...
"You shouldn't be here!"
...and it was not from the tree but from someone sitting on one of its branches.
There had been a man looking down at him the entire time, and his newfound "omniscience" hadn't picked up on them?
He simply noted it down that there was probably much to learn about his new situation. Maybe people were not included in its effects.
Still... How had he missed a whole tree? It had been right behind him the entire time, and he was sure he was able to, even in that moment, sense nearly a dozen kilometers in all directions.
Yet, the tree and the man on it seemed like a... Dead Zone.
He was looking right at them and could see them, but his other senses couldn't pick up on them like the way even in that moment he knew the position and actions of every single butterfly in the garden without looking at them or actively putting in effort to "watch" them.
As for the man looking down at him with a pair of baby blue eyes, Hudson felt genuine jealousy and envy in his heart as he observed his physique.
Chloe had given him the name "big bear" for a reason - he was not too inferior to all those insane bodybuilders people saw on TV or on the Internet, and so, although he never believed he had up to the best hundred thousand male physiques in the world, he was truly shocked to be outclassed to such a degree.
Most, no, all the physiques he had seen back when he was alive could not compare to this fellow sporting the white Roman robes and healthy cream skin!
"Kuh. Those numbskulls." The man began to mutter something in an irritated tone upon seeing Hudson slip into a daze again. "They can play their games on their own. Why involve me? Why disturb my peace?"
His voice broke Hudson out of said reverie, allowing him to regain his bearings and sought out his thoughts.
He figured he shouldn't be focusing on the wrong things. There was someone else here other than himself, and they seemed likely to have information - something he sorely lacked.
"Who are you?"
"Where am I?"
"What am I now? A spirit?"
"Most importantly, what's going to happen to me now? Will I take a boat to cross the yellow river or stand to have my sins judged? Or will I just drink some afterlife soup and "whoosh" my memories away before reincarnation?"
He fired questions at the figure like they were playing 101 questions.
The man in the tree knitted his auburn brows and said, "Roach, you will do well to not test my patience."
Hudson involuntarily took two steps back, a reflexive recoil to a palpable pressure the figure suddenly released upon him as he spoke.
He felt some fear, but deep down he felt... No, hoped that the man would see reason and help him out.
From the facts he knew of so far - the man's seemingly innate immunity to his omniscience and the manner in which he looked down on and addressed him - that this person could not be won't as simple as a soul that had been here longer than him.
At the very least, he was not human or mortal like him - if he ever was.
"Please..." He begged. "...Can you just help me out with some information?"
"I promise I'll be out of your hair soon. Even if I wanted to leave here, I wouldn't even know where to go."
"I don't even know where 'here' is."
The man in the tree remained silent, his frown deepening as he seemed to enter deep thought.
Hudson watched, with bated breath, as the man's facial expressions went through so many changes in a few breaths of time that they would be difficult to follow even in slow motion.
Finally, the man turned to look in a certain direction that Hudson's gaze followed but could see nothing but the endless garden.
Suddenly, he turned and looked down at Hudson with a grin that made alarm bells go off in his head.
"I suppose throwing a wrench or two in their plans would not be so bad," he said.
Before Chloe's beloved could process and figure out the meaning behind the man's words, he felt an overbearing force slam into him, sending him flying through the air.
Hudson cussed loudly...
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