"Why do you think I'm cursed?"
"Well, if not, you wouldn't be in the Darkness right now." The voice's irritation grew.
"In what kind of Darkness?" I shot back, my patience thinning as well.
"Am I whispering to the wind? What a stupid creature!" The voice's frustration echoed. "Well, in the Darkness! What's not clear here - that Darkness, the Darkness! Are you completely dumb or just pretending? Don't you know what Darkness is?"
I knew about the Darkness, sure. It was the Border zone between the Abyss and the River of Oblivion. But no one had ever spoken of the Abyss as a real thing, because no one has ever crossed the Darkness and returned to share it. So, everyone considered the Darkness the worst creation.
If I'd died normally, I should have gone to the River, maybe crossed to the other side—unlikely, though. No celestial welcome committee awaited me.
Or perhaps I'd be absorbed by the River's water and send to the Purgatory as a punishment for my misdeeds for demons to torture me. But I didn't think I was that bad. At least not as I could remember.
Or I might have been just ignored and left leaving in the queue awaiting the verdict. Eternity in the unknown.
But Darkness? How had I ended up here? Because of a curse?
"Well, finally you started to think!" The voice's approval surprised me. "If my approval helps, enjoy it, I can do more and better. But I beg your dambness to vanish and finally Decide your own Fate!"
Decide my Fate? In the Darkness? That was new. I needed to understand everything first, then decide anything.
"So figure it out, I'm tired of watering the desert," the voice urged.
"How you wish me do this?! I've hardly known who I am, and what I was doing all my life. And now staying here? Decide my Fate? Do I even have one?" I knew I wasn't used to be angry, but that very moment I felt like one.
"Oh, Celestian Stars, what a stubborn creature! Attempting to help you is like trying to teach a phoenix to knit. Beg me for some help though!"
"Sure, sure, my honest plea is yours… Imagine me on my deep knees praying for a miracle to happen, so the Great Absolute might send you the enlightenment to share on my humble existence!"
"Miserable and pathetic, no pride or will power… what a garbage…"
Hah, hahahaha, he might have been joking?! These were the exact words suddenly popped-up in my mind that I remembered from my life within the monks, and the exact familiar unpleasant feeling was overflowing me.
"Understand how you died and where the curse came from. You didn't just drown in a knee-deep pond, did you?"
"Is that what I need to do right now?" I asked.
"Exactly! It's a hint, you fool. A hint!!! Your refusal to learn is like a scholar ignoring a celestial library."
"Oh, a hint! Let be it…"
"What do you remember before plunging into the Darkness? What happened while you were still alive? Last moments!"
"Last moments? Last moments…" It sounded truly logic and appropriate.
"Do you not remember what happened before you came here?"
The voice pressed once again, sounding more confused this time, even careful, than irritated as usual.
Hmmm, but what really led me to that icy waters I still felt on my imaginable fingers? And why did I wake up here?
"YOU REALLY DO NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING?"
*Thx for reading.