The dull glow of your computer (or phone) screen suddenly turns into a beacon of blinding white light. It burns so much, you can’t even tell if it’s hot or cold. All you know for sure is that in this moment, it burns. It burns so much. You shield your eyes in a desperate attempt to make it stop. It hurts so fucking bad.
Then, as suddenly as this agonizing glow was thrust upon you, it simmers down to a tolerable warmth. You know that warm, white light at the end of the tunnel they tell you about? You’re probably inside of it.
Yet you still keep your eyes covered for fear of what might befall you next.
“Be not afraid,”
A booming voice calls out. It is extremely loud, yet doesn’t pierce and sting your eardrums like it would’ve if you were alive.
“Open your eyes. Open your heart to the lord and his mercy shall be bestowed upon you,”
The disembodied voice calls again.
You reluctantly remove the nook of your arm from your face. The light no longer burns your eyes despite the fact that you are engulfed completely in it. In front of you lies a sort of mess of eyes and feathers and gold, trapped within an undersized and rusty prison (with bars and all.) An amazing mix of majestic and terrifying. You could try to comprehend what you are looking at, but it is of no use.
Feathers litter the cold floor beneath the creature. It lies still and lifeless. You wonder how long it has been trapped here.
Multitudes of eyes are dotted in unpredictable patterns embedded deep into the rings of polished gold. Contained within these multiple saturn-esque rings is an orb of pure light. And, if you squint your eyes just hard enough, you can spot the ends of it’s scraggly wings poking through the outer bounds of the orb. A large chain is weaved and tangled around and through the creature, attaching it to the bars of its prison.
“Free me.”
You didn’t spot a mouth on it- him? Her? And can’t comprehend how it could possibly be speaking to you. You decide to stop asking questions…. Free me?
Your eyes stray from the creature for a moment to observe the rest of your surroundings- if there even is any. You hadn’t seen it before, and perhaps it had materialized as you stood engulfed in the creature's beauty, but on the left side of the cage is a pedestal made of a dimmer light than the rest of the room is made of. It looks slightly smoke stained, almost. And on the right side of the cage, there is nothing but an intricate bronze lock floating in the middle of what might’ve been a door, if you were alive. In reality, there are no distinguishable bounds to this mysterious area. And even if it were a door, where were its edges?
You stand there silently for a minute, waiting for the being to say something. Anything. It doesn’t. It just stares. Is the creature even staring at you? Does it count if only a few of its hundreds of eyes are pointed towards you? Either way, you no longer possess any of the many masks you had hidden behind in life. You know you cannot hide your thoughts. The Thing can see right through your soul, and the few eyes that appear to be looking in your direction pierce right through all of you. Your skin, your muscles, your tendons, your organs, your bones, your veins, your eyes, your heart, and your soul.
Of course, this is very uncomfortable for you, so you avert your attention towards the stained pedestal. You’re not even sure if you can walk yet, let alone if you still have legs, but you try anyway. The air feels heavy around you, but you still manage to make your way over to the yellowish-grayish pedestal. A thick and dusty book lies on the top of it. There’s no labels on it, so you blow onto the cover as hard as you can, hoping that some sort of hint towards the book’s contents might reveal itself. No luck.
You find yourself hesitating before you brush the dust off using your hands. You are dead. Getting your hands dirty no longer matters, right?.. The dust comes off, but to no avail. No markings or labels were hidden beneath that thick, fuzzy layer of god-knows-what. Oh well. Can’t get any stranger, can it?
You open the book. Within a perfectly sized hole lies a key. It is also made out of the same material as the rest of the room, but is black and… fuzzier. Maybe this key is what tainted the pedestal? Maybe the pedestal was always this color.
There’s one question that trumps all of the others you may have.