I died.

Not the worst thing that could happen at 87 years old, I suppose.

Nothing really remarkable about my death. It was quiet, neat, tidy even, like the sun slipping behind the horizon on a cloudy evening. I was no Hollywood starlet gone out with a bang or an overdose. The world did not mourn my death only to forget about me the next month, and then add my name to a list of people the year took away from us. I had a good life, married early, had 2.5 kids and a dog, went to church on Sundays, and prayed before meals with my family. Thought, 'hey, I'm a good person. I don't swear, don't hold a grudge against my neighbors who let their dog piss on my flowerbed. I'll get to Heaven no problem!'

Purgatory.

One time I told my friend I couldn't possibly get hit in the face with a baseball standing far left field.

What an idiot.

Purgatory isn't this wasteland filled with monsters trying to kill you and anything that moves; it's not what the Greeks thought either, it's not an empty field filled with the moaning spirits of the dead who weren't good or bad enough in life. It's quite a lot like Earth. There's things to do, people to meet, food. I went to the new Star Wars the other day. Pretty good.

Purgatory is a verge, the edge of something; to quote Gandalf, "it's the deep breath before the plunge." Doing things doesn't distract you from this feeling of waiting. You know something big is about to happen, but you're just waiting. Endlessly.

I hate waiting.

I don't know how I knew, but one day I woke up and just began walking. Somewhere in my mind I thought This is stupid, I don't even know where I'm going, but I just kept walking. I wasn't waiting anymore. I was done waiting. That I knew without a doubt.

I'd tried to leave before, but the walls surrounding the city were too high and the guards, who looked like buff grim reapers, never let me pass. They barely looked at me when I walked past. A man tried to walk out behind me. He started screaming when the reapers stopped him from leaving.

"My daughter! I need to find my daughter, please."

The reapers didn't say a word. They pointed pitilessly back to the city. The same thing happened to me when I tried to find my daughter who'd died 41 years ago. I heard one last plea from the man and turned my eyes toward the land beyond Purgatory.

I'd never left the city, where all the dead people are; but I'd seen, through grainy windows the outside, where the sky turned black on the horizon and the land stretched beyond what I could see. Sometimes, I'd make a game of trying to identify features through the glass, but all I could see through the filthy window was the black sky and a suggestion of lighter colored land below it.

Out in it, however, I saw a crayon-drawing, blue river winding sluggishly to my right. A brown creature crept along its banks. Even from the road, perhaps four hundred feet away, I could hear it huffing.

It didn't look like a bear, too skinny. I thought it might be a dog, but when I stopped to look at it, our eyes connected. Its face curled into a grotesque image of my own with a thick, gaping, and drooling mouth.

I'd never been a real looker in life, but dear God, that thing was hideous with its wrinkled skin, flat silver eyes, and swollen purple tongue. It made the zombies in The Walking Dead look alive. All over its brown body were gross lumps; oozing clear, yellow, and white liquid every time it took a step toward me. Big, webbed hands slapped the ground with each step until I could see individual hairs on its mangey skin.

"You killed me," it snarled.

I'd like to say I didn't scream like a little girl, but I screamed like a little girl and fell on my ass. The creature's laugh was a cross between a hyena and a phlegmy witch. It even coughed up a whitish glob.

"The heck are you?" My voice was still an octave too high. The thing cackled again.

"The heck was I?"

"What?"

"Dreams, loves, moments of bliss, sweet candy, days of youth, belief," it crooned, swaying on bone-thin legs with its eyes closed. "You killed me," it said, snapping its eyes open, "stuffed me full of lies, miseries, useless diets. I tried to pump me full of good, little pleasures, late night movies, tasty dinners, morning walks, joy, and good, pure good."

"I don't think I know you," I said.

"I am you and you killed me, murderer," it screeched and jumped at my throat. As soon as its disgusting skin touched me it vanished in a puff of smoke and I found myself hyperventilating in the blue river.

There were three times I freaked out in life; when I got married, when my first daughter was born, and when she died. None of them quite felt like the blind terror of a beast leaping at you with fangs ready to tear out your throat.

Something touched my leg in the water causing me to stop breathing for a moment. An absolutely stunning woman exploded from the water, drenching my poor dead soul. Her hair shimmered silver around pearls woven into braided strands. Her tempest green eyes flashed like lightning. I could see right through her watery body to the other side of the river.

"You saved me," she said.

"Uh, hi," was my very eloquent reply. She giggled, sounding more like a forest creek than a human.

"Hello."

"What are you?" I didn't like the way she stared at me.

"I am everything you ever loved, ever desired, ever needed. I am just one more." Her voice went from a soft bubbling to an ear-tearing roar. "My savior, you gave me life when the light snuffed me out, when the joy kept me at bay." She grew and grew, drawing the river into herself until I stood on dry ground and she towered over me with her arms reaching toward the black sky above. With her hands she stirred the darkness until it swirled all around her. Black tendrils reached toward me, pulsing bigger every second.

"I have come to repay you that kindness."

I ran.

Well what did you expect me to do? I wasn't going to sit around and see what happened if those things touched me. Not that running did me any good. The moment I started running they touched me, and I was plunged into a black void.

Nothing.

No air, no movement, I felt nothing against my skin. I didn't even know if I still had skin, or a body. It was as if somebody had taken my thoughts, thrown them into a pitch-black room and then shoved my thoughtless body down the stairs.

Rude.

There was a sound. Someone cried softly, and a small pinprick of light appeared. It raced toward me and stopped. Curled in the center of the circle of light was a small girl in a pink dress that slipped off her bone-thin shoulders. I knew her. My daughter, who never made it past her 18th birthday.

"Maddie?"

"You promised you would help me."

"Maddie, I'm so sorry."

"Cruel," she screamed. Her face twisted, her head snapped back, and the right side of her body crumpled as she was thrown twenty feet away.

"Maddie, no!" I ran toward her, just as I had done when she was hit by a car after running into the street when we'd had another fight about who she could invite to her birthday. Our last fight.

"You were supposed to be there for me when I needed you," she sobbed. Broken fingers clutched at my shirt. "Why weren't you?"

"I tried so hard," I lied. What a rotten father I'd been to her. I knew I should have been a better father. I was for my youngest. First-borns are always the most messed up.

"I wanted you to pay attention to me. You only saw what I wasn't. I wasn't smart enough, out-going enough. I wasn't nice enough. I didn't have perfect friends. You only ever ridiculed me because I wasn't your dream child."

"Oh, Maddie." I cradled her broken, twisted body in my arms. "I'm so sorry," I whispered over and over, letting tears fall onto her perfect face. Letting her run out of the house that day became my biggest regret. I never saw the impact, but I heard the car horn scream, the first heavy thud. I felt the next thud when her body landed, when the mug slipped from my hand onto the floor. I didn't think. I just ran.

Maddie's body squirmed and I found myself holding a three-legged gray and white Aussie: River. My first dog.

"River, hey bud," I choked. River licked at the drying tears. "You gonna call me a murderer too?" He whined and wagged his fluffy tail. "Yeah, I love you too." River jumped up and wrapped his front legs around my neck and nipped at my ears. "You wanna play?" He exploded into action at the word, racing around and between my legs, barking at me to get a move on.

He vanished from the circle of light and the void around me shimmered into my backyard. The stars hung low in the sky, as if someone had loosened the strings that held them up. River was nowhere to be seen.

"River! Come here," my voice cracked. I knew this night. The sounds and smells of the neighbor's grill out plugged my ears and nose. Our kitchen light glowed yellow against the grass and trees. A truck door slammed shut and my dad's voice entered the kitchen. My mom's voice joined his.

"You loved me." River appeared sitting at my side while I watched my parents argue. I probably should've been surprised, but a talking dog seemed almost normal after a drooling human-dog thing and a crazy water witch almost double killed me.

"This was the night dad took you away. I never forgave him," I said.

River opened his mouth in a dog grin. He yawned and stretched himself out on the damp grass. "Your life has been judged."

"What for?"

"Purgatory is a middle ground, a waiting list for judgement day. When you are judged there is one place you go: here."

"I'm not going to heaven?" I asked. River stood up and walked toward a path that opened up underneath the trees. The river witch, the vile dog creature, and what looked like my daughter stood on the path.

"We are your heaven and your hell. You killed the inner child, so the inner child will kill you every day. You fed your greed and lust, so it will eat whatever it wants and give you what it does not want. You were cruel to your daughter, so she will be cruel to you. You loved me, so I will love you for all eternity. Your life will be your death."

So, I died, which is definitely the worst thing that could happen to me.