Our Infinite Fates

THE FIRST THING I was aware of was the cold.

This was not hell as I’d always imagined. It was not unbearable heat and encircling orange flames. There were no screams of agony or maniacal cackles, no chaos or mutiny or loud, lawless violence.

Instead, there was a slow falling of ash from an imperceptible sky, rows of jagged white trees, and a dark, desolate ground that sprawled out like endless tundra. Everything was too stark, too smooth, the ground like black glass and the trees like pale marble. A silvery mist whorled in the canopy, but I got the sense that even if I could have seen through it, the sky would not really have been the sky at all. It would have been a sheet of purest black, or maybe white, no sun or moon or stars but instead a featureless canvas; something unnatural, something terrible, something that hurt the naked eye to behold.

My chest rose and fell in ragged peaks. I had seen this place before. It had lurked just beyond the periphery of my understanding, as though my body had always known it would come back here. I had caught glimpses when trying to flee the asylum – almost like the torture experiments had shaken it loose, had swept away the dust from the crypt to reveal what had always lain beneath.