It was a harsh summer day in Illinois. The sun rays reflected off the mountains, the verdant green grass, and the trees. Below the mountain was a humble, one stoplight town, home to one man on his way to death. The man had been dealing with heart problems, and he had several heart attacks in the past year, each one more  debilitating. One day however was the worst one he had ever experienced. He had an insufferable pain in his heart. He grasped it, trying to stop the pain but it only seemed to worsen. Soon he was feeling light-headed, and his sight got nebulous. He felt entirely without breath, and soon his sight went entirely black. After a while his vision returned. He could breathe again, and his heart stopped paining him. He must’ve had just a brief heart attack. He felt so relieved that he was alive.

He considered going to the doctor’s office, just to go through some basic heart attack protocol, but he couldn’t recall feeling better than this is ever in his life! He never felt more alive, and he had more energy than he had ever had.

“Well, they always said “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”,” he chuckled to himself. He wondered how he was going to use his newfound vitality.

   The moribund man decided to sit in the rocking chair sat out on his front porch, and read the bible. He loved just sitting on his chair and breathe in the fresh summer air. He wasn’t experiencing any of the  shortness of breath he had been experiencing for year. This heart attack was a miracle! The man in delight of his new health, smiled to himself as he read Leviticus.

In the corner of his eye he saw a dark figured down the long road between his house and a four way intersection. The man looked up from the book and faced it. It was blurred by the rays from the sun. It seemed to be a man in a dark cloak, but at such a far distance, it was hard to tell. It reminded him of his nightmares. As a child, he used have dreams of a dark cloaked figure sitting in his room watching him sleep, waiting for his death.

Eventually the mirage contorted his sight and gave him a headache. He scratched at his eyes and looked up to see the blue, cloudless summer sky. His eyes then took him to the house across the road. He saw a fiery-headed boy playing on a swingset. The boy swung back in forth, screaming in jubilation. The sight brought a smile upon his face, and also memories of his own childhood. He saw himself and his brother playing on the swingset in their old backyard back in Kansas. He really wished he could be that boy. He remembered those days when he thought he could live forever, would live forever.

Even though the man felt so much better than he did before, he wondered what would have happened if that heart attack had had an inverse effect and killed him. Where would he be? He was a devout christian, or claimed to be. He attended church whenever he could, and wanted desperately to reach eternal paradise, though eternal paradise was such a difficult concept to the man to understand. “The best thing you could ever imagine” he remembered the priest saying one mass. So beautifully proposed yet the thought made his stomach churn like butter. He always lived by “all good things come to an end” but where was the end in Paradise? Surely it was too incredible to end. Maybe heaven was something more than just good, but for the forty-some years he had been alive, he couldn’t imagine anything better than living. Before this morning, all he cared about was getting into heaven, but now that he was healthy, he wanted to live more.  He couldn’t think about it longer, he thought if he was too fearful he wouldn’t get in.

In the midst of contemplation, he heard the thud of the newspaper being thrown onto his front lawn. A boy on a bike worked assiduously to deliver mail. The man got up from his chair and went to pick it up. He unrolled it and read the news headlines. “918 Commit Suicide for Religious Purposes” it read. The man couldn’t help but feel at a crossroads. Would he be willing to do that? He thought about how alive he felt, and how he was just beginning to think he could live for a long, long time. He imagined all the days he could bike through the town, all the new books he could read, all the christmases with his family he would have. Why would he just throw all that away? He went back to his chair to read more on the headline, and tossed aside his bible, which clattered to the ground.

The sun rose to its precipice. Noon before he knew it. He had spent all day reading. He had an entire collection of books, and had them stacked next to him. He barely had time for reading anymore, he had been in and out of the hospital for so long.

“This is the life,” He thought to himself, joyfully. He was finally able to relax, and he’d be able to relax for many days to come. He was finally content.

A sharp squeaking noise pierced his eardrums and interrupted his reading. He looked up to see the same fiery, red headed boy he had seen before. The squeaking came from the swing set, which the boy swung happily from. The man couldn’t help but find it terribly irritating. He tried to ignore it and continue reading, but it was simply too loud for him to focus on his novel.

He looked at the boy again. How lucky he was. He didn’t need to worry about what was to come after life. He only needed to worry about when the sun would set and when his bedtime was and when he would wake up again and worry some more. The man wanted to worry about life, not death. The sunset was trivial. His bedtime was whenever. He worried about preserving his life so he could continue to live, because he loved living. The boy didn’t care as much as he did, so why does he get more of it?

The man began to get angry. He glowered at the boy. The boy continued to laugh in glee. He wanted the boy to feel his pain. He wanted him to worry about death. He wanted the boy to have no family to love. He wanted boy to know what is like to worry without end.

The boy noticed that he was staring. The boy looked at him and stopped laughing. The swing lost its impetus. They both sat staring at each other. The boy looked so innocent that the man lost some of his angered and calmed himself.

“Could you please stop swinging? I’m trying to read here-” the boy then brought his legs back and rocked forward. He began to swing again, creating a deafening squeaking noise. The man was infuriated. He covered his ears as the squeaking metal pierced his eardrums, almost like a depraved devil’s call. The man couldn’t take it much longer. He stood up and marched towards the boy with both hands covering his ears. He walked across the street to the boy. He stood there and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Stop swinging, you heathen!” The man grabbed the metal chains and brought them to a flimsy halt. The boy was thrown to the grass. The boy looked around, startled and confused. Seemingly unaware that the man was present.

“Hello?” The boy asked. The man was also bewildered.

“What, do you not see me?” The man wondered if he had just called a young blind boy a heathen and thrown him to the ground. “I am so sorry, I-”

“Vurig! Come inside now!” A raspy female voice rang from the house. The boy on the swing in response jumped from the swing and ran into the house, not once acknowledging that the man was even there. The man was addled. What was that all about? The man walked back across the street to his house. He picked up his books and went inside.

There was something off about this evening, the man could sense it. Was it something to do with his morning heart attack? He dismissed the thought. What would that have to do with him not being seen? His vision began to get hazy and spotty once again, like during his heart attack. He thought reading would mitigate some of his ailments and stress. He took his book and tried to begin reading. He soon realized he couldn’t even see what was on the pages. They were all too blurry. The Great Gatsby, The Catcher of The Rye, Lord of the Flies, none could be read. He flipped each page to avail. What was going on? He then went to the bible. The words on the page were crystal clear. Why only the bible? He was so confused. This must be a bad dream, he thought. This was not happening, this is just some stupid dream. He took the bible and threw it outside on his front lawn out of spite. He went upstairs and opened the door to his room. The room was filled with a cold air that chilled his bones. He could feel a presence in the room. He didn’t dare turn off the lights. Instead he just went into his bed.

“Maybe if I just rest, everything will return to normal,” he tried to convince himself. He lied down in bed and closed his eyes. In bed he realized he wasn’t alone. There was an ostensible feeling of a presence. Terrified and reluctantly, he turned on the lamp on his night stand. The room was lit. No one was there. He man looked around the room, and exhaled a sigh of relief. He went to go back to sleep, only to be scared out of his wits.

“AIEEEEEE!” The man let out a blood curdling scream. In his bed lied a corpse, but not just any corpse, it was his corpse. A cold, glassy eyed body laid before him. It was a surreal out of body experience that hit him hard. He doubled over in shock.He looked at his hands, he then began to notice something different. They seemed to be translucent. They were a ghoulish blue hue. He crawled up into a ball in fear, unsure of what would become of him. Suddenly the doorknob turned, which then thrusted open the door. The door seemed to be the entryway of an inferno. From the doorway was a dark figure in a cloak. He began to realize what would become of him. He tried and tried to get away but was sucked into the vortex that was the inferno. He managed to look the dark figure in the eye. It proceeded to ask “Where are your books now?”