The Rooms

Have you ever heard those stories of people who were put in near death situations and claimed to have spoken to Satan or Jesus? Or, those people who claimed to have seen a white light? I guess you could say, I was one of the lucky ones.

I was driving home from work, after a long night shift, and I was very tired. I was having problems looking in front of me out of sleepiness. I was about half way home, when I saw a car on the opposite lane crash into the car in front of it, probably from some drunk driver, and the car it hit swung into mine, sending me towards the building beside me. I don't know much else about the accident, but I do know this; I was dead. Or, at least, I should have been. I woke up in a hospital bed. Only, the strange thing was, there was nobody else there. Nor was there equipment aside from the bed I was sitting on. I stood up, even after such an accident I still felt full of energy, and looked in the other rooms. Nothing. No people. No equipment. No hospital beds. I headed towards the exit of the building, and as soon as I went through the door, I was in the hospital again. Actually, I think it's better described as... The hospital continued after I opened the doors... This was all too crazy. I could tell I was dreaming! I could remember the accident! I knew I was in a coma or something similar! So, I went back through the doors. I looked up above the door. Instead of saying the name of the hospital, it simply said "TERMINAL". My dream wasn't even being subtle with this one.

"Hello there!" I heard an excited voice from behind me say. But... It wasn't a voice, but rather, multiple voices all speaking at once. I can't even describe how it sounded. There were probably trillions of voices crammed into that one voice spoken by the two entities I saw as I spun around. They were identical. They had the general shape of a human being, but... Nothing gender-specific. I assumed it was a mix of both genders. They didn't really have any features, aside from white glowing eyes contrasting against the darkness that coated the rest of their body. Their eyes were so bright, I would've gone blind if I was actually awake, and their bodies so dark I felt as though I was being sucked in.

"H-Hello...?" I replied questioningly, obviously showing my confusion. "Continue." The voices said, their mouthes not moving as they spoke, as if they didn't have any. "C-Continue? Doing what?" "Continue." The voices repeated a little louder, stepping aside to let me through the doors once more. I walked forward in this strange continuation of the hospital that had earlier appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The figures followed alongside me as I walked. They weren't walking, and they weren't floating. They also seemed to go through walls as if they weren't even there. It gave the illusion that I wasn't walking forward, but that I was moving the world below me forward, and they were the only things not affected. Every time I asked them a question, they would state "continue". My mind was... Blank. I had no idea what to think about in a situation like this. I had nothing to think about. Well... Aside from those two. I could tell that if this really was the gate between worlds that my strange coma-induced dream thought up, one of those must have been an angel and the other must've been a demon. After about ten minutes of walking past doorways with nothing through them but more wall, the long corridor I was walking through suddenly ended in a door. The two figures disappeared. I knew they wanted me to go through this door. It was the only one that was closed and they told me to go this way... What's the worst that could happen? It IS a dream, after all.

I stepped through the door and froze. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was no way I was going to believe this. The room I was in was... My room. The room I woke up in. Only... I was sitting there on the bed, presumably dead. My loved ones were sitting around me, with sad looks on their deceased faces. I did not believe what I was seeing! I knew it was a dream, so why should I believe this? I went on through the hospital one more time, identical to the first time I walked down the long hallway. Through the doors were other patients, all dead in their hospital beds. It was all fake, none of these people were actually dead, I was just dreaming! Yet, that's what kept me walking forward. I saw another door at the end of the hallway, as I was greeted by the two figures again. They opened the door and let me through to the next room.

I was so mad. Those two fuckers did this! They're toying with me! They set this all up to try and scare me! I was so heated that I didn't even have any time to take in what was around me. Whiteness. Just, plain white walls, white ceiling, white floor, white doors, everything was white. The room was pretty short. I saw a door ahead, and walked through. I was back at the other side of the room. This bugged me. I walked through the door again and was back at the start, yet again. Now I was mad again. I kept going through the door, over and over, for hours on end. I'm not even kidding, I was running through for hours without even thinking. It was those two again, wasn't it?! They're still fucking with me! They're making this stupid ass room repeat itself over and over, like they were doing with the rest of the hospital! I was FURIOUS. I felt madder than I ever have before. At this point, I couldn't take any more, and walked through the door one more time... And on the over side of the room, instead of a white door, was a door that looked similar to the rest of the hospital's doors. I walked through, giving out a small chuckle of relief.

A white room. Identical to the last one. Strangely enough, it wasn't that I was "warped" back to the start of the last room again. This is definitely the next room. But, when I went through the door, I was sent back to the start again. I had done this enough. Can't this just stop already? I'd do ANYTHING just to get through. Just to wake up again. I tried talking to the two figures again, promising I'll do whatever they want, as long as they let me through. They weren't there. I couldn't go back and I couldn't go forward. I said I would do anything to go on, but... There wasn't anything I COULD do. I felt a tear roll down my cheek. The door in front of me opened. I sulked through the doorway and into the next room.

I was practically crying at this point. Why were they doing this? And why to ME? Why couldn't I just wake up and get out of this repetitive madness? I looked around me to see... Chairs. Plain wooden chairs in a very large, white room. There must've been thousands of them. And then I looked up above them. Thousands of people, all dead, having hung themselves on the thousands of nooses that were there, all hanging extremely high up. It only made me more sad. Each of these people, with their own story to tell, their own lives, their own minds, their own tastes and distatses... All thrown away for the dead, as all people, good or bad, are doomed to be. I walked along the room. The more chairs I passed, the sadder I got. So many precious lives, wasted... And after what seemed like forever, I saw the door. However, one chair next to the door had a noose hanging close above it, unlike the others. This was all just a dream, right? I am just another life gone to waste, it would be better if I was gone anyway, right? But... That's wrong. We all have our lives for a reason. We also need death, otherwise life has no meaning. That's why we should live life and when death comes, we welcome it in as we did our lives. I walked through to the next door.

An empty room with a pedestal. On that pedestal, was a gun. Behind that pedestal, were the two figures. I walked up to the pedestal and examined the weapon. "Make your choice," the voices said. Choice? What choice? Was I supposed to shoot someone? Was it... Me? Or one of those two? I knew that one of them must've been an angel and the other a demon, but... I had no idea which one was which. And, even if I did, why would I shoot either one? I had no idea what to do at this point. And then, something inside me instinctively pulled the trigger and shot the figure to the right. "Well done," the voices said, with a hint of mischievousness. "You've just shot an angel. You would've been right either way, though." Right? I was right? How was I right? What is this thing talking abou--

I woke up in a hospital bed, in immense pain, with my whole body feeling stiff. My friends and family were around me and observed as I slowly woke up. I got out of the hospital a few weeks later. I continued my life as normal. Every day passed by just like the last repetitive day that had just came and went. But, now, all these days feel more... Fulfilling. I'm living out my days the way I'm supposed to, with my friends and family by my side, until it's finally time to walk through one more door and fall asleep in that hospital bed, with my two greatest friends by my side. I don't know who or what they are, or, really, anything about them. Yet, they have done me the greatest deed anyone has ever done for me.

They have shown me why I'm supposed to be alive.