There I stood on the canyon’s edge, overlooking the rushing current of the river. My thoughts kept turning to . . . that. I won’t say what beyond the fact that it was a waking nightmare. Suffice it to say that it was unbearable, and the thought of it was even worse. I had to escape.

My vision swayed as I looked down at the white water below as it churned against the rocks. I took a breath, then hurled myself into the cool, billowing embrace of the winds. My heart leapt in anticipation of the impact with the canyon floor.

I don’t remember the impact, but I do remember the certainty of death as the rocks rushed to catch me.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next day.

I found that I was by the edge of the river at the bottom of the cliff, perfectly intact and with the full use of all my limbs and joints. Nothing was broken, not even a scratch. I’d jumped to my death and come out unscathed.

I lay there musing a moment before I remembered my reason for jumping. Looking to the river, I found another chance for escape. It wouldn’t be nearly as quick as a fall off a cliff—and it really wasn’t—but it should still work.

It didn’t, though. After blacking out, I found myself awake again some time later, this time lying flat at the bottom of the sea. I looked all around at the inky blackness of the ocean bottom, and I wondered for a moment if I was even awake. I tried to pinch myself, but I couldn’t move my arm. Something hurt though. In fact, everything did as the pressure of the sea pressed me into the sandy ocean floor. I slipped once more into the inky blackness of oblivion . . .

I woke up again. Everything was still dark. Something brushed my hand, and I saw for a brief moment some fish glow with an internal light. Then it went dark again. I strained my eyes to see if there were any other fish of its kind out there. Struggling, I could faintly see the glowing dots marking its kin off in the distance, winking on and off like the stars of heaven.

I began to feel woozy, and my arm started to throb where the fish had brushed up against me. Struggling against the ocean’s weight, I somehow managed to touch it and found that it was swelling. Pain suddenly racked my body, and I blacked out once more, this time from whatever poison the fish had injected into me.

Again I awoke to inky blackness, except this time, it wasn’t all black. There was a giant angler fish right before my eyes. Its blank, milky-white eyes gleamed wide from the light of the giant antenna on its forehead, and its mouth, as big as my whole body, opened and shut, as if it were repeatedly trying and failing to put into words its shock at seeing me. Eventually, it seemed to give up, finding no words to express its surprise at seeing such a being as myself down here, and turned and swam off. Summoning all the strength I had, I somehow arose and began to follow it, but my limbs couldn’t move fast enough to keep up in the heavy, black water. Eventually, fatigue and the ocean’s pressure overcame me, and I slipped into my lifeless state again.

Death is a strange thing. I could never remember anything from those moments of lifelessness, though I was somehow certain that I spent those moments dead. I contemplated the blackness that washed over me each time I had passed out, how its shadow swooped in on my conscious mind like some fell beast, darker than the inky depths of the nearly lightless ocean. Those moments came so quickly, so suddenly, like a candle in a room being doused, and I could recall nothing of their length or sensation. They felt endless, but at the same time no longer than the blink of an eye or the blip of an idea in the mind. It was as if my own consciousness had passed from one existence to another, one that my reasoning mind could not perceive, and yet could still sense existed. It was almost primal and ancient beyond compare, and yet also familiar, as if my mind could expect nothing else. But what was it, exactly?

No longer could I pay any heed to the ocean or its creatures. I could not focus on anything, not the water nor the blinking lights of the fish nor the darkness nor even the crushing weight of the ocean. None of it concerned me, for the only thing that could occupy my mind was finding the place where I went in those moments of death. And yet, try as I might, focus as I would, I could remember nothing of that state beyond the sweeping darkness. I could see nothing, sense nothing beyond the simple acceptance my mind gave it, and with this barring blindness came greater determination to find it. I focused, meditated, and tried all sorts of mental and bodily tactics that I could recall from my life above the waters (what a blissful life it was, I then realized) to force my conscious mind to see beyond its own consciousness and reach into the deep unknown. I recalled philosophies and phony chants and religious doctrines, but none of it opened my mind to see that place beyond death.

One day, my frustration was so great that I cried out into the deep, cold, crushing abyss—or tried to. I opened my mouth, a word forming in my mouth and a scream in my lungs, but neither came out, crushed as they were by the heavy influx of black saltwater. I felt my lungs swell to shreds from the pressure and my mind slipped away once more, even as it kept scrambling for a glimpse below its own perception.

I awoke again, this time surrounded by shining jellyfish. They swirled and spun about, almost dancing as it were, forming a great dome of shimmering lights around and above me. I gazed up in wonder, nearly opening my mouth in awe before remembering the pain of my last death, and saw them dot the seascape like stars, but not the distant stars you see in the sky. No, these stars were close and personal, stars you could reach out and touch, stars you could remember by name and who would remember you for your closeness to them. It was as if I had been rocketed out into the universe and planted somewhere in the midst of those stellar maps that astronomers are always drawing up. People often gaze up at the stars. I was among them.

I stared up in wonder, forgetting all that had happened, forgetting all my pain, all my frustration, and every hint of my quest to see beyond my mind’s eye. Here and now, I was filled with awe. I lifted my arms, yearning to somehow embrace this glorious scene, somehow hoping to absorb these swirling jellyfish and the way they lit up the ocean bottom with their deep primeval light.

My right hand brushed one of them as it twirled past, startling it. I felt a jab of pain as it stung me, one that jarred me squarely from my euphoric state like a slap in the face. My arm throbbed and swelled, and I felt the venom slow my system and stop my heart.

In my last moments, I gazed upward as my mind slipped under the surface of its conscious reach. But then, something happened. Open as my eyes and heart were to the whole scene around me, so too was my consciousness open to the universe and all its glory. And now, I could see. My mind slipped beyond its own borders and spread outward, untethered, but not lost. I looked outward rather than inward, and so I saw outward all the glories and powers that surrounded me. I could still see the ocean, but now it was so complete, so pure and whole a picture that I can scarcely call it a picture at all, but rather a sensation of its existence. I could feel its vastness and power, and yet also touch its limits, limits placed upon it by some sort of decree that wove the fibers of space and time in accordance with its very will. The bounds of this sea were set, and there would be no trespassing them. The ocean waters could crush and choke, churn and storm, and house all manner of life, but all things had their decrees which could not be crossed. I saw these decrees, saw the wisdom upon which they were all based, heard them sounding like the songs of the very cosmos in a sweet harmony of the purest perfection. No unfairness would be wrought, for all was weighed in the level balances of justice, and all was granted its time and space.

I continued to look up, whichever way that was anymore—perhaps it was all directions at once?—and I could see the shores of the ocean. I saw a canyon where some poor lad had thrown himself, not knowing that it was his decree to live and one day die in the arms of his poor distraught wife, who would be left an old maid with no children to care for her, for none had been decreed to come from her womb. I saw the skies and their vast reaches, decreed to end at the borders of cold, raw space, which had no decrees save it be to wait for its time to come forth as living matter, stars, and worlds in some glorious day to come. I began to reach farther and farther out into the universe, feeling the planets and stars in their decreed motions and boundaries and destinies, all of them glorious, and all of them perfectly fair and just. I reached out and out, feeling my way among the stars, for now I truly was among them, right in their midst and a member of their number, belonging as perfectly to their association as a member of the closest-knit of families. I reached and soared far beyond the decreed limits of mortal perception, further beyond the decreed limits of mortal comprehension, and found myself expanding and growing and filling all the while. I was not stretching, for the more I reached out, the more I was filled, and the satisfaction of it was far beyond anything I could ever have imagined within the limits of my own mortal mind. It was a thing not seen or thought, but felt, felt within the very fibers of one’s own decreed existence, for such are the thoughts of the soul.

In one eternal moment, I was so filled and had reached so far that I was surrounded with the brightness of the greatest glory, so glorious that it felt perfectly like home. At that moment, I felt a voice:

Good that you have come to visit, but it is not time for you to arrive just yet. We’ll see you again later on, okay? For now, go back to the earth and finish the work you have there, and then you can come up here to stay. Does that sound fair?

It did sound fair, and so with a great cosmic snap, I woke up again. I could no longer sense the glorious light or the limits of the sea or the decrees on its shores and its ebbing and flowing, nor longer reach out to touch the universe with my thoughts, nor see all things as they were. The limits on my sight were the thoughts of my mind, those tumbling, clumsy things, and the sight of my eyes, which could only see a dispersing, shimmering cloud of jellyfish. I could feel no more space than that which was filled with the crushing ocean waters. I felt imprisoned in the smallest cell imaginable, that cell of one’s own mortal limits.

I closed my eyes in despair, letting the waters crush the life out of me again so that I could soar beyond their depths once again. But this time, it was only dark nothing again.

Maybe I’d just imagined it.

Poor lad. If only he had known his destiny before jumping. And who knows? Maybe he’ll find it still. At any rate, if you enjoyed this, please share this around with all your friends. On the other hand, if you hated it, make your wrath known by sharing this around with all your friends. All proceeds go toward finding a cure for jellyfish venom. Really.