I was lying in the snow, still disoriented. Above me was the green lit sky, its light moving like thin fabric in the wind. My mind felt submerged in fog, and before I knew it, I had left my body. The singing became louder and louder, drowning out Arthur’s worried pacing. Then, the light closed in around me and pulled me into a tunnel.

I traveled through the tunnel like lightning in the air. I found myself standing in a dark, endless room. A cord, black with tar or some other thick oil, stretched from my navel and out into the darkness. I looked at it in horror, and without hesitation, lifted my hand, summoned a knife, and cut it off.

For a moment I felt a deep sense of relief, but it was short lasting. A storm of black wormlike creatures shot towards me from the darkness in all directions. I quickly made a shield around me, but the creatures kept pushing and sneering. I realized I couldn’t hold them off for very long, and the shield shrunk around me and pushed me towards the ground.

I was surrounded, using all my strength to hold the creatures at bay. As a last resort, I prayed - open mindedly for the many definitions of God, and with zero faith in organized religion.

A light lowered down above me, like an orb slowly descending into the vast darkness I had found my free spirit in. The wormlike creatures escaped, and a hand reached down towards me from the orb. I touched it, and not a moment later flew like an arrow into the air. I rose all the way into space, drifting in weightlessness above Earth. The black depth of space was strewn with stars and the orb floated next to me.