Everyone’s a Catgirl! Ch. 1: The Bench
It all happened so fast. “You Died” didn’t flash before my eyes. There wasn’t a guardian angel or that “light at the end of the tunnel.” I didn’t even get the memory reel that everyone talks about.
Just a giant vastness of nothing.
When my consciousness returned, it didn’t come with a body. Well, it kind of did, but not the corporeal flesh-golem I’m used to. It was more like an outline, hinting at where the edges of my skin should be. I thought I’d lost all five senses before I found myself standing in a room, staring at the hinted shapes of other people.
Dead people?
There were a lot of ways I’d imagined the afterlife, and this definitely wasn’t one of them. I was in the lobby of an enormous building flooded with stringent white light. Rooms lined the hallways to my left and right, extending further than I could see. Each section was closed off by glass panels, allowing curious onlookers to peer into what looked like courtrooms. Stern-faced judges in black robes sat at the head of every room while other souls—at least, that’s what I assumed they were—stood at the defendant’s table. The whole setting had a dream-like quality that I couldn’t seem to shake, but something told me that this was very, very real.