The man entered the church, completely empty, and, adjusting the collar of his coat, sat down near the altar waiting for the priest. His fingers caressed the wood of the bench with a certain affection, showing a certain affection for the sacred environment, but the tremor in his lower lip showed his tension.
The priest entered calmly and calmly through the side door of the altar, bowed to the holy corpse of Christ, and, when he had finished, turned towards the man, with a look of pity.
“What brings you here again, my good man?” - the priest says, even knowing the answer
"Father, I believe I have already served my time" - the man said, shaking uncontrollably.
“Follow me, son” - the priest starts walking towards the church exit
The two walked in silence to the door, and slowly opened it, revealing, amid creaks, a vast expanse of black lands, dimly lit by a crimson moon. the priest's robes are replaced by golden clothes, and the man's by rags.
“What do you see?” says the priest.
“I see men suffering”, replies the man
“And why do they suffer?”
“For their mistakes in life”
“They suffer for having disrespected the word of God,” the priest corrected him. “What did you do more than them? How much more did you suffer than they did?”, he reinforced, this time aggressively.
"But I…"
“Do you want sincerity? 'But me' is the fuck, you died 2 minutes ago, and everyone who comes in has the same shitty little speech. Do you know how long I have been receiving the damned souls?”
"Is that…"
“Five thousand years, Juan, five thousand years, and it's not the first time I've come across a turd who sold drugs in a school here”, the priest began to get nervous. "I've heard every, and I repeat, every excuse possible, so you better shut up"
“But what do you mean two minutes? I've been here for about forty years."
“Forty years is my egg, have you forgotten that time here passes differently? You're still on that hospital table and soon they'll revive you again. There you can get your second chance, here you better get back to your pity before I get angry.”
The man turned his back on the priest and started down the long basalt stairs that adorned the church's facade as he watched the black sky adorned with a phosphorescent red mist. His fingers, completely calloused from years of working the ash floor of purgatory, were completely red and crooked, and the ocean of reddish waters and the smell of congealed blood brought an uncomfortable salty air to his lungs. The surgery would still take half an hour, and it would be half an hour before they made his heart beat again, then it would be another half hour in this place, He would live a few more lives inside this hell, this prison, until he could finally return, and try to have a different life.
His long, bony fingers clung together in a single mass around the spear embedded in the ash floor at the foot of the stairs as he tried to sniff the air for those beings who tore the flesh of those who punished those who ended up in the space between life. is the death. Strangely shaped beings, full of vines and tentacles all over their bodies, with thousands of eyes, with mouths inside their eyes, and other unnatural looking creatures that were eons ago from creation lurked to tear apart those beyond life.
From a hole in the ash emerged the body of a man. Both those who had just left the world of the living and those who had been devoured were destined to be reborn from the ground of ash, to repay countless ages for their sins.
The man sat at the foot of the stairs and watched another sunset. The red sun in the middle of the completely black sky disappearing behind the sea of blood, with, sporadically, a large sea dragon named Leviathan leaping over the waves.
One more night…
