The Girl In Grey

A Death Cab For Cutie song?
Yes, welcome to my life.
I mean, death.
I mean, I think.
Except, you know, I never did go to Catholic school or anything like that...did I?
I couldn't remember. In fact, I didn't remember anything much from what I suppose was my life.
When I focused hard for a moment on my past, I was pushed back into that very moment when I appeared here. Oh, my head!
Was this some kind of working of God, that when I die, I can't remember the Earth he sent me to? What am I saying?
Ok, I don't really want to start on religion. Wasn't now the wrong moment to ponder on a God?
Neither do I want to begin by making you feel a little strange about the fact that in this moment I am dead. And that it's the only thing I am certain about with special clarity in my being.
The only other thing coming clearly to me in this moment is music. That Death Cab For Cutie Song about dying. Seriously, don't you think I could have a different song in my head in the line to the judging?
Judging? Well, I supposed that's what it was. Wasn't it that in most religions you die and then you have to wait to be exposed for all your dirty nasty sins? This was coming back to me.
Was I a sinner?
Throb, throb. My head was suffering an indescribably painful migraine.
How could anyone from where I came know that I'd stand here now? I glanced briefly to my surroundings. If this was Heaven, or something of the sort, it was one strange place. Where had I learned that Heaven would be white? This was not a white paradise.
The pain worsened more so as I pondered questions.
Analyze the present, I commanded myself...I needed all the sanity I could possibly possess in this moment.
And so I commenced...
In this vicinity there was a peculiar mix of colours. None of the colors I viewed stood out in particular, but rather there was a soft yellow orange glow to all of the other colours of...the people? Yes, it occurred to me then that there were other beings such as I around me. The most proximate to me was a young girl in a light pink dress. It reached to the ground. The ground, now what was that like? More orange glow. So that was where the horrendous colour was coming from. When I looked to the sky, the ceiling, I couldn't be sure, I saw only dark.
Best not to look to the dark, I told myself. Where had I heard that? A knife ripped through my brain.
Focus, again. I demanded of myself. I studied the little girl that stood motionlessly before me. Her distance from me was probably a half meter, and upon glancing forward of her, I noticed the rest of the beings here were the same distance from each other.
It was in that moment I realized that my surroundings were completely silent, still, but not stale. It was a feeling of waiting, but it was not one of tension. The line was not straight, but rather a wavy line, and for that, I could see at least half of each personage.
Each of these silent, unmoving figures was dressed in a shade of colour, from hues of red, to greens, to blues... The darkest I found was a royal purple, and I saw no colours that could have been labeled sad. The girls were all dressed in the same style of the youthful child in front on my eyes. The men in robes, and all of us without any sort of shoe.
I looked at what I could of myself. I scanned the peak of my toes from underneath my dress, and then it brushed through my mind that I was in grey. The only one? I had to find out. In consequence, and with almost a sort of fear, I took another glance at the varying sizes of people in front of me. I was the only sad colour among hundreds.
Was I a sad person? Was I a sinner? Who am I, and what am I of?
My temples experienced an overwhelming blast of pain and I squeezed my eyes shut.
The worst slam yet, I forced myself to sit on the glowing floor and yanked my knees upward. My head went in between them, and I pressed them tightly together, as if the pressure would relieve my whamping head. My blonde hair, stick straight, slid it's long length along the extent of my calves, and swept the floor.
My thoughts went blank, and the throbbing subsided. I have no way of knowing how long it took for the searing brand of my thoughts to dull to a subsided aching, but it could have been anywhere from one minute to a few eternities.





When I finally passed the point where I could release the tension of my legs against my temples, I lifted my head cautiously.
My eyes ever so slowly adjusted to the warm light that now contained more of a yellow tint. I viewed that the entire line of people had gone, but that I wasn't completely alone. In the distance, or at least I could judge he was nothing close to me, I saw a young man of maybe 19 youthful years dressed in a grey robe. Grey. Any breathe I had was gone.
I did not recognize him, just as I had not recognized the back side of the previous young girl who had stood before me.
But he knew my name. And I knew, for he called for me then. He called me out in what could have a been a shout, what could have been a whisper.
“Sher,” it was a tender call, I realized after the sounds left his lips.
I could not bring words to form, or any kind of sound to emit from my lungs. What could I say in this moment?
Was this situation, this youth, this young man here supposed to be some kind of test?
I threw away to the trash all my questions, my doubts, my endless contemplations, and decided to go along with it all. His eyes that I then looked directly into seemed trustworthy enough. He stepped three normal steps and he was in front of my curdled figure. I saw his eyes clearer then. It was the colour of the Mediterranean Sea on a clear late spring evening. A shimmering shade of blue. How did I know of a sea, and it's appearance? That came back to me then.
A Deathcab For Cute song and an image of the Mediterranean sea are all I have at this point.
So I took his now outstretched hand. He lifted me effortlessly. Perhaps we weighed nothing in this soft lighted circumstance. He didn't let my hand go, and I wasn't sure if I should pull away. I didn't know what it meant, nor was I sure I knew who he was. My only will in this moment was to exist. I was helpless, and felt like I could sink out of any existence if someone was not there with me. I was scared, frightened, frozen; helpless.
He was still silent, and in place of where my eyes had stayed with his, I looked down to our hands linked together by my fear and uncertainty.
That's when all of my rationality left.
I intertwined our fingers, he glanced at them for a moment, as if to be sure of something... And then he began to tug me forward, and I went with him.
The way in which our bodies glided along was, well, like we were gliding along!
My questions faded away, and I began to think over how his hand felt with mine...When he brushed his thumb over mine, a half smile broke my blank face.
I trusted him more with each of his re-grips when my hand started to slip.
We were headed towards the black darkness of the far off distance, I didn't know what awaited us, I only saw that his black hair matched that of the blackness, and our grey forms would fit just perfectly in the dark cloud should it decide to swallow us.
We were so close by then, and we slowed to a halt right before the, now that I could see up close, cloud of black.
He turned slightly backward to look me in the eyes. His whisper came again.
“Sher. This is where it begins.”
I paused my breathing and we then jumped into the dark, together.