The Nursing Home

"I'm ready," I say to myself. And I know its true; for the past 20 years I have been ready. Ready for God to take me from the shadowed place we call earth and into His arms. I had always been faithful to God, praying every morning, noon, and night. Reading the bible once a week and going to services when ever I could manage to get out of bed. My heart slows, beating it's last rounds of blood. My fingers and toes tingle, the feeling soon spreads throughout the rest of my withered body. Closing my eyes, I wait patiently. My breath stops and everything is black.

Am I still alive? I can't be asleep, I don't feel my body any longer. My spirit is no longer trapped by flesh and blood. I don't think I can move, but where is there to move too? All there is is darkness. Minutes go by, or were they hours? Days? I go into a kind of dreaming state, thinking over everything I left behind. Which isn't much. A small room in the depressing nursing home that smelled of death and insanity, a few old pictures, and old clothes. I never had a husband, no kids or grandchildren. The only thing that ever kept me from ending my own life was my faith. My Lord would not appreciate me wasting mine.

Something came into my sight. Why could I still see? Gray, green, and black. The blurs took on forms. The forms became people in black, standing on green lush grass, all looking serious and some bored. Large and small gray rocks poked out of the ground at random places. These figures struck a cord. Tomb stones. There, in front of all the people, a coffin was being lowered into a freshly dug grave. It was brown and plain, made of cheap wood that probably splintered. I moved towards the grave slowly against my will, alarm flared. "Lord!" I screamed without a mouth. None of the strangers reacted to my yells. "Please help, Lord! Savior!?" I begged. I was hovering over my grave now, the coffin carelessly dropped in before me.

The overwhelming feeling of falling took over as I plummeted down, through the cheap wood of my coffin, then halted suddenly. Right above my body. It lay stiff and cold, my skin almost blue and my hair white and wispy. The nursing home mustn't have cared enough of my remains to bury it properly since I was still in the same clothes I died in. I did not look as if I were sleeping, I didn't look peaceful. I just looked like a dead body. The pitter patter of dirt landing on my coffin sounded right above me. "No ,wait! Stop! I'm not dead!" My inaudible screams were in vain. I yearned for the my soft bed in the nursing home. Anything other than this. "Oh, God. I'm not ready! Please. Where are you?"I sobbed. "What did I do wrong? Did I sin?" I asked to the darkness. But, no. It was not totally dark. I could see my body perfectly.

I watched my own corpse start to decay. Bugs come through the badly made resting place and gnaw on my dead flesh. They entered my carcass and made it their home. Nibbling on my organs and reproducing in my skull. My eyes soon shriveled up and my skin turned leathery as I watch. All the while I screamed in horror and begged for forgiveness. Mercy never came.