Gee Way Oneshots!!

Welcoming Death - Marching Band Gerard

Gender Neutral Reader

I had always wondered where I'd end up after my death. Then again, who hasn't? Maybe Heaven and Hell did actually exist. Maybe there'd be a Good Place waiting for me. Or maybe I'd be taken away by some kind of angel to deliver me to my afterlife. But nothing could've prepared me for what arrived.

When the bullet penetrated my skin and entered my heart, I closed my eyes and let the pain pass. At first, the pain was unbearable. Shocking my limbs to a still and my eyes unable to open an inch. Yet, at the same time, I felt this sense of relief. I felt...okay, almost. Part of me knew that no matter what happened, whether I lived or died, I'd be okay. Even if I ended up in the worst of the afterlives, I would be okay.

I was...okay. Right where I was.

As any trace of life left in me vacated from my body, all the pressure around me thickened and it felt like I was falling. Falling into a suffocating tunnel of hands that groped and squeezed me until I had zero breath left in my body. All the oxygen in my lungs eventually left me, one little squeeze at a time.

It felt like I had no body, yet I very clearly had hands and feet, fingers and toes. I could blink my eyes, open my mouth, operate my lanky limbs while still falling very fast yet at such a slow pace. Taking its time while also moving faster than the speed of light, it seemed. It was this paradox inside my gut that confused my brain beyond comprehension.

I eventually started seeing light break through the blinding darkness. The falling sensation started fading away and everything started slowing down. My heavy organs that felt like they were made of cold stone eventually felt like they were made of air. Light as feathers. I closed my eyes, sinking into the feeling of absolute nothingness around me. No air, no sound, nothing.

Nothing left.

When my eyes opened, I was in a hospital bed. An IV bag was connecting to a bandage on my arm, a worn hospital gown reaching down to my bruised legs underneath the thin sheet of a blanket. My arms were cluttered with minor cuts and scrapes that were too minor to waste bandages on.

Above my heart, soaking through the fabric of the gown, was a dark red stain. A blood stain that had clearly dried a long time ago. I sat myself up slightly and carefully brought my jittery fingers to the stain. To my surprise, I felt no pain. I expected the pain that would come with a bullet wound, but nothing arrived to torment me. I pulled on the collar of the gown slightly to reveal the skin the stain rested upon. Not even a scar was in sight. As if I hadn't been wounded in the first place.

When my blurry vision cleared, a faint sound of drums playing around me, I was completely alone in what mimicked a hospital room. The only way I wasn't able to tell that it was fake was how hollow the room felt. The walls looked so thin as if they were made of fabric. Curtains, so to speak.

My hand went to my head, automatically expecting a headache from the painkillers I had taken previously, or possibly any scar that was left upon my face. Again, to my surprise, not an ounce of pain arrived. It was almost as if my body had completely forgotten how to feel pain entirely. Like it wasn't even a conceivable concept.

I took a small breath, my previously-aching body relaxing in this hospital bed. I could still move my arms and legs, but it felt easier here than it ever did before I was shot.

Everything felt fine. I was fine.

Taking a deep breath, I slowly climbed out of the hospital bed and my cold and pale bare feet landed softly on the dirty tile floor. The lack of color around me made me question where I was. I obviously wasn't in the real world. Was this some kind of hallucination? Were my painkillers making me see things? Was this all in my head?