Excerpt from Transcending Limbo

Transcending Limbo is a piece of in-the-works literary fiction. Part compilation and part novel, it's composed of writing that I've done over the course of more than seven years. I expect to complete it later in 2014. Below is an excerpt from the opening chapter.

I DID NOT believe in an afterlife until I arrived here, and now there is very little refuting it. I feel as though I have just woken from a restful sleep, yet I am standing upright, poised to move as though I have merely opened my eyes from a blink. Where I am standing is a white, unadorned hallway with textured mint green linoleum floors that stretch on at least as far as I can see in either direction. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to a white brightness that emanates from nowhere in particular; there are neither light fixtures nor windows, and I do not cast a shadow, as though the light pours from the floor and walls themselves. On either side of the hall are doors, spaced about twenty feet apart and staggered so that a person walking would pass one every ten feet, first on one side, then on the other. Between every second and third door on either side of the hallway is a bench, wrought iron frame and wooden slats that looked weathered, although likely not by weather but perhaps by time and asses

A placard hangs on the wall on either side of me. On it is written “TELL YOUR STORY. KNOW YOURSELF,” in large, black block letters. Underneath and smaller is scrawled, “Good luck.” Though it appears to have been added by hand to both of the signs, they are entirely indistinguishable.

There are only two directions in this hall – forward and backward relative to the orientation in which I became conscious – and it seems important that I remember which is which. To my original left is a bench over which is hung the placard, while to my right the placard is separated from the nearest bench by a doorway, so as long as I remember that the bench-placard wall is left, I will know which way is which.

I sit down on the bench under the placard and contemplate the door across from me. It is the same white as the walls and has neither keyhole, nor peephole, nor knocker; its sole feature is a round brass doorknob.

I think that this is something momentous, these my first moments in this life. In my last life, my first moments must have been chaotic with a doctor and nurses and mother and father and grandparents hovering at the door and orderlies in and out. But I was barely present at that event, and here I am the only spectator and the sole celebrant to these minutes in this life. I try to feel the weight of it. I fail. Instead what I feel is an urge to cry out to the empty hallway, to ask where I am and to what end and what has happened to bring me to this place. Where is everyone else? What is behind the doors? And is this place good or bad? And why am I hungry?