text: A man dies. Death comes to collect him and tell him of his eternal fate. When the man reaches the afterlife, he is first startled and then smug to find that the afterlife has all the comforts he had hoped it would have and he is content in the knowledge that surely he’d gone to Heaven for Hell was said to be full of tortures that surpassed anything mankind could think up. Even as he came down from his haze of smug self satisfaction for what he saw as God agreeing with him and thus allotting him a special place in Heaven, he was greeted with the sight of dishes upon dishes being brought out, all by the most beautiful men and women he had ever seen. The only thought that greeted the man as they lifted the lids of the dishes of different and delicious looking foods was that he deserved this. He was right. He didn’t notice anything was off until he had been there for time immeasurable and he went to once more bite into a slice of pie that was literally exactly how his mother used to make. Instead of the flavors that he expected to greet him, he tasted nothing but ash. Frowning and taking a bite of another dish, he tasted the same flavor. It was exactly the same flavor. Ash. He started to notice that while what he ate still filled his stomach comfortably, he could no longer taste any of it. All he could taste no matter what he ate or drank was ash. He was put off by it and stopped eating soon after it was proven that he could no longer taste the flavors that he knew he had tasted when the feast started. He soon found other pleasures to occupy his time, the main one being the pleasures of the flesh. He had a far better time than he did in life and he thought that surely if things like this were in Heaven that God had no problem with him vigorously partaking. He did so and as he moved from person to person taking what he wanted, he began to feel less and less. Soon no matter what he did, no matter that he had been given the stamina of a man in his prime, he could not satiate himself. He always wanted more and the encounters became increasingly unsatisfying. He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself that he felt these encounters less and less. He didn’t want to face it when he realized that he finally felt nothing despite how good it had all felt when he had started. Slowly, the pleasures of the flesh were stripped of their pleasure and he abandoned such things, for surely there were still plenty of things for him to enjoy in the afterlife. It wasn’t until he had gone through the multiple (and at one time, enjoyable) aspects of the afterlife that he realized that he had nothing left to do, for everything he had once enjoyed had become a chore. Nothing that he enjoyed still existed as it had when he had first come here. Nothing caught his interest like it used to. The afterlife had become bland instead of pleasurable and he was left with bland, beautiful, boring people who only ate and partook of the pleasures of the afterlife as if they could still taste and feel them. It was at this point that the man realized that this was his reality for the rest of existence. He then began to realize that despite what he initially thought, he had not gone to Heaven or any incarnation of such a thing. He had gone to hell, surrounded by the joys of life and unable to enjoy partaking in any of it. It was only then that the man began to regret. Too bad for him that regret did nothing to get one out of their deserved fate. He had every pleasure he’d enjoyed in life slowly taken away from him until he had nothing left and that was to be his existence from then on. The man did not rage, nor cry, nor even react at the realization of what his eternal existence now was, for he no longer cared. He was empty.