Ante-Purgatory

*this is a very short piece, i had made which was based on Dante's purgatorio...which i am trying to explore the idea of a different afterlife...what do you think??

“By judgment, I had failed.” Canto whispered to himself as a ray of light that had cloaked his figure began to fade away. He shot his eyes one last time to the silhouette of the Deity above him. Faint murmurs of disappointment echoed to his ears before a crowd appeared around him. Their heads were bowed down with hands covering their mouth.

He gazed downwards to where they were looking. By his feet, he saw himself outstretched on the centre of the road. Like a clock, one hand lay upwards above his head while the other was pointed at his side. His face was pale like the moon with eyes blankly looking at the darkened sky. His mouth was gaped open with a hint of blood flowing from the corner of his lips.

He stammered back placing his hand roughly against his chest. By his chest, he felt no faint beating from his heart. It was just an empty silence. He clenched his fists hard closing his eyes hard.

When he opened them again, he stared at the various people surrounding the body. Some widened their eyes in shock while others tried to gaze away from the sight before them. They stood there still as if waiting for his body to rise up from the ground. Behind the crowd was the sound of the ambulance. It was parked behind a large bus that had collided with a medium sized truck at the centre of an intersection. Doctors came out from the ambulance helping out the various people who lay injured on the street. Their screams echoed to the distance that gathered the attention of people four blocks away from the site.

“I deserve this, do I?” he murmured to himself before his transfixed his gaze upward. The ray of light had now disappeared to a mere twinkle. Canto bit his lip once more; his arms fell heavily on his sides when the first droplet came down.

People began to move away from his body. They went to the sides under the protection of the buildings. Only a number of nurses and hospital volunteers stayed behind. Their faces were partly covered from the green raincoats they wore over their heads. They covered the body with a thick green blanket and lifted inside the ambulance. As the doors were shut closed from me, He closed my eyes once more feeling the four-ringed chain wrapped tightly against each of my arm.

“I deserve this, do I?” he repeated as he turned around. His body was now within the confines of the ambulance. There’s nothing else I can do, he thought as he held one of his arms as he walked in the rain.

One by one, the people by the side of the street began to blur from his sight. Their faces and their clothes were now nothing but a mass of disheveled lines. Their outlines were a surrounded by a faint blue aura. From this, Canto saw other figures appearing before him. They walked sluggishly with bent backs. Their naked fleshes were covered with mouths. Each mouth muttered a single event from the figure’s lives.

Canto sighed slowly as he heard a faint murmur by the back of his neck. The voice talked hoarsely about his birth. Around him, the buildings lay static with no hints of life whatsoever. As he cast his eyes downwards, the cemented grey road darkened. It’s stretched endlessly to the distance. On its surface were dark outstretched hands of figures. They danced endlessly trying to escape from their confinement. Their faceless heads stared blindly at him while their moldy hands gripped the soles of his feet.