16 Finally gone…

[Melbourne, Australia. Year: Christmas Eve 2019]

Nothing but a black void surrounded him.

The last Alex remembered was talking to Kanghui about something before a push from behind landed him here.

It wasn't her. She was in front of him.

What was the something? He thought hard, but failed to recall.

Alex could hear a myriad of noises. Beeping, conversations all meshed into a huge noisy mess with their different pitches and tone, causing a migraine which felt like a sledgehammer slammed into his skull.

He tried to call out, but something was in his parched and sore throat. His teeth were biting down on something.

A pressurized push of warm humidified air had flowed through his bronchi down into his lungs, which expanded.

Then something sucked the air out from his lungs, causing rawness along his air passages.

A strange metallic taste was in his mouth where his lips felt dry and chapped. He could feel someone turning him and stuffing a pillow between his legs.

His legs felt cramps and a tingling sensation, as though he was wearing a pair of tight leggings.

Then a click.

"Alex Fu-Tales, DOB October 13th 1994, Patient number: 09645611. New. 10ml Propofol 20mg/ml, loaded. Ampoules are here."

"Yup. Correct patient on tag. So sign off here."

The medical jargon gave away who they were - either doctors or the nurses. Alex had never felt so alone in his life.

Kanghui's presence had but completely vanished the moment he found himself stuck in a purgatory of a body.

"Mr and Mrs Tales, we are so, so, so sorry. It is a tough time for you. We made sure that he was comfortable. Let us know when you are ready," said the voice of a staff trying to reassure his parents.

"Set the bolus on the morphine," another whispered.

Ready? No, Alex did not feel comfortable. Then a high feeling swamped over him. He was floating.

Was it the drug taking effect?

It felt similar to the weed he had tried in Nimbin during schoolies break when he was a teenager.

"W-why us?"

Alex could hear his father speak. His mother begun wailing in the background. Noises from the ICU grew shrill and louder, as though he could hear the entire place.

"Poor boy. His parents, so upsetting when one has to, you know, bury their only child and at such a young age," someone said.

"Let's hope for a Christmas miracle. I will add him to my thoughts and prayers."

"Yeah. Such a pity. To think that two days ago, his parents told me in the visitor's room that they were hopeful about his recovery. Nobody knew he deteriorated that fast. Nice people too. Bought my Nan a cuppa when I needed a break."

He felt weighed down by something heavy. Like in the depths of a lightless abyss.

"My boy, I love you so much, I-I-I just can't… oh my g-god, my l-l-little boy," his mother clung to his hand with hers while something wet dripping down.

"He is suffering, hooked up to the machine. We need to let him go. His condition… cannot be reversed," his father replied in a trembling voice.

"It so much like y-yesterday he stroked my face when he was a baby… oh g-g-gawd, my s-s-son, w—why…"

Alex wanted to tell his parents how much he loved them and that he wanted more time. But he couldn't. I don't want to leave, he said.

"Do i-it," his father signalled.

No dad, don't, Alex tried to say, but that damn hard plastic thing was in the way of his mouth.

"Alex, sorry to have to do this to you. We did our best," a male voice spoke. "Go for it," it lowered to a hush tone. "Leave the morphine in, so that it will ease his pain."

"Turn off the ventilator."

The beeping in the machine ended, and Alex felt suffocated as he tried to gasp.

"Take the ETT tube out." He could hear a low hushed whisper as though trying to not to let his parents hear.

They slid something hard out of his throat and he tried to gag, only to feel something slimy down his lips.

"Heart rate slowing to 45. SATS 60%, 50%…"

"Let go," Yata's voice called out to him. "Let go."

Easier said than done, Alex thought. Yata wasn't the one leaving his parents and what the hell was Yata doing here?

"Yes, let go. Frankly, it is easier," a deep husky voice whispered to him. "Damn, the spider is useless. Guess I have to yank you myself."

Alex didn't recognise that voice at all. It wasn't someone he knew. Why the heck yank him from his body?

Then a shrill long beep rang out. Something yanked Alex from his body into the air, into a scenery of a thick white fog around that filled him with dread.

Alex was no longer in the hospital.

Was he dead yet? Is it heaven? There was nothing but a surreal environment of white around. The source of radiating light came from all directions.

Kanghui mentioned something about letting go quickly before she unceremoniously pushed him into his body without his knowledge.

A blinding flash of light distracted him from the thoughts running through his head.

A numbness was entangling around his legs. He looked down to see blackish wisps entwining around his ankles and moving up his legs.

Before he could respond, something was pulling him downwards into the ground. The vision of the area was dissipating into the now greying clouds. He was free falling.

He felt a sense of impending doom suffocating him. His instincts made him stretch his arms upwards to anyone, even if he can't see anyone, in desperation.

Sudden shrill cries and flashes of yellowish light made him gaze downwards. The light yellowish illumination of an unexpected terror greeted his sight.

Below him was a bubbling, hellish fiery pit of humans screaming in torment and pleading with their hands outstretched. Their flesh was burning, yet not charred.

Emerging from the flames were flying creatures, heading straight for him.

They bore the skeletal frames of the bird-like creatures with long, sharp teeth gnashing away. How they flew defied physics. The eyes - there were none. Just a pair of deep black holes.

A strong gossamer silk grabbed him upwards and dragged him upwards. Something strong yet smooth entwined around his waist, squeezing him firmly, but not enough to suffocate.

He glanced upwards. To his relief, he spotted Yata in the clouds, using the silk spider thread to reel him up. Yata lifted his finger to the lip, bidding him to stay silent.

Why would the spider help him? Alex wondered as Yata pulled him onto higher ground while the skeletal monstrosities regrouped to aim for them.

"Brothers, it's your turn… to feed."

Two gigantic spiders appeared as they spewed out a golden yellowish spider threads from their mouths, creating a taunt but tough web of a net below the both of them much to Alex's horror.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THOSE BIRDS?"

"Fucking soul shearers," Yata shrugged. "Been wanting to get back at them since they pecked me out the last time I was here. 500 years of waiting for revenge.

"What are you doing here?"

"Remember when Kanghui asked for your choice and told me to stand by? It means that she granted your request."

Alex looked downwards and shivered at the sight of two gargantuan spiders rolling two screeching skeletal birds up in a cocoon. "W-W-what are they doing?"

"Eating the soul shearers. Don't worry about it."

"But those are bones only."

"Um. Not bones of calcium - that much I can guarantee you."

Yata then pointed to a spider biting into the cocoon. "Watch Ao feed. He is less messy than Shiro."

A strange, whitish wisp was being sucked from the cocoon as it slowly shrunk into the spider's mouth. Then it chewed up the now deflated silk cocoon. It looked up at Yata and a terrified Alex. With a wave of its long hairy front leg, Alex could have sworn that the spider smiled as it disappeared.

"That's the process of soul shearing?" Alex asked.

"Yup. Soul shearing, but you are intact with your seven components of the soul, so not a ghost. Kanghui wanted to get Avici off your back with us, so you got lucky."

"Wait. I was being used? Hey… isn't Avici the Buddha dude?"

"Oh honey, he may be the Buddha dude who 'looks after'…", Yata said, "… the incessant suffering in our Hell, but those soul shearers are also his."

"How much trouble would you be in?" Alex asked out of curiosity, wondering why Yata would go to such trouble.

"None. Avici actually like us. One of our fore-bearers did a very good deed. Tried to pull a soul out with his silk, but as the story goes, that soul went to cut the thread holding the other desperate souls. So the silk broke from the lack of compassion for others."

"I thought that was Sakyamuni, not Avici, in the story of Kumo no Ito, the Spider's thread," Alex said.

"Uh huh, wise ass… what did they say about the rest of us in the legends and how did we compare in reality?" Yata asked.

"Oh never mind. But where are we off to now?" Alex noticed they hadn't moved for a while.

"Take my hand," Yata offered his to Alex, who glanced at it with disdain, remembering it was a spider's pedipalp.

"Oh, for fuck sakes, I haven't screwed a female spider for 500 years. It's clean. Besides, we don't piss out of our sexual organs like humans do."