Since I always believed what evangelists told me, I really expected to see a bright light, followed by either a booming voice inviting me to step forward, or a mangy hippy named Jesus to seize me by the wrist and drag me to the pearly gates.

Those television miracle men are full of shit. Let me be the first to murder your assumptions. Okay, maybe you're smarter than I, and you already figured all that out. Since I choose to consider myself a trailblazer in the realm of spritual discovery, I'm gonna stubbornly insist I'm the first person to return with concrete answers. I'm back to kill speculation with hard fought true death experience.

Something did happen after the rats gnawed me open. I died, of course. You know that. My spirit did not float upwards. I saw no light. There was no heaven. Well, there might be. I chose the first option. Let me explain.

It was like a three card monty game. I had to choose one of three options. The cards (more like cowbells) rung and glimmered on a low resolution Atari screen. I was disembodied, corporeal, a floating notion.

No, not exactly. My existence was... shit, this is tough to describe. I was a ping pong ball in a slingshot, and I got to decide which direction to sling. Bell one, two, or three. A little girl's voice floated to me on a nonexistent breeze. She said:

"One bell will send you back whence you came! One bell will send you to the next place! One bell will wipe you away! Go ring a ding a ling! Tee hee!"

The fucking bells weren't labelled. So I shot for the first one, and I got sent back to earth. How come more people didn't get the resurrection bell? Maybe I was special. Maybe I was Jesus.

Nope.

I woke in the same body I left. I didn't start breathing again. I didn't heal. I just awoke. My flesh was soggy and bloated where it still clung to my bones. My finger meat had been nibbled away by maggots, rats, and possibly homeless children. In the time since my death, my body had drifted from the sewer tunnel down to the bank of the Des Plaines River, where it lodged in the brackish mud. I was half-submerged in greenish muck. It was soft.

I sat up. "Aw fuck, I stink." I tried to say that. What I got was a huge slimy wad of murky water, algae, and necrotized flesh. It wobbled down my disintegrating tongue when I tried to speak and weakly tumbled from my mouth. It landed in my lap with a weak "thoock."

"Damn." I tried to say that, but my jaw unhinged on one side and dangled. I tried to snap it back shut, but before I got the chance, a strong wind blew it off. It sunk in the river. This was not going well. How was I going to murder every rodent on Planet Earth if I kept melting?

I felt a rumble inside. Yes! My renewal must be starting. I would rejuvenate! I would become a normal pink person again! Resurrection time! Good, because K-Mart would never sell me guns and ammunition if I was green, grey, and dead all over.

The gut percolation tickled. It felt nice.Then I felt an itch under my ribcage. Strange, and not pleasant. I poked my stomach with my sharp index fingertip and it went through my belly like a spoon through pudding. Ooo.

My tummy exploded and a horde of baby rats stumbled out, wailing and hairless. Their parents had been fucking and birthing in my ribcage, and my waking had aroused them. That tickle was no cell regeneration like I'd hoped. It was just more goddamn rats. I tried to stand up and do the hokey pokey to shake them all out, but the sodden cartilage gluing my bones together gave way, and I disintegrated into a pile of foul death. Worm food.

How depressing. Then I was back at the bells.

I might write a completely different part four and turn this into a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I might just slog ahead to part five. I have no idea. 3:14 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm