The rain started to fall today, but it didn't make it to the ground...

I didn't know why.

Why was I alive?

"The wages of sin is death..." I muttered in self-pity as I stumbled aimlessly across the plain with drunken steps. Thunder rumbled overhead from deep inside thick, dark clouds. The scent of rain threatened to muddy the dry dirt that was crunching under my almost-bare feet. Some of the dirt was becoming fine between my toes and surely callousing my heels. But I kept walking, no matter the threatening darkness looming overhead or the pounding of my head due to earlier sun's heat. An aching in my chest reappeared, not where my heart was but where that bloody stone once rooted itself, giving me strength and keeping me alive.

Alive...why was I alive? The stone was gone, now. I knew I'd ripped it out...nice and painfully. A parasite crawling on the floor with tears in its wide, forsaken eyes.

That's what I am. A parasite. What death is the wages of; a sin.

So why wasn't I dead?

It melted in my...its scrawny hands. I am an it. It said its "bye, bye", and withered into dust. Suicide formed by a tragic being, envious of the lives of others. Envious that it wasn't human and didn't want to live anymore. It watched in envy, sulked in envy, slept in envy, lived in envy. It was Envy.

I am Envy. The ugliest sin. The deadliest. What death is the wages of; the result. I died.

So why wasn't I dead?

When it dissappeared into dust, everything around it suddenly grew calm. It felt its conscious, its spirit if it had one, linger in the presence of the lives it envied...but it was me now, wasn't it? I didn't have that body anymore. It had disintegrated; gone. So I...I spent a few more seconds, unable to leave.

I would've liked to shout at them. I wanted to scream, "You bastards! You can't let me leave, even after I've died!" even though I knew it wasn't them keeping me there. I didn't know what it was. I just wanted to scream, for the hell of it. Even if they wouldn't hear me.

I saw their faces. They were filled with the most pitiful expressions; I laughed at them instead. They were pitting me, weren't they? What idiots. Why would they pity me? Well...yeah, I knew why. I couldn't deny it at that moment. I knew why. That guy had said it...the shrimpy guy with such familiar blonde hair. The whole reason why...it killed itself was because it didn't want them to pity it. It didn't want them looking at it with such sorrowful eyes. It left them; I left them. And I gave every damn about what they thought, even after I'd died. In that moment, I took one last look at the blonde shrimp. And one thought went through me at that moment.

Thank you, brother.

And nothingness consumed me. Like it had been waiting those brief seconds for me to think that very thought. Maybe I said it out loud. I didn't hear it, but I know it coursed through me. But why did it want me to say that? Acknowledge, say, whatever. Why am I even considering this like it was a living being? It was nothingness. In the nothingness, I heard nothing. There was nothing. But I did hear it.

Nothing was saying something. Nothing was calling for me to go away. I tried to ignore Nothing, but it pushed at me. In all resistance, I felt myself being dragged away, and pushed away at the same time. In the same direction.

I didn't want to leave! I wanted the nothingness. I didn't want to go to Heaven, or Hell, or any afterlife! I wanted to stay!

But I didn't. when I knew the nothingness had vanished, I expected to be plunged into fire, or clouds, or whatever. The fiery depths of Hell would've suited me moreso than Heaven, so I expected it.

But instead of fire, I got this. Dirt.

I knew I must've still been alive. That was the only explanation. No afterlife I'd ever heard of was ever described like this. I ended up on this road to nowhere, stumbling, desperate to find....something.

I was on a road.

And I wanted the hell off.