Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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"So..." Arielle covered her mouth and coughed again. "So if I were to go upstairs... what would happen?" She cringed. "Aside from the raging migraine and the stomach ache, that is. Will I faint? Throw up? Be... rebooted, or something?" She wrinkled her nose. "Can ghosts die again?"
"Oof." Penelope floated over and waved at Arielle. "Calm down, or your brain will explode. You need to learn to take it easy." She lowered one arm to her side and lifted the other to rub her palm over the back of her head. "Look, you won't faint or throw up or... be rebooted? Whatever the hell that means. And no, ghosts can't die again. But they can... be transferred."
"Transferred?" Arielle blinked, still having trouble ignoring the mild red glow in Penelope's eyes. Why hadn't it left? Was she still in anger mode, repressing her crazy self to not freak Arielle out? "Transferred where?"
"Well, if you... push your limits one time too many, if you ignore the perimeter and try to pass through it... you might be switched over to a different realm." Though she'd resumed her nonchalant demeanor, Penelope's face twitched for the quickest of seconds; so quick Arielle might have missed it had she blinked again. "And it's not a fun area, so if I were you, I wouldn't press my luck. Don't venture upstairs."
"I don't want to," said Arielle, crossing her arms as a chill coursed up her spine. "But... what other realm is there? The Void, the... Soul place, and... what else?"
Penelope immobilized, her pupils rounding, her fingers stiffening. "Terror."
"Terror?" Arielle cocked her head. "Are you saying it's a realm of terror, or...?"
"That's its name." Penelope spun away and wavered over to the other room on the ground floor; the one Arielle hadn't ever bothered to check out. She stopped in the doorway and sighed before pivoting to Arielle once more. "The Terror Realm. We ghosts... don't talk about it."
The chill in Arielle's spine spread from one shoulder to the other, expanding from her neck to her waist. Its fluctuations were like an icy blanket being placed on her back and vibrating its coolness into her skin. "Terror realm? So what... it's like hell, or something?" Penelope began to frown, so Arielle held up her hand and shook her head. "Sorry, I know, heaven and hell don't exist, but I need something to compare all these weird dimensions to. Something to prepare me."
Penelope shot over to her, and her whooshing caused a slight gust to batter against the walls, as if to rip the wallpaper off, to shred through it. "Nothing prepares you for Terror. Nothing."
Her eyes were like saucers, the chords in her neck rigid, and her arms like planks of wood. What had her so on edge about this other realm? She was here, in the Void, stuck of her own accord; so how did she know enough about the Soul and Terror realms to spook her so much?
"And besides, you won't go upstairs to test this out, will you? I don't want you risking yourself. You might not be transferred or sucked in right away, especially for a first offense... but it's best not to taunt fate."
