the reckoning

The light that pulled him here has diminished and Joshua is now in some sort of a receiving area. At least that is what it feels like. There are small groups of others here, but he is alone. He can feel energy emanating from the groups, and one unit of energy is somehow familiar to him, but not in a comforting way. In a disturbing way, in a way that makes him feel sad and somehow ashamed.

An energy form approaches him (it is undulating bright blue) and it pulls him in, then pushes him out and he sees it, what he did that brought him here: A young Black woman with braided hair that falls a little short of her chin, and he is holding a gun at her, confident that there is no danger because it is liquor store in what his mother would call a good neighborhood and the Black woman is so lovely, and she is clearly frightened when he tells her to clean out the cash register. Hearing a noise behind him, he turns for an instance so he doesn't see her pull out her own gun from under the counter. He hears the shot before he feels anything. And he turns and shoots her back and sees her fall a few seconds before he does.

There is the light and the tunnel.

Then this place and he knows, although he can't say how he knows, he just does, that the disturbing feeling coming from the group is the Black woman, and he realizes that he has been wrong for a long time. He was so sure that because there was so much evil, betrayal and hatred in the world that there couldn't possibly be a God

or an afterlife. But he was wrong.

Because he is alive, although dead, and he knows there will be a reckoning.