After a six-hour long near-death experience (in which I entered a state of indescribable communion with the Great God Pan in his highest cosmic form, looking as if he was made of all of the stars and galaxies in the Universe), my mother told me that the first time she came to visit me at the hospital, right after surgery when I was practically comatose, she clearly heard her sister’s voice in the room with us. My aunt was telling her “I’m so sorry, I was so selfish, I’m so sorry…” over and over again. That freaked my mother the hell out, so much so that she was still very deeply disturbed even a year afterwards.

 

I naturally DIDN’T tell her about my whole experience on the other side, the part where Pan looked at me from the corner of his eye and smiled upon me knowingly, and I then fell into his endlessly spiraling ram’s horns, literally made of the fabric of the cosmos, and ended up walking down a spiral staircase made of black stone. Not a proper staircase really, simply steps made of probably onyx, floating above oblivion. After quite some time walking down the onyx steps, I found my aunt completely listless on the stairs (she had violently put an end to her life five years earlier), and she said, “I’m more lost than ever, this is the Abyss, I’m more lost than ever”. Without thinking, I took her hand and replied, “You’re not lost anymore, I’ve found you.” She looked up, her eyes full of life again, and that was it, next thing I remember was waking up at the hospital days later.