I had done all that I was going to do in the world.

As I lay there in the in the slippery street, the towering streetlights shining down on the coarse mixture of oil and blood smeared over the black pavement, I knew my broken limbs would never move again. My systems were slowly shutting off, one by one, like a gasping factory at the end of a long work day.

It was funny though, because as fluids flooded from puncture wounds and my veins became ice in the absence of warm blood, a torrent of new life gushed into me. The experience was akin to the euphoria of gluttonously gulping gallons of water after unending hours of sweat-shedding, dehydrating, physical labor, but to a transcendent degree.

Then, the flood became a fountain, and I was thrust into the sky, high above the metallic wreckage of my dark-grey Honda and the hulking, rustic, red semi truck that slammed my car into the side-railings of the overpass, casually casting both broken vehicles down to the earth below.

However, as I floated up and up like a weightless red balloon, I didn’t resent the truck driver at all. The man was probably tired, and may have just momentarily poked his head into that time rift of sleep which distorts a blink into a nap.

I didn’t resent him at all. I also didn't resent dying at all.

I had done all that I was meant to do in the world.

I fought in a war, directly saving a few lives, but directly taking some as well.

I met a little girl that rocked the foundations of my personality and built me back up better than I was, and I did the same to her.

I raised two kids without ever growing up myself, and last time I checked, they were were everything I meant them to be, and nothing like my parents.

I wrote. I created. The gears of my imagination turned and jolted like clockwork moving faster than time, and the factory of my mind produced stories that will engross and fascinate society and scholars alike.

The last thing I ever did, the last real thing, was talk to my little brother. I went to his average, white-walled, brown-roofed home, and sat him down on his maroon leather couch, in his dimly lit den with its dark mahogany floor panels, and I talked to him.

I boosted him up on a throne, instead of shoving him in the dungeons as I always had. I apologized for all my wrongs. With my strong right hand clamped fixedly on the muscly section between his neck and shoulder, I greedily revoked my words of abuse and torture. I lifted off and threw away all the thoughts that weighed him down, the ones that I had stacked there. I allowed him to stand up and stretch delightedly his unused muscles of action. I looked through a blurred window into his glassy eyes and I consoled him, and I counseled him.

His life began there.

Mine ended.

Finally presenting golden, glowing life to a brother whom I censured into slave-like submission was my final deed.

After I righted my last wrong, took back the scornful words of our past, and handed my brother the shining key that would unlock the door to life, I jubilantly slung open the door to my dark-grey Honda, hopped in, and headed happily home.

In that moment, I experienced true perfection. My bucket-list was empty, every box on my to-do-list satisfyingly slashed though with a big red check mark.

I now know that the sensation I had as I zoomed along the streets of Earth, comfily cushioned in the black leather seats my little Honda—that sensation was self-actualization.

That’s why the truck driver destroyed my body. I didn't need it any longer.

I was freed, like my brother was, and I drifted peacefully, like a feather swooshing side to side on the wind, into the next world.

I can’t remember now, as I suspect we are not supposed to remember, but as I transcended one Realm to the next, I caught a glimpse of gold. It was as if the halcyon rays of Heaven’s light shone out of a gap in time.

I’m not quite sure, as one can never be when attempting to decipher the signs and sights of God, but it seems as if those divine beams burned into my soul some knowledge which does not belong in the Universe.

I have gazed into the light and I have seen. Through a boundlessly traveling, all-seeing eye I have seen not just cities of gold, but entire planets forged from the stuff. I have seen humans from the history of Earth, the greatest of their kind, strut the silver streets as gods—and I saw others. Crowding the streets I saw thousands, maybe millions or billions, probably an infinite amount of other races and species and animals and…classifications and distinctions which frighten me to even begin to fathom, let alone describe. The history of the Universe was inscribed there on tablets of gold. What was most compelling however, was something I noticed on a single stone tablet.

Carved deep into the rocky composition of the tablet were words, figures that I do not even comprehend as writing, eternally ancient symbols that weren't quite symbols, that weren't quite even physical, that were just there, hanging in half-existence.

Somehow, however, I understood what the ethereal inscriptions said—not word for word, for the words don’t exist outside of God’s own mind—but I captured the idea.

God, whatever it may be, established a hierarchy. Every being starts the race of life on the same footing as his companions—or his competitors. Every being is given equal ability to ascend its ranking. Every being begins Alive. Every being may Die. Some Die quick, some Die at the very end of their time in a Realm, but every Living being can continually ascend through the Realms without Dying, until it is proclaimed worthy, and elevated to the ultimate level of the hierarchy, where it becomes a god, and lives forever in the world of God. However, if it Dies, meaning it has forsaken self-actualization, then while its body may continue the robotic, restrictive pattern of its Realm, its soul is butchered, and it truly Dies, never to ascend a Realm again, and never to set foot on the brilliant blocks of gold that are the stair steps of the world of God.

I do not know the name of the world, I cannot call it a Realm because it is not confined within the Universe or of its dimensions, it is simply the ultimate, free from the tightly-bound constraints of time. Rightfully, one may only gain admittance to the world and when one is admitted to become a god, a feat achieved through consistent self-actualization in a countless Realms.

I am one that has moved on to conquer another Realm. What makes me distinctive, however, is that I am aware of my achievement. No Living being is knows of its previous self-actualizations, if it has any and is not in its first Realm, for it would gain an advantage over all Living beings, an advantage I now gingerly possess.

It seems as if a dark dusty covering has been wiped off by the wholesome hand of God, like a paleontologist brushing aside the red sand that concealed the white bones of an ancient beast.

As a matter of fact, I have realized that if I squint my eyes and stare deeply into my surroundings, as I do when seeking elusive prey, I can just detect this delicate, gilded veneer that blankets the Universe. It’s as if the light that flooded out of the hole in time on the day of my death has poured over all that exists. Every mountain, mound, lake, valley, plant, being, is painted in translucent gold—even the air is coated in it.

Although, mountains, valleys, beings and air of this Realm vastly contrast with that of the Realm in which I drove my Honda.

In this Realm, there are only monsters.

I thought I had known monsters on Earth, crazed serial killers and lurid rapists, great grizzly bears and man-eating sharks lurking beneath the waters of wavering shadows—but here are the true monsters.

On this planet we call Zulroth, each one of us roams forever the deep purple swamplands that bubble with murky poison pools. We tenaciously chase our prey like bull-rushing rhinos sprint-pounding through the savannas. We do not stop for family, we do not stop for friends, we fight whatever animal we can eat, even that of our own dark-furred, ebony-horned, four-footed race.

How do I ascend from a Realm in which I am, by nature, a beast surrounded by beasts?