{"sf1_id":283401,"sf2_id":"GnDAv061","title":"Finis","author":"Revresbo","words":495,"posted_at":"2011-09-03T10:17:00.000Z","tags":["Death","Hell"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/283401-finis","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/GnDAv061","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/1d/a7/1da78612-69a4-4d00-9898-84dd80e0bb41","description":"","content":"At first, it wasn't so bad.\u0026nbsp; There wasn't really anything to hurt him.\u0026nbsp; As a matter of fact, there didn't really be anything at all.\u0026nbsp; He'd been warned of the heat and how it might singe his fur, but his fur didn't seem to be on fire.\u0026nbsp; Actually, he couldn't tell if his fur was anything.\u0026nbsp; He culdn't feel it.\u0026nbsp; He slowly came to realize this.\u0026nbsp; He couldn't feel his fur.\u0026nbsp; Why?\n\nHe tried to move, to touch himself, but he couldn't move.\u0026nbsp; Or could he?\u0026nbsp; He couldn't feel himself moving, either.\u0026nbsp; It wasn't like his muscles were unresposive; rather, he couldn't feel his muscles at all.\u0026nbsp; He tried to open his eyes, but it seemed they were already open.\u0026nbsp; He tried to blink to clear the darkness away, but it seemed his eyes were already closed.\u0026nbsp; _What the hell is going on?_\u0026nbsp; The irony of the question didn't occur to him.\n\nHe gradually came to realize that all of his senses seemed to be unresponsive.\u0026nbsp; He couldn't see, hear, taste, smell, touch; he had no sense of balance or acceleration; temperature and kinesthetic sense were gone; and, perhaps oddest of all, he couldn't even feel pain.\u0026nbsp; Or was that oddest?\u0026nbsp; No.\u0026nbsp; He had no sense of the passage of time.\u0026nbsp; He could not tell if he had been in this state for seconds or years.\u0026nbsp; Yet he was... conscious?\u0026nbsp; Could he be sure?\n\nHe remembered a philosopy class, and specifically Descartes.\u0026nbsp; _I doubt, therefore I must be_.\u0026nbsp; So, he existed.\u0026nbsp; But did anything else?\n\nIncreasingly, he had the feeling that something was missing.\u0026nbsp; Something more important than even his missig senses.\u0026nbsp; But what?\n\nHe spent an eternity pondering the question.\u0026nbsp; A moment after he started, he had exhausted the list.\u0026nbsp; Everything he could think of that he might be missing from before was not what caused this emptiness he felt.\u0026nbsp; After another eternity (or was it only a moment), he recalled what others said they had.\n\nHe scoffed in his mind immediately, but some small part of him wondered.\u0026nbsp; He had thought it beyond unnecessary.\u0026nbsp; To him, it had been nonexistant.\u0026nbsp; And yet...\n\nHis logical mind tried to find a parallel.\u0026nbsp; It hit him then.\u0026nbsp; What if he had been ignorant of gravity his whole life?\u0026nbsp; It still would have pulled him down to Earth regardless of whether he believed it wholeheartedly or proclaimed its nonexistance.\u0026nbsp; Yet, had he been put in a world without it, he would have noticed its lack even if he knew not what he lacked.\n\nA minute or maybe a year of thought made it clear to him.\u0026nbsp; A famous passage came to his mind: _In the beginning_...\n\n_So_, he though, _this is what I get.\u0026nbsp; After a lifetime of saying there was no God, I got my wish.\u0026nbsp; A world without God._\n\nAnd then, with the clarity of a mind that had spent all eternity in thought, he realized, a moment after he arrived: _I am in Hell._\n\n  \n  \n\n"}