The In Between

     It's the blackness that hits you first. They always say that death is light, a tunnel. None of it is true. Death is more of a void, deep and black. You know you're dead, when you wake up. You can feel it in you very core. You can feel the loss of everything you wanted and worked for, everything you loved and cared for. It's an ache that never goes away. Even the souls who have been here from the beginning of this place say they still feel it. That is why we work so hard, to keep the others from experiencing this kind of pain. We have been doing well, only one other has shown up after me.
     Who I am and how I got here is unimportant, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I must account for everything before I move on. I must keep people from making the same mistakes as I did.
     When I was living, I was known as Anna. I had a mother, and a father, and a sister. I had a best friend, Leah. I died when I was sixteen. I had been walking home with Leah when a drunken man hit us with his car. Leah died with me, but her soul went to the good place. My soul was sent here. That is all I can remember of life. I cannot remember any other names or faces, places or things. All I know is that I would do anything to get it all back, to end the ache in my chest.
     Here we have no names or faces. We just are. Some call us ghosts, and some call us angels. We are neither; we are caught in a kind of purgatory. We are simply between living and dead. I suppose if you were going to label us you would call us guardian angels. We watch over the living. We are that guiding voice in your head you call a conscience. We protect you from our fate.
     You see, what I told you about the blackness is true. When you die you are surrounded by blackness. You spend an eternity in the blackness, waiting, but a light always comes.  If you are to go to Him, you see a lantern guiding you across the sea and sky to where He dwells. If you are to go to The Others you see torches, they guide you down to the caves of The Others. If you are to remain in the In Between, you see the colors. It starts as a shimmering. The air becomes fuzzy, and then all of a sudden you are surrounded by a rainbow. Billions of strings of light floating around you that seem to stretch on forever. These are lives; the lives of every one on Earth. If you touch one, you're flooded with the knowledge of that person. What they have seen and done, all of their hopes and set backs. You will know their life story. To "talk" to the person, you have to grasp their lives and will your thoughts into theirs. It's quite exhausting.   
     I was quite good at my job. I liked having this small contact with the world I had left behind. It was only when he came along that things started to go downhill. He had the most colorful life I had ever seen. When I first laid eyes on it, I knew I had to have it. I had to be the guide to this person, no matter what the cost. That is when my destruction slowly began to unfold.