It all started when Sam Harper died.
He had lived a fairly normal life—nothing extraordinary, just a good man who paid his taxes, waved at his neighbors, and attended church on Sundays. When the time came, the doctors couldn’t save him, and he slipped away quietly. As his vision blurred and the familiar world faded, he felt a strange pull—a light, warm and inviting, like the embrace of an old friend.
“Is this Heaven?” Sam wondered.
The light became brighter, pulling him upward, through the sky, past the stars. Soon, he stood at golden gates. They were even more magnificent than he had imagined, with shimmering pearls and soft music playing in the distance. Beyond them was a city glowing with eternal light. People laughed and walked with halos on their heads, singing hymns of joy.
“Welcome, Sam,” a voice boomed behind him.
He turned to see an angel, radiant and powerful, with wings that glistened.
“This is Heaven. Your eternal reward.”
Sam’s heart swelled with relief. He had made it. The afterlife was real, and it was everything he had been promised.
But as the days passed—or what he thought were days—something gnawed at him. The beauty, the light, the endless peace—it began to feel… off. The laughter around him was the same every day, almost mechanical. Conversations with other souls were eerily repetitive. They spoke in platitudes, praising the glory of God in the exact same words, as though they had no original thoughts of their own.
Then there was the music. It was perfect, too perfect. The same harmonious notes played on loop, never missing a beat, never changing. It was comforting at first, but now it was maddening.
Sam started to notice the cracks. When he looked too long at the golden streets, they shimmered in a strange, artificial way, like a poorly made illusion. The more he observed, the more he felt the world around him wasn’t as real as it seemed.
One day, Sam approached the angel who had welcomed him.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, his voice trembling. “This place… it doesn’t feel right.”
The angel smiled—a cold, calculated smile. “Heaven is perfect, Sam. This is your reward. Eternity in peace.”
“No, no,” Sam insisted. “It’s too perfect. It’s like… like a prison.”
The angel’s smile faded. “You’re beginning to understand.”
With a wave of its hand, the angel dispelled the light around them. The golden gates, the shining city, the eternal sky—it all vanished, revealing what lay beneath.
The sky was black. The streets were made of something cold and hard, like stone. The other souls—once smiling and singing—were now hollow-eyed, trudging in circles. They wore no halos. There were no songs. Only silence.
“This… is the real Heaven?” Sam whispered, horrified.
The angel nodded, its eyes now dark and empty. “This is the eternity you sought. Perfection comes at a price. Here, you’ll feel nothing—no pain, no sorrow. But no joy, either. Just endless, empty peace.”
Sam’s heart raced. “But… I thought Heaven was happiness forever?”
The angel’s voice was like a cold wind. “Happiness, peace… those are illusions. Eternity strips them away. This is what remains.”
Sam tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. The darkness closed in, swallowing him whole.
Heaven wasn’t what he had imagined. It wasn’t paradise.
It was worse than Hell.