I Saw God. He’s Nothing Like We Expect
I should’ve died. I was driving back from a friend’s house; admittedly, it was far too late, and I was far drunker than I should’ve been. But with the ride home at just under 20 minutes and the expectation of an open road at 3 AM, I figured it was worth the gamble. I wish I could give some dramatic lead-up to the crash. Honestly, though, even if I remembered what happened, it would take away from the stark reality that life is oddly anti-climactic in that way. One second, you’re going about your day. The next? Darkness. No dazzling near-death montage. No slow-motion farewell. Sometimes, things are just over. The cops and paramedics later explained that a big rig had struck me. Fortunately, I wasn’t at fault—but my drunken haze had surely dulled my reflexes, preventing me from possibly lessening the impact or avoiding it altogether. I still think someone had to be looking out for me at the hospital because I never had DUI charges brought against me. I digress… After the collision, everything immediately went black. I would say I sat in darkness for a while, but it wouldn’t be accurate. If anyone can think of a way to describe experiencing “nothing.” It was that. And then, gradually, feeling came back to my body. The world around me slowly became a white blur that eventually formed into a crisp void. It was as if the universe had blinked out of existence only to slowly reform around me in its most basic state. One where nothing had been created yet. Consciousness returned in sluggish waves. My mind strained to answer the most basic questions. Before I could even ask, “Where am I?” I had to answer what “Where am I” even meant. If you’ve ever been completely disoriented, you know how your mind scrambles to piece together reality in a desperate attempt to forge a larger, comprehensible picture. Problem is… I had no frame of reference for where I was. Even as my mind tried to catch up to my body, it searched for some kind of key to unlock the door of clarity. Only to find that even in the deepest recesses of my mind, that key didn’t exist. Great. I stood, and then, like a lightning bolt striking some repressed chord in my brain, everything returned to me. Who I was, where I was before the darkness and the best answers I could give to my pseudo-philosophical questions. For a moment, it was painful. So much so that it briefly sent me back down to my knees. Not just because of the shock of the moment, but because I knew something about this place was still in there. The void was warm. My previous drunkenness had gone. And I could breathe better than I ever could before. The air tasted sweet and smelled of apples. Odd. All I could see was white. No external sound was present. Testing this, I yelled, but the sound simply vanished. No echo. My first thought was maybe I was in a dream, but using the tried and true method of trying to (lightly) injure myself, I found that it wasn’t the case. My clothes made it to where I was, but my car keys and phone didn’t. With no means of communicating with anyone, the best thing I could think to do was walk. And so I did. For how long? I couldn’t even begin to tell you. The walk might’ve been one of the most disorientating parts of my “adventure.” One moment, it would feel like I had been walking for days. The next, I’d swear I had only been walking for a few minutes. The whole time, I never got tired or felt the need to eat or drink. My perception of direction warped. What felt like walking in a straight line would suddenly morph into the unsettling suspicion of endless circles or random turns. There were no landmarks to offer reassurance, just the persistent, illogical sensation of constant motion leading to nowhere. I had to stop momentarily because I could feel my brain breaking. Looking back into the white expanse, I caught a glimpse of someone mirroring my build and face, but dressed in clothes I’d never seen. I shouted for the other me and dashed over, only for the figure to vanish instantly, leaving behind a surge of alien memories. Memories of experiences I apparently had but swore I’d never lived. What the fuck was this? That was the moment I considered that I had to be in some sort of hell. Trapped forever in a silent void, doomed to go insane, surrounded by mirages and false memories. I slumped back into the nothingness, hopeful that even though I didn’t need it, maybe I could try to sleep and wake up in a better place. At least one with people? Sounds? Something. I closed my eyes and attempted to drift off into sleep. It was maybe five minutes of relentless dark before a sound pierced the silence: a whisper. A genuine murmur in this soundless realm. The words were indistinguishable, but I didn’t care. I jolted upright, straining to hear. It persisted. I ran toward the sound, using it as a radar to find its source. The louder it became, the more desperate I was to head in its direction. Countless minutes, hours, and likely days went by. My sole goal was to follow this one link back to humanity until… I found them. The whisper stopped. It was silent again. The silence gave way to a disquieting scene. A vast sea of people extending infinitely into the void. Some dressed in grey robes, others wearing everyday clothes. Each was separated by about six to ten feet. Every single person knelt in deep prayer. My gaze drifted upwards, mirroring the people down here; I noted countless dark lines etched against the white expanse. But my attention was soon stolen by something far more significant. Beyond the kneeling masses, a colossal form materialized on the horizon. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. But the more I walked toward it, the more I understood. It sat there. I’d estimate it was many, many times the size of the largest object humanity has ever built. It resembled a gargantuan brain, its silver surface slick with a viscous, translucent green slime, like a creature suspended within a gelatinous shroud. Elongated frontal lobes tapered into sharp, unsettling points. Countless tentacles extended from its body far into the distance. Two long eyestalks protruded from the top and bent back down to watch over the praying people. It never kept its gaze in one spot for long, but it certainly had more interest in some people than others. I looked around, and everyone stayed exactly where they were, praying toward this abomination. Instinctively, I shook the closest woman next to me. I tried to scream at her that we all needed to leave. I didn’t know where to go, but this obviously wasn’t safe. She didn’t so much as flinch when I tried. No time. I noticed I had caught the thing’s attention. I moved to the next man, and I got the same response. Another one. Again, nothing. “The hell is wrong with all of you?” I thought. There was no possible way everyone here was entirely unaware of the looming monster. I looked up, and those stalks were already over me. They stretched down until they were mere feet from my face. It made some deep, booming, unintelligible sound that almost resembled language before its tiny pupils dilated and flashed a bright light at me. I didn’t want to stick around and find out the reason for its interest. I sprinted in the other direction, pure terror guiding my feet in a random direction. I thought that finding people would be my salvation, only to realize that everyone else who made it here had found themselves in hell. Naive as I was, I thought I could outrun the thing until I was lofted into the air. One of its many slimy tentacles had wrapped around my body and was slowly making its way up my neck and deep inside my nostrils. The black streaks closed in as I ascended into the sky. Only when we finally stopped did the horrifying truth reveal itself. They were people. Fucking people. Each was a lifeless puppet dangling from thick, invasive tentacles snaking into their nostrils. For some, apparently, that wasn’t enough for the creature. It had entered through their ear canals. For others… The tendrils opted to pierce directly through their eye sockets. I didn’t know if anyone there was alive or dead. All I knew was that the bodies extended into the infinite as I looked out. As above, so below. Tentacles were branching off each other, constantly at work, continually bringing new people from the prayer pile into the sky with the rest of us. When I looked down, I could see some people being released, only for them to go straight back into prayer. I looked on in horror as tiny eyestalks emerged from the tentacle that had grabbed me. It looked deep into my eyes, and I could feel it reaching up my nasal cavity until it had penetrated my skull. I don’t know how I didn’t scream out in agony as it made contact with my brain. When it did, I assumed a horrific death wouldn’t be far behind. My eyes rolled to the back of my head, but instead of liquifying my brain or pulling squishy-bloody chunks out through my nose, something amazing happened. I saw a cavalcade of colors. The entire spectrum of light, shades I didn’t even know existed, danced before me. Strings of numbers and alien symbols flashed among them, forming equations, and somehow, I could process it all. For each second I watched this display, massive repositories of information flowed through my mind, and I began to understand more than hundreds, maybe thousands, of minds could comprehend. The numbers and colors blended together to form images I could feel. Images of me living past lives, not only as a human being, but all the way back to when we were single-celled organisms. Throughout all of time, every experience, every piece of knowledge, and every minuscule reaction to our world had been stored, and now, it was all coming back. Much had changed through my experience, but there was one constant throughout it all. One force that was always guiding me beyond where I could see. More accurately, it guided us and our world in far too complex of ways for me to begin to understand, let alone relay. But one thing was clear. He had somehow built much of our experience. He somehow had been the reason we were here. And we were all always meant to come back. And the reason why became clear. He was God. Not the God of the false stories they tell on our tiny little rock. No. The human mind, or at least the one we currently experience, is far too simple to understand something beyond creation. Let alone even begin to conceptualize what such a being could be. Or its purpose. See. We think in terms of ourselves. We believe such a being must look similar to us. Think similarly to us. Have goals that seem rather human. How naive. How do you explain a being that forms worlds using code and mathematics that our greatest quantum computers couldn’t begin to calculate? A being that can communicate vast amounts of information through a precise showing of color so effectively that even someone who had never seen its displays before would always understand it perfectly? A being with an absolute understanding of our universe, down to its most minute principles. This not only allows such a being the ability to predict all future events perfectly but also allows it to adjust those principles as it sees fit. I’m sure that even the form I saw wasn’t truly what it looked like. It was simply my mind’s best guess as to what I was seeing. The funny thing was, as I remained suspended there, absorbing this information, it became clear that I had been there before. We all have. We have all had these revelations and have been one of those people praying before him, hoping he would allow us to see just a fraction of a fraction of what he knows. Allowing for a glimpse into the infinite. Then, as abruptly as all this began, it was simply over. The void dissolved, replaced by a hospital room’s stark, sterile white. Blurry shapes gradually sharpened into the mundane reality of medical equipment. My mind struggled to ask the fundamental questions of what happened and where I was. Of course, I didn’t remember anything that happened. None of us do. And like everyone else, I would’ve moved on and gone on with the rest of my life. But recently, I’ve had these “dreams.” I call them “dreams,” though they feel like a continuous, unbroken experience that sometimes bleeds into the edges of my waking perception. In them, I’m back at that place, talking with the version of me I attempted to speak within the void. He tells me of my last experience there, and that time works in such a way that there is always a version of myself exploring. Sometimes simultaneously. To prove it’s real, I ask about things in my world. Things I have no business knowing but with the understanding that a version of me with this vast knowledge should. Every single answer given to me has turned out to be true. I don’t know where I heard this from, but someone suggested that our minds are almost like radios. Under the right conditions, we can tune into specific frequencies from outside our realm of existence. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here, but it fits. As I walk through this place in my dreams, more comes back. Sometimes, I lose other pieces, and I’m sure there are events I don’t recognize now that will return later. In fact, I’m almost certain that, given enough time, I won’t remember any of it. It’s a big reason I’m writing this down now. As I talk to my other self, he explains that he has this theory that there’s a reason for all of this. That “He” has some purpose for all of us, but needs us to reach a point where we can understand what was meant to happen. That part still keeps me awake at night… But I suppose there’s something that we need to have a certain amount of knowledge to do. There’s a level that each of us has to attain to even begin to communicate with him on his level, let alone become what is needed. As for me, I don’t think it was my time to stop learning in this form. At the same time, I can’t help but think that my going through that and relaying it to all of you was part of his plan. The truth is, I’m not the only person to speak of their experience with death. Maybe we need all of those people to talk about their experiences to really get an understanding of what we’re dealing with. Just a hypothesis. Still though. The more I think about that place and my time there, the more questions I have. Honestly, it’s been driving me kind of crazy, so I’m hoping that after I get this out, I’ll be able to stop thinking about it for a while. I just can’t shake the feeling that some bad events are coming down the pipeline, either. They always do, of course, but something says that a uniquely devastating event is coming for our species. I lost almost all of the information that flowed through me in that place, but I think something must’ve stuck. Some combined insight points to our world heading toward a truly awful experience. Think about it. This “God” never showed any signs of being particularly good or loving. Knowledgeable, yes. Yet, this same entity has overseen every mass extinction, every bombing, every act of human cruelty. The fact is, there’s a lot of learning through pain. I’ve become more fearful, knowing what’s out there but not knowing what it desires. And yet, a good part of me still wants to go back. But that place has a grip on my mind like nothing else. I’d be lying if I said that knowledge wasn’t absolutely intoxicating. Far beyond anything on earth could ever be. What more did I know? What does it want with us? Sometimes, I lie awake just thinking about everything it could share. These are questions that a million of us wouldn’t think of asking. And the answers a billion of us are dying to know. Knowing all that knowledge is just over the edge of death… And how easy it would be to just tip over. Let myself free-fall back into the void, back into a place where I can beg for that fraction of a fraction. Don’t worry. I plan on living until the day I die from natural causes. But it’s something I live with. And it makes me question how many people that place sticks with on some deeper level. Many of us don’t even know we want to return there. Because in reality, we belong there. It’s where all of us are destined to be. The one place we all know is at the end of our journey. I could go on forever with these questions, but there isn’t enough time in the world to answer them. So I simply want to thank those who made it this far. You can’t imagine how good it feels to get this off my chest. For those who have experienced something similar or had their own unique experiences on the other side, I’d love to hear from you as well. Please, take care of each other and yourselves. And remember, there’s no need to spend too much time staring into the abyss. The abyss is already waiting for all of us. Credit: Bryan A Young Reddit X Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.