then she sat me down on a cold stone throne

Somehow, the brutal responsibility of it all - presiding, ruling, judging death over others - doesn't seem to matter, so much.

Not anymore.

Not after...how long has it been?

It's been...inured away.

In comparison to the automatic non-choice of not being alive (or reliving, over and over, in grisly, separated chunks), it almost feels...industrious.

At least there's some sort of work to do.

Nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to find out what's beyond the cusp, necessarily. Because certainly, what lies beyond is much, much worse than what lies here.

All made up of long pauses and immaterial jurisdiction.