sky to heaven - the invisible life.

I am in a cage of wood and steel, suspended in the air. It is being transported on a suspension cable, I can hear the metal wheels clickety clacking on the tracks. A single light bulb illuminates my cage, pendulating back and forth with the rhythms of the wheels. Every cage delivers its occupant to a chosen destiny, for some it will be a hell, for others heaven. I felt an ever growing sense of fear for the fate which awaited me. I tried my best to meet this fear with calm, for I knew if fear overcame me, I would not be able to confront anything at all.

The wall that was in front of me fell away as I approached my destination. My cage was nearing what looked like the interior of a large abandoned warehouse. I looked down and underneath it was a large, Olympic length swimming pool. It seemed pretty shallow, but the water was turbulent, and I could hear the small crashing waves of the water even though I was several stories above. It was dimly lit, with only a few lights hanging from the ceiling.

And the whole place was swarming with crocodiles. And they all looked and acted hungry. They lunged back and forth, writhing and pausing in anticipation like sharks on land. There were small groups of crocodiles on all the different levels of the steel structure, and there were crocodiles all around and in the swimming pool. So this was my destiny – to be eaten by crocodiles. And then my cage suddenly stopped, and I found myself falling. I looked up, and saw that the cage was going back towards the outside, and now I was attached to a guided parachute that was slowly descending towards the crocodiles. I found that I could control the direction of the parachute, but everywhere there were crocodiles, and they all seemed to be intelligently hungry - they were all eyeing me with anticipation. They seemed to know it was feeding time, as if this had all happened before. I was very nervous now, since there was no place I could land where there were no crocodiles.

And then I saw a cable stretching across the air. Since time and height was running out, I maneuvered towards it and grabbed onto it. I took off the parachute and quickly moved along the cable towards the nearest wall, which was fortunately very near. There was a narrow ledge near the wall, and lots of thick huge poles banded together with old cloth were lined up against the ledge. For a brief second, I thought I had escaped and perhaps I could stay in that safe spot forever, and wait the crocodiles out. Unfortunately, as soon as I had this thought, I saw one lone crocodile scramble up on the old equipment leaning against the wall. It clambered onto the ledge and made its way towards me. I quickly looked around for something to defend myself with, and I found…. a tennis racket.

As the crocodile slithered its way toward me, I threw the racket into its face and it landed directly in its open mouth. The crocodile promptly chomped on the racket and snapped it in two, keeping its eye on me all the time, as if it knew what it had in its mouth was just a racket, and he just wanted me to watch him crush that racket into tiny pieces, which would be what he would do to me. His power was real and he just proved it to me. And I could feel time shrink, for the cracking sound of the tennis racket in his mouth was my signal that only a few more seconds of my life remained before I became the cracking sound of bones in his mouth. And suddenly the reality of my own imminent death struck me, and I suddenly became, as if awake - awake to my own will to survive and live, which I had somehow forgotten.

At that instant, I resolved to fight. I was not going to die there a helpless, afraid coward. If there was any chance I could live, I was going to damn well try. I didn’t feel I really deserved to die here and get eaten by crocodiles. What kind of fate is that? I was really mad now. So I looked around again, not for something to defend with, but to fight with. And the first thing I picked up was… another tennis racket. I gripped it firmly in my right hand, and slowly crept step by step towards the crocodile, looking for the weakest part of its head and gauging its movement and attack sequence. I returned the crocodile’s glare with a glare of my own. If he was going to fight for his food, I was going to fight for my life, and I knew that that would be one of my few, if only, advantages. I knew that I had a chance. I did not stop to dwell on whether that chance was great or small, I only knew that it was a chance, and by god, I was going to make it for all it was worth. Perhaps by myself I could not defeat all the crocodiles, but perhaps in the old equipment lying around, I could come up with something else if I used my head. If necessary I would kill all the crocodiles one by one. I would not give up, even were I in the mouth of the crocodile, I would still fight for my life to the end.

And such was the moment when fear transformed into determination. I woke up from my dream then, and realized I was still alive - and all the crocodiles disappeared.