She felt her blood forget her, her heart forget her, her brain forget her, her bones forget her. Throughout life the body holds on to the soul. Death is a forgetting, and when the body forgets, it loosens its grip, and the soul falls out. That is the simplicity of death. It was so dark and so hollow here. There was no noise, no smell, no feel. And yet its hollowness was very, very huge. Something was chasing her. “Why am I still awake?” She answered her own question, and at once: because you expected to be. Death is whatever you expect. If you expect heaven, you get it, or hell, or nothing. And you are also your own judge: you give yourself what you deserve. The fundamentalist creates his own hell, the Catholic his purgatory, the agnostics wander empty plains, muttering to themselves. As she had died, a cat had come leaping out of the ceiling, Now it was behind her, stalking her.
