I was surrounded by loving faces. My family, my kids, my wife of 49 years and even our dog on my lap when I died. I guess it might have looked peaceful for anyone watching, I was dazed and sleepy from the painkillers so I couldn't talk much and everything I did say felt muffled and slurry. Inside of course, I was in a state of utter panic. It's one thing to know in the abstract that death is near, quite another to have heard a doctor tell your family, in the nicest possible way, that you probably only had minutes of existence left. I could feel a wave of pain in the distance, kept at bay by the morphine but always just over the horizon, till the dam broke, the pain hit me all at once and then just like that I knew I was gone. The lights went out and I took what I thought would be my last breath.

That was, until I was suddenly and unexpectedly sitting on the side of a hill in what was unambiguously a wildflower meadow in the English countryside. A minute previously, I had fully expected to fade to nothing, for my existence to be extinguished and for the void to swallow me. Instead I was sitting on a nice tartan blanket, the warmth of the sun on my face, and looking below me at a nice hedgerow with elderflowers in full bloom, overtopped by a dignified old elm tree. I could smell a hint of salt in the air, I got up and took a few paces up the hill and sure enough, the field extended about another hundred yards downhill until the grass gave way to white sand and a calm sea beyond.

I wasn't alone either, as I made my way toward the beach I walked past young couples giggling and chatting on blankets much like mine, Families eating picnics with their children and their dogs and their elders, and groups of children running back and forward between the sand and their parents sitting on the grass, dogs, toys and sometimes the occasional enthusiastic grandad in tow.

Aside from the lovely vista, I noted as I walked along that my health had drastically improved in the last few minutes. The illness I had been suffering from these last few years was a wasting disease, slow and relentless it had taken my mobility, my coordination, my ability to feed myself and finally I suppose my life. I'd lived to be 78, people who live as long as that are described as having had a good innings. I would have been quite happy with the same again. Anyway now I felt not one minute of my years. I could have jogged, or run or cartwheeled down that field if I'd a mind to. No longer was I the bedbound mess I had been, my family dilligently cleaning and changing me and making sure I was comfortable. I felt like a young man in the prime of my life.

I must have walked for 3 or 4 hours along that beach, the warm sand between my toes, the laughs of happy strangers surrounding me. And in that time I thought about what I must have done right in my life to end up in such a tranquil place after. I had always been a churchgoing man, every Sunday we went to the same little church in our village. We sat in the same pews, sang the same hymns as they appeared and disappeared in their cycle over the year. Attended communion and said my Lords Prayer when called to. But the dirty little secret between me and my maker was that I didn't believe a word of it. I enjoyed the community, the friends I made along the way, As for the religion itself, a fairy tale for children. As for the rest of my life, I brought up 4 children to do as well as they could. They were happy children and moody teens and disapointed adults. They all moved away from our little town to find their own way eventually. They worked in jobs that I didn't really understand, and weren't always happy. My wife wasn't always as happy as she could have been, she told me I was boring, too sensible, too careful. But we loved each other and we worked out our problems. I wasn't the worlds best man. I thought about other women but didn't act. I got angry at my kids and my friends but didn't let it spill into grudges. I got angry at the changes in the world that I didn't understand, but I didn't let myself become a bigot. I bit my tongue a lot these last few years!

I guessed that must have been enough for God. Because here I was in Heaven. As I walked I let my imagination drift further. I could be happy here, for the years I had to wait until I was reunited with my family. They would be young and strong again like I was, and recovered from the stresses of the word.

I spotted a nice looking little village in the distance and started making my way there. The sun was starting to go down and I was surprised to find that even in the afterlife you need to sleep. As I walked off the beach and up some steps that led to a harbour, I could see a man who wasn't quite like the others around me. He was tall and slim, pale like he had recently been sick, with grey hair and a walking stick. I was surprised to see anyone could be sick or injured here, so I waved and walked over to where he sat on a little wooden bench, looking out over the ocean.

"Good Evening" I said, taking a seat next to him. " A fine evening for sightseeing"

"Hello", said the man tersly, "I wager it's not so fine an evening as you think George, your family wouldn't describe it so anyway"

Taken aback in two ways, because this man knew my name and because he was right about my family, I exclaimed "Who are you?! Where are we?!"

"I am called Slater, George. Though the others in my department call me Sel. I am the demon in charge of this part of hell"

I felt like the carpet had been pulled from under my feet. "How can this be hell?" I asked, "there is no torture here, no fire and brimstone and magma"

Slater, Sel, looked at me sadly. "It's been the work of my life to create this place George. It's hard to create anything lovely on our own, without the light of the almighty to give it life of it's own. Hell is the place we were given outside the presence of God. To make what we could of it and house those who chose not to enter Heaven."

I have a million years here, as you'll see, perhaps in another chapter of this story I can get in to the meaning his words. For now though his sober news was enough for one night.

"Fall all my labours though George, there is no love here. Most of the people you see are facsimiles I made to give the place life and atmosphere, they are no more alive than a painting or a movie on a screen. You probably don't notice the real people, walking the beach or the meadows or the forest in silence, alone. For those people, and you are now one of them, there is no comfort in a sunny day or a peaceful tableau. The only torment that hell really produces is that everyone comes here on their own, and no one who loves them ever comes after."

The full meaning of this last part hit me like the death wave, come for a second time. My family, my friends, none would follow me here. I am to wander this countryside as a stranger forever.

"If we are to be alone together forever Slater, then why even make such a place, with the fake happiness and the copies of people"

Sel said "because if we were not able to sometimes lose ourselves pretending that some of the happiness around us was real, then this place may as well be the hell you expected"