363 | False Beliefs Trap

363 | Evan, Abby, and Diesel Experience the Afterlife and Discover How Their False Earthly Beliefs Trap Their Souls

Chapter 1: Four Friends Die Together and End Up in Different Parts of the Afterlife

As the four friends die together and end up in different parts of the afterlife, their unique spiritual journeys begin. The four of them die together. Again.

And again, they don’t end up in the same place.

Chapter 2: Evan Tries to Rescue Abby From Walking in Blind Circles

While wandering through a gray wasteland, Evan tries to rescue Abby from walking in blind circles caused by her unquestioned earthly beliefs. “Abby!” Evan’s voice rips across a gray, endless plain. His throat feels raw, but he keeps shouting. “Abby, where are you?”

A faint echo comes back, thin and far away. “I’m over here!”

He follows the sound.

The mist thins, and the scene hits him like a punch: thousands of people shuffle across a dead flat plain. Every one of them wears a blindfold. Every one of them drags a heavy chain locked to a massive lead ball. The balls grind tracks into the dirt, forming wide, perfect circles.

Abby is one of them.

“Abby!” Evan sprints to her. The links of her chain clank with each step as she walks, head bowed, lips moving like she’s mumbling a prayer. “What are you doing here?”

She stops, turning her blindfolded face toward his voice. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she says, breathy and almost happy. “I’m walking the path to the Promised Land.”

Evan stares at the deep rut she’s worn into the ground. “You’re chained to a ball and walking in a giant circle,” he says. “Take off your blindfold, and you’ll see it.”

Abby tightens her grip on the chain, knuckles white. “This chain is my guide home. I’d be lost without it. I have to trust it. I have to trust blindly, or I’ll be in serious trouble.”

He looks around. Souls bump into each other, trip, fall, stand, and keep going, stumbling over the same rocks again and again. Their skin is torn. Bruises bloom purple and black. Some lie on the ground, only to be dragged forward by their chains.

“Abby, your soul is beat up,” Evan says quietly. “You keep tripping over the same obstacles. You’re getting hurt in the same places, over and over. Look.”

Something slithers past his foot. Snakes coil along the ruts. Spiders crawl over torn ankles. Farther away, shadowy shapes with teeth lurk, striking whenever someone stumbles.

“Snakes, spiders, worse,” he says. “They’re attacking you. Why don’t you use your own intuition—your inner sense—to see where you’re going?”

“I’m supposed to have blind faith,” Abby answers, voice firming as she repeats something she’s probably recited a thousand times. “I have to be long-suffering. I have to endure hardships until my Rescuer comes to save me. Someday, He’ll make everything right.”

“I’m here,” Evan says. “Right now. I’m trying to save you. But you have to let go of the false, blind beliefs that are keeping you chained in this… this hell.”

She flinches at the word. “I was warned this would happen,” she whispers. “That tempters would come, trying to trick me into losing my faith in this path of suffering. You might have been my friend once, but now you’re working for them—the Tempters. You want to destroy my blind beliefs.”

Evan swallows. “Where did all these assumptions even come from?”

“My Rescuer spoke to me,” Abby says. “Through one of His trustworthy recruiters.”

The memory rises in her voice, like she’s replaying a recording.

“Your soul only has two afterlife options,” the Recruiter had said. “You can choose eternal happiness or eternal torture.”

“That’s the most extreme threat I’ve ever heard,” Evan says. “How do you know that recruiter was telling the truth?”

Abby laughs softly, like he’s asked if the sun is real. “That’s a silly question. He wore a black robe and a white collar. He carried the one Big Book with all the truth anyone could ever need. He told me exactly what to believe to get a free ticket to the Good Place.”

“Did you ever check any of it?” Evan asks. “From any other source?”

“Fact-checking is forbidden,” Abby says. “Unless it’s done with the Book of All Answers. I was told to be long-suffering and assume I’m doing the right thing. That way, I lower my chances of being tortured for questioning what he said was the truth.”

“So the book proves itself,” Evan says slowly. “That’s it. No outside evidence. No questions allowed. That isn’t logical, or scientific, or even basic common sense. Abby, look around. How can all these souls be so sure there are only two choices, in a world this huge, this diverse?”

“I don’t have options,” Abby insists. “I have one choice: keep walking blindly toward the Promised Land.”

“Walking in circles with your eyes shut gets you nowhere,” Evan says. “If you opened your eyes, you’d see it: some ‘expert’ conned you into believing there are only two choices.”

“The penalty for non-Absolvers is too awful to think about,” Abby whispers. “My beliefs—my presumed beliefs—trigger both conditional and unconditional forgiveness of my sinful karma. My loving Rescuer took away my sins.”

“Then why are they literally chained to you?” Evan asks. He taps the lead ball with his foot; it thuds, heavy and final. “If someone carried your sins temporarily, they’ve been given back. All of them are stored in this ball, anchoring you to this circle. Abby, you’ve been blackmailed into believing the only road to paradise is through assumed redemption. You were offered instant, unconditional absolution. But the threat of eternal suffering is what really holds you here. It keeps you blind. You can’t see your enemies.

“Please,” he says, softer now. “Open your eyes. Be free of this curse on your soul.”

“No.” Her voice shakes, but she holds it together. “No. That’s not true. I’ve been freed from the power of sin and guilt. You don’t understand the big picture. All my unquestioned beliefs depend on each other. They hold each other up. I have to believe everything the Promoter told me, even if none of it makes any sense.”

She’s breathing harder now, words coming quicker.

“I have to assume I only get one real choice: get an eternal happy life. If there are more choices, then my soul’s options expand.” The idea clearly terrifies her. “Right now, my only option is to believe all my karmic sins will be washed away, and I’ll be made perfect in an instant.

“I believe the Tempter is standing right beside me, holding a can of gasoline, ready to light me on fire if I stop blindly believing I’ll be washed clean by the Holy Ghost. My soul’s purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So please, step aside. I need to keep moving. If I stop, I’ll burn.”

Evan watches her mouth move. “Why do you keep opening your mouth and sticking out your tongue?”

“I’m asking for my daily bread,” she answers.

An angel glides past the line, silent. When he reaches Abby, he places a small, flat piece of bread on her tongue. She snaps her mouth shut.

Evan turns to the angel. “Why such a tiny piece?”

The angel’s eyes are old and tired. “I have more,” he says. “Plenty more. But she won’t open her mouth again until tomorrow. Absolvers only accept a small portion of truth. They’re afraid that too much will destroy their blind beliefs.” He pauses. “And they’re right.”

The angel disappears into the crowd.

Evan steps forward, grips the lead ball, and lifts. It’s heavier than it looks, but it rises. He holds it out to Abby. “Here,” he says. “You carry your own sins for a while.”

She hesitates, then takes it. “Wow.” She staggers under the weight. “This is… heavy. But it feels like… like a lost part of my soul. I feel lighter without the chain constantly yanking me to the right.”

“You’re free to choose your own path now,” Evan says. “But you have to take off the blindfold. You have to let go of the beliefs that keep you blind. Open your heart and mind to the whole truth—nothing less—so God can actually help you.”

Abby clutches the ball of dense, buzzing karma against her chest. Then, with shaking hands, she reaches up and pulls off the blindfold.

For the first time, she sees.

A deep circular trench scars the ground where she’s been walking. Blood stains the dirt. Her own footprints overlap so many times they’re just a blur. Around her, other souls limp and stumble, faces bruised, eyes sealed shut under fabric.

“I…” Her voice cracks. “I’m shocked.” She spins slowly, taking it all in. “I’ve been lied to. I’ve been lied to, too. Where am I?”

Her eyes widen. “Everyone! You’ve been misled. Open your eyes!”

The Absolvers flinch. Many raise their hands to their ears.

“There goes the Tempter again,” some mutter. “Trying to shatter our blind faith.”

Abby stares at them, hurt and furious. “Why won’t they listen? I can see everything now, so clearly. I see what they can’t, but they won’t trust me. They’re such fools.”

She turns back to Evan, tears on her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for rescuing me. I’ll trust you completely now. Just tell me what to do. Take my hand and lead me to the Promised Land.”

Evan lets out a hollow laugh. “They won’t let you in with that sinball,” he says. “You have to reincarnate and pay off your own debts.”

Abby looks down at the heavy sphere in her hands, feeling the truth of it tugging at her soul.

The circle, for her, is broken.

Chapter 3: Abby Rejects the Blinding Light and Chooses a Dark Cave

After abandoning her karmic chain, Abby rejects the blinding light and chooses a dark cave of familiar illusions instead. Abby wakes from a long, foggy dream.

She’s lying on something that isn’t exactly ground. It’s more like a solid shadow. The air is thick and bright at once, like staring into headlights.

“Something’s different,” she says. Her voice sounds too loud in the space. “I think… my body died.” The thought is cold but distant, like it belongs to someone else. “But this isn’t what I expected.”

She tries to stand.

Chains rattle.

Dozens of them wrap around her arms, her legs, her torso, coiled like metal snakes and sinking into her skin. Each link pulses, humming with something heavy and familiar.

“I can barely move,” she mutters. “How do you expect me to fly with this on?”

Hands—light, almost transparent, but strong—reach down from above. A blinding, intense light burns overhead, like a sun cranked up far past normal.

“Come with me,” a calm voice says from the light.

Abby squints and shrinks back. “The bright light…” Her throat tightens. “It intimidates me. I don’t trust it.”

Her old beliefs kick in, automatic and fierce.

Heaven is supposed to be comfortable. Heaven is supposed to feel like hanging out with friends. Heaven is supposed to be pleasure.

“Heaven is where I can do whatever I want,” she tells herself. “I want pleasure. I want my friends. I want people who think like me.”

Something else stirs in the darkness below her.

Comforting tentacles—shadowy, soft, almost warm—coil gently around her ankles, her wrists. They tug her downward like an embrace.

Familiar.

Safe.

Abby glances up at the harsh, blinding light, then down at the cool, inviting dark.

The angelic hands wait, patient.

The tentacles tighten.

She chooses.

Abby lets herself fall toward the dark.

The tentacles pull her down, into a wide, shadowy cave. The air is cool, the light dim, and a glow flickers from a screen against one wall.

“That bright sun was too hot,” Abby says with relief. “Too irritating. I’m going where it’s cool and dark.” She laughs softly. “I always kept my blinds closed at home so I could see the TV better. This place…” She rotates slowly, taking it in. “This cave looks like my living room.”

On the wall, a movie is playing. A voice she recognizes. A plot she knows by heart.

Abby slips deeper inside. “Now this feels right. Familiar comfort at last. That bright light was messing with my fantasies. I couldn’t see them clearly.”

Shapes move in the dimness.

She squints. “Wait… now I can see some of my friends.” A smile spreads across her face. “Hey! Hey, everyone. I’m here. I’m so ready to start my free eternal vacation.”

Her friends grin, relieved, tired in a way that doesn’t show on their faces.

“That’s what we expected, too,” one of them says.

“Where’s my Brother? The Savior?” Abby looks up toward the cave mouth, where a distant blinding glare presses against the dark like a living thing.

One friend lifts a chained arm and points. “That distant, hot, bright light out there? That’s the Savior. We were invited to come closer once, but… the closer we got, the more our bodies started to smoke. Like we were going to burn away completely. We barely made it back in time.”

Abby shakes her head. “No. That can’t be right. I’m a Believer. I get special access. I’m supposed to stand right next to the Savior. My Big Brother will make me perfect so I can hang out with Him, drink tea, walk together, talk.”

“You were conned,” another friend says bluntly. “You’ll be made perfect, yeah—but by burning off everything that isn’t already like Him. Most of you will go up in smoke. What’s left is just the part of your soul you have already made perfect. Maybe a speck of dust floating in the light.”

Abby’s chest twists.

“My intuition tried to tell me,” she murmurs. “All those years, it kept warning me my simple, blind beliefs were childish fantasies. I wanted an easy afterlife so badly—a vacation. I shut up my conscience when it told me I had to actually become like my Savior if I wanted to stand in His presence.

“I trusted the people who said I just had to be an innocent, long-suffering bystander. That he’d do all the work.”

“We thought the same,” her friends admit. Their chains rattle when they shift. “We were foolish Absolvers, expecting all our flaws to be magically transformed into perfection. We didn’t try to be fruitful. We didn’t multiply our talents. We didn’t learn to cast out demons, work miracles, heal the sick or raise the dead.” One of them laughs bitterly. “We didn’t even learn to take responsibility for our own messes.”

Chapter 4: Abby Learns Her Sins Were Not Erased and She Must Master Cosmic Wisdom

Watching the celestial infomercials, Abby learns her sins were not erased, and she must master cosmic wisdom before she can escape her chains. The TV in the cave flickers—a voice drones on, explaining spiritual laws in slow, painful detail.

Abby frowns. “What’s happening now?”

“This is a temporary celestial sanctuary,” one friend explains. “We’re waiting for another body. When the time’s right, we’ll reincarnate.”

Abby looks around again. “It seems… nice.”

“It does,” the friend says. “At first. Then a hundred years crawl by. You can’t go outside without getting burned, and the TV keeps replaying the same infomercials—over and over—about everything we should have learned while we were alive.”

“Then I’ll just sit here and watch until I understand everything,” Abby says quickly. “Then I’ll go join my brilliant Brother in the light.”

“We tried that,” another friend says. “Didn’t work. Knowing ideas in your head isn’t the same as living them. We have to unlearn our false beliefs, give up our selfish desires, and surrender to our Creator’s master plan. Then we have to master cosmic wisdom, divine virtues, and our inner senses and powers.

“And that takes actual practice. Real choices. Real experience. In a physical world.”

Abby’s head spins. “I believed my Savior took away all my sins. All my imperfections.”

“So did we,” a friend says. “But shortly after we got here, all the misused energy we dumped on Him came back. We had to bear it ourselves. That’s what these chains are.”

Abby looks down at her own links. Each one glows faintly with memories—times she lied, hid, denied, blamed. Her own face flashes inside them, over and over.

“The Savior took our sinful karma for a while,” the friend continues, “but He expected us to learn how to transform the energy we polluted. Those sins weren’t meant to vanish. They were meant to be returned to us so we could clean them up and reclaim the energy. It was re-given, not erased.”

Abby nods slowly. “That… actually makes sense. But I’ve lived on one fixed set of blind beliefs for so long, I don’t know how to open my mind anymore. I was trained not to ask questions. Anything beyond simple, illogical answers was called ‘mystery’ or ‘unknowable.’”

She wraps her arms around herself.

“I looked forward to being made perfect,” she whispers, “because all my unasked questions smothered my curiosity. My creativity. I could barely think near the end. My whole world shrank down to mindless emotional highs.”

The TV grows brighter, then dims.

“That wonderful Holy Spirit fire we once felt?” one of the friends says quietly. “It left when our karmic chains were given back to us.”

Abby closes her eyes.

The cave is comfortable, but now she sees the bars.

Chapter 5: Diesel Wakes Up as a Ghost and Learns to Possess Drunk People at a Bar

Completely oblivious to his own fatal car crash, Diesel wakes up as a ghost and learns to possess drunk people at a bar to fulfill his earthly cravings. Diesel blinks awake.

“Something is very different,” he says. The words slur out of his mouth, but his head feels too clear for a hangover. “Oh well. What’s next? How do I get some fun around here?”

He pats his chest. Still solid. Sort of.

“I must be alive,” he decides. “I still exist. I’m thinking. I’m feeling. I’m talking. If I were dead, I wouldn’t be doing any of that.”

Around him, ghostly figures drift through what looks like a city street right after midnight—dim lights, wet pavement, neon signs that flicker in and out of existence.

Some of the people look almost normal. Others are faded, blurred, moving as if they’re underwater. A few barely have outlines at all, like half-erased chalk.

“Am I stoned?” Diesel asks himself. “Did I take something new?”

He watches a man pass by. The guy’s outline shimmers. His lips move, but no sound comes out.

“Those people…” Diesel squints. “They’re not normal. They’re glitching. Some of them are… talking without talking.”

He realizes he can hear whole sentences, but no mouths are moving.

I’ve seen something like this before, he thinks. Drunk. Stoned. Hallucinating.

Except now he’s inside the hallucination instead of watching it from the outside.

“I need a drink,” he mutters. “That’ll fix this.”

He starts walking.

At least, he thinks he does. Every step feels slow and heavy, like he’s wading through thick syrup. The rest of the world speeds past him—cars zipping by as if on fast-forward, people flickering from one side of the street to the other.

“Wow,” Diesel says. “I must be exhausted. It’s taking forever to get anywhere.”

He reaches for a door handle.

His hand slides straight through it.

Diesel jerks his arm back, staring at his fingers. They’re pale. Faintly transparent.

“I can’t open a door,” he whispers. Panic flares in his chest. “My hand went right through it. What is this? What did I take?” He presses his palm against his face. It feels real enough. “I must still be dreaming. But I just woke up from a super long, super realistic dream.”

An older man walks toward him, moving quickly, sharply focused compared to the haze around him.

“Hey,” Diesel says, stumbling toward him. “Where’s the bar?” The words come out thick and slow.

The old man doesn’t even blink. He walks straight through Diesel, not looking back.

Diesel spins around. “I said—” But the man is already far away, halfway down the block.

A young woman flickers into view right in front of him. She’s bright, solid, and pretty as hell—and then she blurs and vanishes behind him like someone switched channels.

“She was cute,” Diesel mutters. “I must really be losing my charm.”

“Or your body,” a dry voice says behind him.

Diesel turns.

A pale, not-quite-solid guy stands there, eyes amused. “You look confused,” the stranger says. “Name’s Waunt.”

“Dude,” Diesel says. “You look… sick. You okay? Is this some new COVID variant? I don’t mean to be rude, but you do not look normal.”

Waunt chuckles. “You must be new. You probably just lost your body. Takes time to get used to being a ghost. It gets easier once you figure out how to get what you still want.”

Diesel rolls his eyes. “Sorry, man. You’ve got me mixed up with someone else. When my body dies, I stop. No more thinking, no more feeling, no more anything. That’s how it works.”

“Good luck with that belief,” Waunt says. “I tried telling myself the same thing. It just made me miserable until I finally woke up and realized… yeah, my body was dead.” He tilts his head. “How did you die? Want to go see the corpse?”

Diesel snorts. “Whatever disease you’ve got really fried your brain. I heard COVID does that.”

Waunt shrugs. “What’s the last normal thing you remember?”

Diesel frowns, thinking.

“I was driving home from the bar,” he says slowly. “It was dark. I was pretty drunk.” He gives a crooked grin. “But I’m still a good driver when I’m wasted.”

He remembers headlights.

A blaring horn.

A stop sign he never saw.

“This big truck came out of nowhere,” he says. “Slammed into the side of my car. I watched the whole thing. I don’t know how I survived. The car was… shredded.”

Waunt’s eyes soften. “You didn’t.”

“Wake up,” he adds. “Your body didn’t survive the wreck.”

“You’re lying,” Diesel snaps. “I remember climbing out of what was left of my car. I saw it from the outside. Someone else was in the driver’s seat.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “I remember someone telling me I was too drunk to drive, but I ignored them. I thought I was alone. Maybe I met someone at the bar who looked just like me. Maybe he drove.”

Waunt raises an eyebrow. “There it is,” he says. “You were driving home alone. You smashed into that truck. You left your body in the wreckage. You stepped out as a ghost and didn’t realize it.”

The memory sharpens.

Diesel remembers looking back into the car.

The broken windshield.

His own face, slack and twisted, half-buried under glass.

His stomach drops.

“This is depressing,” he mutters. “I need a drink.”

Waunt smiles slightly. “There’s a bar right there,” he says, nodding to a neon sign that reads BOTTLE & BONE. “Follow me.”

They move together in slow motion, gliding past the rushing blur of the physical world. People shove open the bar’s door, sweep past them and slam it shut again. Waunt and Diesel wait until the next person opens it, then slip through like smoke.

Inside, the bar is warm and loud, but Diesel hears everything as if it’s underwater. Music thumps. Glasses clink. Laughter explodes in sharp bursts.

Diesel heads straight for the counter. “Two beers,” he says, slapping his see-through hand on the bar.

The bartender doesn’t flinch. His motions are fast, jerky, like a video on 2x speed. He pours drinks for living customers, never once looking Diesel’s way.

“They must be slammed,” Diesel mutters. “He’s moving so fast he doesn’t even see me.”

“You’re dense,” Waunt says, amused. “Watch.”

He drifts toward a man slumped over his beer. In one smooth motion, Waunt steps into the man’s body, aligning his ghostly form inside the physical one like a second skin.

The man lifts the glass and takes a long swallow.

Waunt sighs through him. “Now that,” Waunt says, voice vibrating inside the guy’s chest, “feels good.”

Diesel shudders. “Okay, that is way too weird.”

He reaches for a beer on the table next to him, fingers stretching toward the cold, wet glass.

His hand passes through it like it’s fog.

He grabs again. Nothing.

“I don’t get it,” he says, frustrated. “What is this disease?”

“Don’t worry about the diagnosis right now,” Waunt says, slipping back out of the drunk man and reappearing at Diesel’s side. “Just copy me.”

Diesel picks a guy at the far end of the bar who’s already three drinks in. He tries to slide himself over the man’s body.

The instant he makes contact, the drinker shudders violently, jerking upright.

A spike of energy slams into Diesel and hurls him backward. He sails through a table and lands in a heap on the floor.

“What was that?” Diesel gasps.

Waunt floats over, smirking. “You picked someone who wasn’t drunk enough. He felt you trying to ride his nerves. You have to choose people who are really out of it, or they’ll notice you and fight back.

“Same rule as when you were alive, really,” he adds. “Easier to use people who’ve already numbed themselves.”

Diesel rubs his chest out of old habit. “How long have you had this… whatever this is?” he asks. “Is there a cure? Because I got all twelve COVID shots and boosters. I’m supposed to be fully protected.”

Waunt laughs, low and dark.

“Welcome to the afterlife,” he says. “No shot covers this.”

Chapter Synopsis: Evan, Abby, and Diesel find themselves in different parts of the afterlife following a fatal crash. Evan discovers Abby walking in blind circles on a grey plain, chained to a heavy ball of karma and wearing a blindfold reinforced by false, fear-based religious beliefs. After Evan helps her remove the blindfold and see the truth, Abby rejects a blinding heavenly light. She retreats into a dark cave with familiar television comforts, where she learns from fellow souls that unaddressed karmic debt and a lack of cosmic wisdom leave them trapped in chains. Meanwhile, Diesel wakes up as a ghost after a drunk driving accident and teams up with another spirit named Waunt, learning how to possess intoxicated people at a bar to chase his earthly cravings.

Core Themes & Laws:

• Unquestioned, fear-based religious beliefs act as blindfolds and karmic chains, trapping souls in endless repetitive circles of suffering and false security.

• Fleeing from raw truth because it feels too intense leads souls to seek shelter in comforting, low-vibration illusions and dark caves.

• Karmic debt and misused energy are not magically erased; souls must eventually face, clean up, and transform their own energy through active mastery and real experience.

• Dying with unfulfilled physical addictions and denying one's own death leaves ghost-world entities stranded, driving them to parasitize intoxicated living people.

Key Entities Featured in this Document:

• [Evan]: A discerning traveler who rescues Abby from her blind circles and urges her to open her mind to complete truth.

• [Abby]: A soul trapped by unquestioned dogma who initially walks a karmic trail before rejecting the blinding light and choosing a comforting cave.

• [Diesel]: An unready driver who dies in a car crash and wakes up as a disbelieving ghost learning to possess bar patrons.

• [Waunt]: An experienced ghost guide who introduces Diesel to the mechanics of ghostly possession in a local bar.