White.

That was all there was.

Ethan opened his eyes and saw nothing but more white. No ceiling, no walls, no sky. Just an endless sea of white as far as he could see.

He lay on something that seemed to be nonexistent - nothing, but still giving the feeling of support under him.

He sat up.

And then he stood.

The process was too smooth and easy. There was no stiffness in his joints, no feeling of heaviness in his limbs.

The only thing that he experienced now was standing upright, staring into a completely uniform sea of white which blurred the boundaries of his vision when seen for too long.

He turned left. White.

He turned right. White.

"Where the hell am I?"

He tried remembering what happened to him recently, what led him to this point. The only thing that he clearly remembered was the office building - the other guard, the envelope, the boss’s face.

Then came the long way home through the cold. But after that - nothing. An eternity of nothingness instead of memory.

He had no recollection of arrival.

He did not remember falling asleep.

And this certainly was not his apartment.

"Where the fuck am I."

These words didn’t have any emotion to them anymore, sounded as a statement instead of a question. He directed them at the endless white and got no reply from the void.

With a clenched jaw, he looked around, desperately trying to find something which could be used to make sense of the situation.

And then, a voice came from behind him.

"Hello, Ethan."

He turned around.

It was an old man sitting on what seemed to be a wooden stool placed in an entirely inappropriate place, the middle of an infinite white void.

The man must be in his eighties or nineties already, looked fragile and hard to predict at the same time. He had long, white hair, hanging on his back and melting smoothly into the background.

His robe was white as well, with blue trimmings around its edges, looked plain but deliberate at the same time. There was a gnarled wooden staff in his left hand, resting against his shoulder.

The thing that attracted Ethan’s attention the most was the eyes of the old man. They were white as well, lacking any pupil or iris - just two colorless spots on his face, staring at the horizon ahead in complete silence.

Ethan stared at him.

The old man seemed to stare at him in return, or at least it appeared that way considering the white eyes he had.

"Who are you?" Ethan asked.

The old man straightened up and stretched both hands widely to his sides, like someone making a big statement at last.

"I am a god."

Silence.

Ethan stared at the old man with his white eyes. He turned his gaze towards the white void around them, then looked back at the strange man sitting on his stool, still having his staff in his hand.

’Is this old man alright in the head?’ Ethan thought.

Again, he couldn’t really say where he was, how he got there, or what was going on, but knew for sure that panicking would lead him nowhere.

Also, the only source of information about the whole thing was standing right in front of him. So he followed the example of the man in front of him and raised his hands to the sides of the body, copying his posture.

"Oh, okay," he said, keeping his voice absolutely calm. "Then I’m the richest man on earth." He held this position for a brief moment. "Now - can you tell me who you are and where we are?"

The old man’s eyes narrowed and he slowly lowered his arms.

"Are you making fun of me?"

It wasn’t a question.

"I am a god," the man repeated in a voice suddenly getting weight in it. "And you are a dead man."

These words hit Ethan’s heart.

He quickly lowered his hands and his artfully shaped face expression collapsed without his consent.

"What do you mean I’m dead?"

Again, his voice was trembling. Ethan hated that.

There was no reply to his question.

Instead, the old man raised his wooden staff in front of Ethan, pointed it in his direction. He did it in a deliberately slow manner as if he wanted to allow enough time to observe the effect that was about to take place.

Suddenly, Ethan felt pressure in the air – invisible energy started swirling in front of him, first slowly and calmly, and then quickly contracting.

The energy finally tore open, leaving a small hole in the void of white, a portal showing something that was definitely not white anymore.

This thing was roughly the size of a window. Behind it, Ethan saw the street where he lived. He recognized its pavement and streetlights, the road itself in the night.

It looked completely empty as he had never seen it, and yet something else caught his attention - a completely still body on the pavement, lying face down and having a deck of cards near it.

It was his own body. Still as a rock.

Ethan stared at the portal with horror.

He saw the unbreathing chest of his, his hand open and unmoving on the pavement and the card box his sister gave him next to it. This was all that he saw in the portal and couldn’t look away.