Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine

Michael leaves this world and is transported to a universe of many worlds.
As he embarks on a journey that takes him from one world to another, his experience is of perfect people living perfect lives in their perfect world. Banquets, concerts, mansions, streets of gold, life's greatest pleasures, available to all.
But a narrow road takes him away from the route he's travelling, and he's drawn into darkness.
Standing on the edge of a dark and sinister world, he finds himself unable to move, and it's a mysterious stranger that leads him back to the light.
He pushes the experience aside and continues his idyllic journey. But the dark world is not finished with him yet.
He returns to the darkness, and from within its confines it seems that, this time, there is no way back.

The reader is challenged to determine the truth woven into the fiction and the fantasy.