Lucas didn’t know what to do. He was good with people, he was likeable, it was a compliment he always got, at least back when he was alive. Everyone had said so.
But this wasn’t just about being friendly. He had been friendly, and tried to chat with Wendy, Anita, and Milo, but he had been able to tell right away that the conversations were fake. He was good at reading people, and he knew that these people didn’t want to get to know him. They were cold. Did something happen to people when they died, that made them this way? He had tried with others, to share about himself, his family, his life and death, and asked after theirs, and no one had wanted to talk.
“Rough out there, huh?” a voice said.
Lucas turned. It was Lucile. The young woman stood at the periphery of the room, gazing at all the hushed conversations taking place in front of them.
She continued: “See, it’s obvious why they won’t talk to me. Everyone hates me, because I was the only one smart enough to do the obvious thing and go for the Chairs of Ascension, and now I’ve become taboo. They don’t like when someone tries to steal the spot that they feel they so deserve.”
“That… sounds hard,” Lucas said.
She snorted. “What are you, a therapist?”
“No, I mean, I’m just saying your feelings are valid…”
“Who cares if my feelings are valid? Probably therapy is fake and doesn’t work, and even if this hippy dippy bullshit does by some miracle give me a single iota of happiness, it won’t matter. Because in a few short hours, I’m going to be suffering for all eternity. How I feel now pales in comparison.”
“I can see why that would be really stressful,” Lucas said.
“I cannot believe you just said that. Are you not listening to what I’m saying?”
“Um, sorry?”
“You actual idiot,” Lucile marveled. “I cannot believe you just said that. I actually cannot believe it.”
“Hey,” a voice said, “Don’t bother with her.”
The newcomer was Ryan, the man who had volunteered to try smashing the window with Avery. Lucas attempted a smile at him.
Lucile said, “Oh yes, don’t mind me. Go on ignoring me just cause I’m the only honest one. It’s not like every single other person here is also plotting how they can lie and cheat and steal their way to Heaven right now, politicking and lying and doing all sorts of sin. But no, it’s me who is the bad one, just cause I was smarter, I had a better idea than them, even though it didn’t work.”
“Hey,” Ryan said, “Let’s go talk over there.” He indicated a cubicle at the side of the room.
“Okay, sure, sounds good.” Lucas said.
“Yes, run away,” Lucile called. “I’ll see you later, probably in Hell.”
Lucas shuddered. That girl was so incredibly unsettling, despite her being at least a decade younger than him.
“Hey, thanks for that,” Lucas said as they walked across the room. “Ryan, right? I’m Lucas.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ryan said, offering his hand. He had a firm handshake. “And don’t mention it. Seemed like you found yourself in a bit of a crazy interaction, and I thought I’d just offer a way out.”
“Yeah, I really appreciate it. Is everyone here like that, or are there any normal people here? You are the first person I’ve talked to who seems like a good guy.”
Ryan gave a good natured laugh. “I don’t know if I’d say I’m a good guy. But yeah, this whole situation is extremely uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to see the best in people. But that said, I’ve been talking to a few others who I think are chill, and you seem cool too, so I was hoping you’d come join our squad?”
“Sure,” said Lucas.
~
“Hey. Alexandra, right?”
“That’s right. And you’re Wendy, yeah?”
“That’s me. So, you want to go to Heaven, right?”
“Well of course, I mean, doesn’t anyone?”
“I’m going to cut to the chase here: you seem like a good person to work with. I’ve been watching you, and you remind me of myself when I was your age.”
“Uh, thank you!”
“And I don’t think it’s fair how you got screwed out of your spot in the random ballots, even though you did nothing wrong, and you acted with dignity and honor. That’s why I’m talking to you here, one on one, instead of choosing someone else. Because I believe if we work together, we can both get into Heaven. But it’s important that you follow my instructions exactly. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yeah, for sure. I’m good at following directions. You want me to vote for you, I assume? But I don’t see how that will get us there…”
“You don’t have to vote for me. Vote for whoever you want. That part doesn’t matter. What you need to do is, while everyone is distracted, get a dry erase marker from one of the cubicles…”
~
Justin sat alone in a cubicle, listening to the conversations surrounding him but not participating. Even in death, he was a coward. Even when it was a matter of eternal bliss versus eternal torture, he still couldn’t bring himself to start conversations. It was just too scary.
There was no reason for him to be this shy. It was a weakness that was his and his alone. A failing of his character. He was weak willed. If he couldn’t even muster the bravery to have one conversation, surely he didn’t deserve Heaven.
Justin had lived alone most of his life, worked solitary jobs, first as a trash collector, then as a day trader in stocks and cryptocurrencies. Even when he became rich – whether through his own intelligence or through the luck of the market, he still did not know – he was never able to converse with anyone. Forget meeting a romantic partner, forget making friends – he couldn’t even bring himself to talk to people at the grocery checkout line! Over time he drew further into himself, as modern conveniences allowed him to get food left outside his door, no interaction necessary. He paid rent digitally, and only talked to his landlord through emails. Even that level of contact left him with crippling anxiety. In the end, he had died of what was probably a preventable, treatable condition, just because he was too afraid to talk to a doctor.
The irony of it was that Justin was a singer. He was quite good at it, writing and recording his own songs that he would never be able to share with anyone. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was writing and recording these songs for, save for a vague fantasy that they would be discovered after he was long dead, and his name would go down in history as one of the greatest artists of all time. But he had never made any arrangements for his music to be discovered, and now here he was, dead, his music in a folder in a password locked computer in an apartment where they wouldn’t even notice anything was wrong until rent was due in a month. At least he had made arrangements for his finances to be donated to charity, some small part of him thinking that if there was an afterlife, maybe this would win him a spot up there.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He hadn’t spoken since dying, except to say his name when they had all said their names, and even then his mouth had gone dry and he had mumbled and tripped over his own name.
And now here he was, at the periphery of the room, watching the mingling unfold, too afraid to take any action even to save his immortal soul. He watched Thomas eagerly soliciting votes, and wondered what the difference between them was. He watched Lanie, Lucas, Ryan, Julie, and Maya form a group of five that promised to all vote for each other, and wondered why he had never been able to be part of a group. And he watched Steven approach Claire at the side of the room, the tall man concealing a knife behind his back where only Justin could see it, and he knew what was about to happen, but even now he couldn’t bring himself to speak up.
~
Claire still didn’t know how she had died. It had been murder, that much was certain. What else could bring her from peacefully asleep to the gray office building of Limbo with only an instant of pain?
But who had done it? That was the question. Had it been a rival of her husband’s criminal empire, seeking vengeance for some grievance? Had it been one of her husband’s other lovers, motivated by jealousy? Or had it been her husband himself, as in a fit of rage he had figured out how Claire had defied him, how she planned to steal all his assets and flee the country?
Claire tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter anymore. Either way, whoever had done it, she was here now, and they were back on Earth. But she couldn’t stop herself from caring. Whoever it was, they were going to wind up in the afterlife at some point, and she was going to find them and make them pay. She was glad Hell existed, because some people deserved it.
Her first impression of her twenty nine compatriots was that they were soft. Many were elderly, probably having died of natural causes. A few were younger, but she figured they’d had diseases or maybe taken their own lives. She was probably the only one who had been murdered. Maybe a few were different – Quenton and Wendy sprang to mind – but most of the group was weak.
The softies expected compassion and democracy and prayer to save them, but Claire didn’t put her trust in any of these things. She knew the way the world really worked. And so while the softies were arguing about the most democratic methods of decision making, Claire explored. First she tried to find a way out, even if out meant going into the gray void. But the office was airtight. There were no hidden doors, no cracks and no passages.
Next she checked all the cabinets. Most were empty. Some had normal office things: paper, staplers, three ring binders. But in a long drawer in the corner of one of the random offices, labeled with a sticky note saying look in here!!!, she found something else.
Weapons. Guns and knives, arrayed on a long rack. Claire noticed several odd things about the weapons, beyond the mere fact that you wouldn’t expect dozens of weapons housed in a random unlocked drawer in any office building she knew of.
The knives were all identical blades, and the guns were all identical pistols. Claire knew her way around guns, and this gun wasn’t any make she recognized. Rather, it seemed to be a hybrid of the most common pistols – an idealized version of a gun, as if dreamed up by someone who had never used an actual weapon in their life. The knife was similar. Each pistol was loaded with six shots already in the chamber, and the safeties were on. She counted the weapons. Suspiciously, there were slots on the rack for exactly thirty pistols and thirty knives. Only twenty-nine of each were present.
Someone had been here before her.
She wasn’t going to die again, not without a fight. She grabbed one of the guns, tucking it into the fold of her pants. It fit perfectly, hidden, as if it had been made to go with these pants – the pants that she and the others had all been wearing when they appeared in this world. Interesting.
Claire resolved not to tell the group about the weapons. They would find them on their own, or they wouldn’t. Surely by now everyone had realized what this situation really meant. Thirty people, and only five slots in Heaven. It was kill or be killed, and Claire didn’t intend to be killed. Not again.
~
The mingling was cut off by a gunshot. Everyone turned and looked, and saw the smoking gun in Claire’s hand. The body of Steven fell to the ground beside her.
“He was trying to kill me,” Claire said, very calmly. She set the gun down.
“Um, sorry what?” Anita said.
“How do you have a gun?” Josh shouted.
“How do we know he was trying to kill you?” Wendy said.
Lucile, of all people, jumped to Claire’s defense. “He was attacking her, I saw! He had a knife, he was going to stab her!”
“He was,” said Ryan, “I saw it.”
At the periphery of the group, Justin nodded very slightly, but no one saw.
Everyone looked to Steven’s limp hand, which was indeed wrapped around a sharp knife. Then something even more unexpected happened. The floor under Steven’s corpse turned transparent, and Steven’s body sank through. As the corpse fell, it opened its eyes and began flailing and screaming. Steven had returned to life again, but this time it was for the worse, because as they all watched, he sank into a vast fiery cavern. But there was something wrong down there, something so horribly evil and violative, like your worst nightmare had corrupted your best memory, like you were never going to be okay again, and it was just going to get worse and worse forever, and the shape of the figures down there was twisted and contorted in unnatural ways, the flesh melted and sawed and reattached and it was so wrong that every single one of them looked away, unable to bear it.
“Holy shit,” Ryan said.
“That… must be Hell,” Wendy said.
“No shit,” said Lucile, but she sounded shaken, and there was no venom in her voice.
As they watched, the floor returned to normal, leaving no trace of Steven but for a few drops of blood, a knife, and a gun.
“It was self defense,” said Claire again. “He was just attacking me.”
“It’s alright,” Wendy said. “If he had killed you, it would be you going down there instead.”
“What I don’t understand,” Josh said, pointing at Claire, “is how is she so calm?”
“Because I knew this was going to happen,” Claire said. It was only now that her calm broke, and she became ever so slightly impassioned. “That’s where all of us are going. All of us but five. I didn’t know it was going to be me that he attacked, but I knew this was bound to happen at some point. I’m not even mad at him. If you’d been paying attention, you would know. You would know this was bound to happen eventually, because this is in fact a zero sum game.”
“Okay,” said Wendy. “But where the He–” she couldn’t say it – “Where the heck did you get the gun?”
~
Vivian reminded herself to breathe. It was what the doctors had told her. Remember to breathe. As if her body wasn’t capable of performing basic functions itself. As if she were an idiot, and if she could simply remember to respirate, perhaps the cancer would decide to leave her alone.
It seemed that even now, with her body restored to perfect condition, she still harbored resentment for the doctors. Even though she knew, as she had always known, that the doctors weren’t the problem, that they were trying their hardest at the insurmountable task of fixing her.
And though she might resent the doctors, as always, she still followed their advice, and forced herself to breathe. She resisted the urge to hide.
She had thought she had found peace. Freedom from the pain, from the endless therapies, from the friends and family pretending to be strong when they were so obviously terrified.
But now it turned out there was an afterlife.
And that, by some twist of fate, it was almost certain that she would spend the rest of eternity in Hell.
She choked back a sob.
How was everyone not terrified right now?
And at the same time, how were they all acting all cordial? There were weapons here, for God’s sake, weapons that could send them into the land of eternal torment, which she still couldn’t get out of her head. How were the others not breaking down, or making a break for the Chairs of Ascension? Vivian had thought about it of course, had almost made a run for it that first dawn. But she had stopped herself, because even if by some miracle she made it, she wouldn’t deserve Heaven. She would be stealing the spot from someone else. The fact that she had even considered it brought her great shame.
Finally, she couldn’t stop herself. She ducked away, in a random out-of-the-way office. There was a floor level cabinet under the desk, and she pulled herself in, shutting the door behind and curling up in the darkness.
If she was going to Hell, so be it. Surely it couldn’t be much worse than she was already feeling.