by Penni Jones
“Where will they go?” I’m not sure I want to know but couldn’t resist asking.
“Depends. Some will become productive members of the afterlife.”
“Like you?” I ask.
“No. Not like me. I never had to go through the cleanse.” His voice betrays a slight annoyance, but he maintains his professional posture.
“That’s not what I meant. Sorry.”
Ernesto waves his hand dismissively and says, “Natural deaths like mine after a life within the acceptable bounds of society have very little drama in the afterlife. No grief watch, little red tape. It’s not so bad.
“But the truly punished souls like these don’t have an easy go. The ones here who are suicide souls will move through that process next. It’s more difficult for them to get through it since a lot of time has passed between their death and grief watch. But that’s part of the punishment for dangerously deviant behavior.”
“And why are we going this way?” Greg asks.
“This is the fastest way to move between areas. In this case from the Vapid Body Waiting Area to Suicide Soul Station. This conveyor system will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go.”
“But I didn’t come this way to get to the Vapid Body Waiting Area. I just appeared there,” Greg says.
I open my eyes and look around, noticing the vast system that escaped me before. There are conveyor belts everywhere. All of them contain several souls in groups.
“That’s different. You weren’t choosing when you moved from place to place at that time,” Ernesto says.
There are so many dead people all around us.
“How do they know when a soul has been cleansed?” I ask.
“There is a machine that souls get hooked up to. It’s sort of like a mind-reading machine. Apparently, it’s very painful to have your brain read. It’s best to avoid at all costs.”
“Worse pain than being eaten by the Death Shadow?” I ask.
Greg turns to me slowly. “How do you know that’s painful?”
“I was there when my mentor was taken. If I slept, his screams would haunt my dreams.”
“You sure you’re not just being dramatic?” Greg asks.
“Are you sure you’re not just being an asshole?” I put my hands out and try to push Greg, but of course it doesn’t work. Greg’s face registers enough anger that he must think it did.
“Boys, boys,” Ernesto says. “We have to figure this out or you will both get firsthand knowledge of the Death Shadow.”
“I’m not being dramatic. It’s fucking terrifying.”
“He’s right.” Ernesto puts his hand on Greg’s shoulder right where I tried to push him. “The Shadow is not to be trifled with.”
Greg nods solemnly and looks down.
We continue on the conveyor belt silently. I look down to avoid the faces in the walls. If we had all known what the afterlife was like, would we have done things differently?
Probably not.
“When we find Doris, let me do the talking,” Ernesto says. “She has quite a temper.”
“No problem.” I have no desire to speak with Doris anyway. Previous interactions with her were less than pleasant and that was before I knew she was trying to send me to Oblivion.
Greg pulls the letter from his pocket and says, “I’ve lost two more spaces.” He looks up at Ernesto like a child asking his dad for help.
“Almost there. We’ll get this sorted out.” Ernesto smiles softly.
Maybe Oblivion won’t be so bad. I won’t have PTSD from the Shadow if I’m not aware of anything.
* * *
Naomi
Segments. Now time is broken into segments. This revelation should be a positive thing. It should be a relief to have a marker, to have some sort of indication of what is happening and when. But it’s not. Without time markers I was liberated. I was outside of the construct of someone else’s expectations of when or how long. It was a freedom that I didn’t realize I had and now it’s gone.
And I can’t stop staring at the damn watch. It takes one segment for me to sign into the laptop and open a few folders. I try to get on the Internet but then quickly realize there is no such thing here. We are beyond the Internet, in the outer reaches of existence.
Or should I say non-existence?
The folders contain different categories of what I assume are suicide souls. We have been divided up among suicide methods. Wrist-cutters, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, intentional overdoses, etc. Names go under each heading until they move on to a new body. After that they go into a separate folder titled “relocated to vapid bodies.” I can’t figure out why we even have records for those unless it is just for reference. Maybe when there is unlimited storage space, all information is kept.
There is a separate folder for souls in Oblivion. I click on it and find Tony’s name immediately. The names must be organized by time, or segments. And Tony was the most recent soul to go to Oblivion. Tony poisoned himself with cyanide. Our choices of drugs were different, but the intention was the same.
Tony’s wife Rachel had terminal brain cancer. She was falling apart in front of him and she wanted to die. He poisoned her and then poisoned himself. It wasn’t murder. But I guess Doris hadn’t called it murder, had she?
When Tony poisoned his wife, he took her before her time. That’s why he was being punished.
Life’s not fair, and neither is death.
It’s been two segments now. It’s like I’m checking the clock for my cigarette break or a Lean Cuisine lunch.
The staff binder is right where Doris left it. I touch the glossy cover, and it feels mostly like nothing just like everything else around here. The pages contain photographs and bios. The photographs were all taken by a coroner. Everyone is blue and expressionless.
Why didn’t one of these dead fuckers get the job? They’ve been here longer than me. Judging by her photo, Edith Valentine has been here since the 1950s. She’s wearing an adorable dress with a cinched waist and full skirt, and her head is in the same type of oven my grandma had until sometime in the 1980s.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” my grandma would say with her lipstick-stained mouth wrapped around a Virginia Slim.
Why me? Sure, I’m freaking awesome. But what about me was worth waiting so long for?
Or maybe these people knew better than to take the job.
It’s been almost three segments when I look up and see Luke, Greg, and some other guy standing in my office. It’s becoming less startling to have people suddenly appear.
I guess you can get used to anything.
I know why they’re here. But I don’t know what I can do about it.
“Miss, do you know where Doris is?” the man asks.
“This is Ernesto. He’s helping us because Doris has been stealing our spots in line.” Luke gestures at Ernesto.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m Ernesto.”
“I like your new outfit,” Greg says. I smile at him for a half second then remind myself where we are.
“Yeah. I like it, too,” Luke says. He has ditched the tragic cargo shorts. I want to talk to him alone. Away from these two.
“Doris will be in a meeting with me in about two segments.”
“Segments?” Greg asks.
“That’s how we keep time around here. That’s one of the things you learn when you stick around,” Ernesto says.
“It’s kind of disappointing isn’t it?” I say.
Luke and Greg both nod slowly as the revelation sinks in. I try to make eye contact with Luke, but it doesn’t work.
“Naomi, do you know why she’s doing this to us?” Luke asks.
“She’s doing it to preserve her own memories. It’s like she’s stealing from you to buy things for herself. It’s kind of confusing. She promised me that neither one of you would get to 300.”
“But why us?” Greg asks.
I shrug and say, “I don’t know. I asked her the same thing. She didn’t give m
e a clear answer. I think maybe she’s trying to teach me a lesson.”
Now I’m in a seedy club standing in a back corner with Luke at my side. There are exotic dancers in the middle of the room rubbing themselves up and down poles to a Motley Crue song. Just as Vince Neil intended.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this many naked women at once in my life,” Luke says without taking his eyes off the stage.
“I have,” I say.
Nolan sits at a table about two feet from us. I point him out to Luke, and we join him.
“Hey, you two. Surprised to see you both.” Nolan only takes his eyes off the women for a second.
“Surprised to be here, Nolan,” Luke says.
“It’s a good thing I dated strippers, huh?” Nolan asks without taking his eyes off the stage.
“I would say so,” Luke says.
I manifested this. I can manifest things.
The blue of his shirt makes his eyes look like a darker blue than they did before. It makes him look a little older than he did in the T-shirt.
“Janet who, am I right?” Nolan grins, and I’m pretty sure he would drool if he could.
“Who’s the mark?” I ask.
“Her name is Carlotta.” Nolan points to the woman on the far left of the stage. She’s tall and thin with a visible C-section scar. The old-fashioned kind. Her boob job isn’t too fresh, either. She has on a red wig and a shiny red bikini. I can tell from where we sit that her eyes are blue.
“Carlotta? She’s not Hispanic, is she?” I ask.
“Nah. Her real name is Cindy. She thought Carlotta sounded exotic. She heard it on a soap opera or something.” Nolan smiles wistfully.
“One Life to Live,” I say. Nolan gazes at me with a blank expression, apathetic to my knowledge of soap operas.
“Carlotta Vega,” Luke says. “I can’t believe I remember that.”
I want to hang out with Luke and talk about soap operas. Why are we battling time even when we’re dead?
“Nolan, you were quite the player,” I say to get myself back on track.
“Yes, I was. Before the ED got me.”
“How many songs have you heard while staring at her?” I ask.
“That’s an excellent question, my dear.” Nolan looks down to his fingers and starts to count.
“Why didn’t you just try Viagra?” I ask. “There’s a drug for everything. And multiple drugs for dicks.”
“It wasn’t just the ED that pushed me over the edge. It was also the shaking.” Nolan’s eyes stray from Carlotta’s breasts to my face. “To enjoy the beauty of a woman, the passions of a woman on a regular basis and then to have that taken away caused a deep pit in my belly. So many pills to treat all the things that were falling apart. I guess I felt sorry for myself.” He looks back to Carlotta.
“You’ve probably been here too long,” I say.
He looks down to his fingers and says, “I only remember hearing ten songs since I’ve been here. There may have been more. I think there’ve been a lot of costume changes, too. I may have seen the janitor cleaning the place. And maybe the lights were out for a little while.”
“You need to zoom in on Carlotta and get the job done,” Luke says.
Nolan nods and says, “Okay. I’ll do it. After this dance, I promise.”
I put my hand on Luke’s arm. The familiar warmth goes from my hand to my toes. “Luke, you can stay with me if you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you want to become a mentor, I can make that happen. I’m not sure exactly how. But I’ll figure it out if you want me to.”
Luke stares at my face and starts to nod slowly. And then we are back in the office with the others.
“Your alarm has been going off,” Greg says. He looks at my face and Luke’s. He wants to ask what’s going on, but he doesn’t.
“The meeting.” I grab the binder. “Let’s go to the board room.”
“We can’t all transport together, right?” Luke asks. “We came here on a conveyor belt.”
“A conveyor belt?” I have so much to learn.
“It’s a way to move to and from the Vapid Body Waiting Area,” Ernesto says.
“If we all think of the board room, we’ll all end up there, right? It’s not like we have to think in a group,” I say.
Ernesto scrunches his eyebrows and says, “Yeah. Things are more streamlined over here. The permanent resident souls prefer technology like escalators and conveyor belts, and those are the souls who keep the Waiting Area running.”
I respond with a shrug. Maybe I don’t know enough about this place because there’s so freaking much to learn.
Chapter 27
Luke
The board room is what I imagine all corporate board rooms must look like. I’ve never been in one before, but the ones on TV look just like this.
It seems that a place with unlimited resources would be a little more original and take some artistic chances.
“And here she is, along with three other people,” Doris says. She does that thing where she seems taller and more imposing, reminding us that she is still in charge.
“Doris, long time no see,” Ernesto says. He smiles, turning on the charm that I wish I could emulate but would just look stupid.
“Hello, Ernesto. Still taking on charity cases I see.” Doris crosses her arms and leers at Ernesto. She is the first woman I’ve seen who is immune to his smile.
“I’m here to ask you to stop this. These boys have not wronged you and you have no right to do this to them.” Ernesto’s smile is gone and in its place is a stern frown. But he’s still just as handsome.
“This boy,” she says pointing to me, “has yet to prove that he wants to live.” There are several people seated around the conference table. None of them have said a word since we appeared.
“Yes, I have, Doris. I made it through my grief watch, and I helped Nolan. I know I didn’t start off great, but I get it now.” I sound like a whining child. If the situation weren’t so dire, I would be embarrassed.
“You did what Naomi told you to do and what I told you to do. You would not have survived on your own and I want you to prove that you really want to survive. That is my last action in this role.”
“What about me?” Greg asks. “What did I do to deserve this? I got through my grief watch just like I was supposed to.”
“I do owe you an apology,” she says. “You are merely a pawn in this. But I’m afraid that’s just the way it is. I needed more spots than what Luke could give me, and I knew that Naomi cared for you. You are collateral in case she changed her mind.”
“That’s bullshit!” Naomi says. “Neither of them should have anything to do with this. My decisions are my own.”
“Yes, dear. They are. But what would I have done if you changed your mind and left me stuck here for another goddamn decade?” The look on Doris’ face reveals something I can’t quite place. She has tricked us, or at least tricked Naomi.
A man stands from his chair and clears his throat. “Excuse me, please allow me to explain what’s happening here.”
“Sit down, Francis.” Doris slams her hands on the table and stares at him.
“No. I will not.” Francis walks toward the front of the room, closer to where we are standing. “What I’m guessing that Doris did not tell you, Naomi, is that this job carries the highest risk of all. You have to stay in this position for a minimum of twenty years as counted by the living. Once the twenty years passes, you only have the equivalent of what would be about one week of living time to find your own replacement. If you can’t find someone within that time to take the position, you are in the position for another ten years. If it doesn’t work out that time, the next term is five years. That’s as short as the terms get.”
“Why is that so bad?” Naomi asks softly.
“Because once the commitment clock starts over, if anyone you love and/or you’re related to happens to become a suicide soul after that point, he or
she will be sent straight to Oblivion. We don’t know why, but that’s what happens.” Francis looks down as he speaks as if it’s his fault.
* * *
Naomi
“There’s no need to ask you why you didn’t tell me, Doris. How many people did you lose after you missed your first go-round?” I ask.
Doris looks down for a split second in what could be remorse. But that’s a little hard to believe with her. Maybe it is remorse, remorse for the people she lost. Not for lying to me.
“Two. My father was the first one.” She looks up at me and continues, “He was very old by then. He struggled and struggled to open the bottle of pills that he took to keep his joints moving. It took him almost an hour. By then he had nothing left. So, he swallowed the entire bottle. The second one was my cousin’s son. Barely even related to me, but I knew him when he was a baby and I loved him dearly. He had been rejected one too many times on the audition circuit. He was meant to be a famous actor. At least that’s what he thought. He slit his wrists in the bathtub. Just like your Greg. It was a very messy affair.”
“What are you going to do?” Luke asks with his hand on my arm.
“I don’t have a choice. Do I, Doris?”
“No, my dear. You do not. You’ve made the commitment.” Doris sits at the conference table and motions for me to do the same. “It would be terribly imprudent for you to go back on it.”
I sit down and ask, “Can you please stop taking spaces away from them right now? You owe me.”
“Owe you? I’m not so sure about that. This job does carry some hefty perks.” Doris taps on the folder on the table. It’s Dylan’s file. Dylan is her hefty perk.
“What can I do to prove myself, Doris?” Luke asks. “I’m running out of time.”
“Well, you have to make a sacrifice. Something that’s not easy for you,” Doris says.
“I don’t see how this is helpful,” Francis says.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Doris says. She narrows her eyes at Francis, and I swear she growls.