Dead!

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I looked around, hoping to see some sign of where I was or how I got here. I was in a fairly large, but nondescript room with a whole bunch of chairs arranged in a rectangular formation , not unlike the waiting room that was at the DMV when I went to get my driver's license on my sixteenth birthday. Oddly enough, Jack, Raj, Henri, and Maya were all there as well. I spotted a sign on the wall that read "The Celestial Bureaucracy: Proud To Serve The State of Iowa For All Eternity!" right next to a ticket dispenser.

Maya was the first to take a ticket. "666," she read. "This can't be good."

Just as I took #667, I heard an announcement. "Now serving Number 345! Number 345, please come to the front of the room! Number 345! To all others: remember that numbers may be called out of order. Number 345!"

"I'm not going," mumbled a trembling old man sitting in the corner of the room. "They can't take me."

After calling Number 345 a few times, the announcer decided to move on to Number 347, apparently angering whoever was Number 346. Knowing that I might be here for a while, I sat down in a chair near the center of the room.

I fumbled through my pockets, and just to add to the confusion, I found a phone that was clearly not mine. The lock screen was just a generic design instead of a picture of Dash, but when I typed in my password (purplekitten318), the phone unlocked. All of my apps were still there, as were my photos, but there were two new apps: something called "Angel Wings" and something called "FAQ." I just shoved the phone back into my pocket. Meanwhile, Maya was busy typing something into her phone, Jack was reading, Raj was talking to a grey-haired woman, and Henri was just sitting quietly.

"Now serving Number 671! Number 671, please come to the front of the room! Number 671! To all others: remember that numbers may be called out of order. Number 671!"

I hadn't even noticed Anthony earlier, but he was apparently here too, and he had the great fortune to be called before any of us. He disappeared into a room, and didn't return until about forty five minutes later. My guess was that whoever ran this place just wanted to get rid of him.

I still wasn't sure where I was or how I got here. There was no clear entrance. People just seemed to appear near the ticket dispenser somehow. The only exit was blocked by the obstructive bureaucrats calling out numbers. The obvious answer to where I was seemed too strange to be true.

I was dead, and this was the afterlife.

Everything seemed to line up though. I had seen the others die. Maybe this whole thing was just a nightmare and I would wake up in the morning to the sound of Dash's meowing. If this was a dream, it was certainly a terrifying twist on the whole "waking up and going school" dream.

To be honest, there were so many things that I missed already. Dash was one of them, but I also missed Chloe. Maybe we could talk about this over coffee after all of this nonsense was done.

If it ever finished.

I must have looked really worried, because that was about when an old, shriveled man sat down next to me and stated, "You must be new around here."