Dead!

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Raj was the first of us to be called. By that point, all of us had long since lost track of time. I had no idea what day it was, but I heard Number 668, and I watched Raj get up and walk to the front of the room.

He didn't return.

For a while, I wondered where the Celestial Bureaucracy had put him. Raj seemed like a nice guy, so I guessed that he would go to Heaven. It wasn't like someone like Raj could ever hurt anyone. Sure, he had to be physically tough to be a good hockey player, but he was too easygoing to do what I had done.

What was Heaven like anyways? Everyone probably had a different idea of Heaven, so how would all of those fit together? I had no idea, and the FAQ page didn't have any answers for me on that topic. Then again, I hadn't looked very hard. I was certain that I was going to end up in Hell, so it seemed useless to learn about Heaven.

It wasn't long before Henri, Maya, and Jack were called as well. I was sure that they would end up in Heaven too. Well, maybe not Maya, but at least she would enjoy Hell. I wasn't like them though. I didn't deserve the paradise that they did.

I couldn't stop thinking about them as I waited for #667 to be called. They were all off in Heaven already. Raj was probably skating around with some other hockey nuts, passing the puck back and forth. I imagined Jack reading a real book and enjoying the new book smell and Henri getting a brand new oboe and practicing day and night. Maya, if the Celestial Bureaucracy didn't care about her disgusting fanfiction, was most likely listening to her weird emo music and writing more of that weird emo fanfiction. Any of those options seemed preferable to waiting around here.

Time just seemed to tick onwards. I wished that it could go faster, but it couldn't. Every so often, I would go over to the food stand to get a snack, but even that wouldn't help. There seemed to be no escape from this. I had no idea how Joe could possibly stand it. If I ended up there for two hundred years, I would have gone crazy.

I would have talked to somebody, but there weren't many people that I wanted to talk to. Just about everyone was decades older than me, and it's very weird talking to someone that's old enough to be your grandparent. Sometimes I hung out with Samantha, and that was cool, but it wasn't the same as being with my friends. All of them were still alive. I missed being with them, and it seemed that I was never going to be able to fill that hole.

I just wanted a way to get out of my mind. The loneliness was eating at me. Maybe this was what they wanted. They wanted me to wait forever, hoping that it would break me. Maybe this was really Hell, and not purgatory. There were people everyone, but it was hard to make friends with most of them.

At the very least, I had a lot of time of my hands. I listened to a lot of new bands (yes, even some of the weird emo music that Maya likes!) and I read a lot. When I was alive, I always wished for more time, but now that I had it, I didn't know what to do with it. Maybe it would be better in Hell. Being tortured for eternity must keep you occupied.

Samantha and I shared our misery with each other, since we seemed to be the only two people under twenty in the room now that Maya, Jack, Raj, and Henri had gone on to Heaven (or possibly Hell). I didn't exactly love listening to her talk about her political ideas for hours on end, but it gave me something to do. "Why do you care so much?" I asked her once. "I mean, most people aren't this obsessed with this sort of stuff."

"I think I just want to change all of the things that are wrong with the world," Samantha said. "I can't do that from here, but someday, I'll be reincarnated, and then I can. It's my own little way of creating meaning in life."

"I wish I could do that," I said. "I didn't even do anything in the sixteen years that I was alive. I just made other people's lives miserable."

"Come on Ivy, you must have done something good," Samantha said. "Does anyone miss you?"

"Chloe for sure," I answered. "Maybe Heather and the rest of my family. Dash probably misses his morning cuddles. Caroline and my other friends might miss me too."

"See?" Samantha said. "You must have done something good for them."

"I suppose so," I said.

"At least a few people cared about you," Samantha said. "I don't think anyone cared when I died."

"That's silly! Someone must have cared!" I exclaimed.

"Maybe the followers on my blog," Samantha said. "My roommate's probably thrilled. Now she gets the dorm to herself."

"I really doubt that your roommate's happy that you died," I said.

"She hated me," Samantha argued.

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't want to talk about it," Samantha said. "So how long do you think it's going to take to call us? I'm guessing at least another month."

"Hopefully not much longer than that," I said. Honestly, I was just ready to give up. I wanted to know what my fate was going to be, but the Celestial Bureaucracy seemed to have other ideas.

If I wasn't already dead, I would have said that this was going to kill me.