The Soul Shatters

Chapter 1: Waiting Rooms and Chatterboxes

Chapter 1: Waiting Rooms and Chatterboxes

When I regained consciousness, it was dark. Probably because I had my eyes closed, but who really knows. After I pried them open, against my better judgment of course, I looked up to see a gaggle of frumpy-looking ladies glaring at me. I guess even dead people PMS.

What, you didn't think I knew I was dead? It's pretty damn easy to tell when someone shoves a knife through your chest. I was slipping away before they even pulled the blade out; it went right through a lung, and you kind of need those to breathe.

Anyway.

I stood up, and the old hags backed into their corner a little more, giving each other scared glances like little old me was here to steal their yapping Yorkies. As if. In fact, everyone seemed to be huddled in some kind of a group except me. Aww, I'm being left out, I thought. It was almost organized like a high school, except with much older people.

The senior citizens seemed to have some kind of badass clan going on, their walkers and canes forming a steel barrier, while some ladies were engaging in a knitting circle to my right. A bunch of ass-hat looking lawyers and ladies with a deceptive air stood about a table of magazines, forming a sketchy clique. There were a few babies that had been sat in the corner, a couple of them in mangled strollers or crushed cribs. So that was where the smell came from.

All of a sudden, there was a beeping noise, almost like a heart rate monitor flat-lining, and another elderly thing stepped out of the wall that I was pretty sure had just been solid. Oh well, details, details. The man slowly shuffled forward, almost as if by instinct, to be with the other wrinkly beings of his kind. Oh god, they were probably going to drink prune juice and talk about their grandkids. Gross.

It was almost like no one even noticed that another person showed up. As I stood there longer, more people showed up in a constant stream, taking the place of others that simply faded away. And still, no one seemed to think it was out of the ordinary. Pretty soon, everyone that had been there when I originally arrived was gone, and so were others that had come after me.

I waited a little longer, but still, nothing happened. The constant flow of traffic going on in this big-ass room, and I have to stay here?! How fair is that? Oh wait, it's not. Christ, if I was going to die, I didn't want to spend all eternity in Hell waiting. Like throw me in the goddamn fire already before I get bored enough to start reading a People magazine.

After Allah-knows-how-long and three different tacky magazines, I noticed that people had stopped arriving, and now they were just disappearing again, plus the room was getting kind of darker. I don't know how that managed to happen, there were no windows and the fluorescent lights were bright enough to exorcise a demon.

When all of the people had disappeared, and I had resorted to playing rock paper scissors with myself out of boredom, the darkness reached an all-time high, save for the lights blazing out of the ceiling (even though a few of those had dimmed as well). A pudgy man with a bowler hat and decorative cane hopped out of the wall and did a quick scan of the room, before turning to leave again. Then suddenly, he turned around with a shocked expression on his face before gaping at me like a flamingo had suddenly turned green.

I knew I was ugly, but come on. Staring is rude.

"Y-y-you. What are you doing here?!" he managed to gasp out, looking like a fish out of water, minus the whole flopping around/dying part.

"Well, it all started when I got stabbed by this grimy bastard wearing a fedora and an ascot. I mean, really. That fashion combination was a definite no, and you're talking to the girl that wears the same jeans three times a week. Anyway, he went stabby-stabby, and I was all 'oh fuck I'm dying' and then I did die, and I've been here since then, and seriously could the interior decorators have been any more hospital-waiting-room cliché then this? Plus you guys have crappy magazines, and there isn't a TV anywhere. Am I gonna go meet the Lord now? Or is this Hell? What kind of afterlife involves waiting around anyway, huh?"

And there went all of my pent-up energy from the last however-many hours. It's not like I'm a total chatterbox, but this asshole had the audacity to speak to me like I wanted to be here. Like, what's up with that, huh?

"But everyone is supposed to be gone by now! You go through customs and then to your meeting with a Council and then to whatever comes next!" he spluttered, still impersonating Nemo—albeit much less cute than the original.

"Christ, man. Do I look like I know what the hell is going on? Isn't there some kind of Satan-thingy or Jesus or whatever that you can ask about this? I'm pretty sure I saw Buddha in here earlier, but that may have been a really fat dude, I don't really know."

"J-just stay here. I'll be back with someone who knows how to fix...this," he said, motioning to all of me.

Oh, so now I need fixing? What a jerk.

Pudgy stepped through the wall and I sat down on the floor, bored out of my mind. He wasn't gone for too long, and when he came back, there was another guy with him. This one, however, wasn't fat, or balding, or doing an impression of a dying fish. He would have been kind of attractive, if I wasn't so pissed at my entire situation.

"Yo, I don't really care if we go do the eternal-torture thing now, but can we at least get out of this stupid room? The wallpaper is as tacky as fuck and I'm sick of reading about Oprah." You could say I wasn't one for formalities.

The man chuckled and stared at me for a brief moment, before dismissing Pudgy with a flick of his hand.

"Welcome to Hell," the man smirked at me, his smile poised to intimidate, like he was trying to scare me away.

"Thank you," I replied. "I would've paid a visit sooner, but this place is invitation only."