Heaven, Hell & Room Service

Chapter 4: Orientation

For once during his eternal stay in Hell, Neil wanted to dress to impress. It was his first Orientation day at Thorpe & Sons, and to celebrate the occasion he had even managed to scarf down his entire bowl of porridge. He showered, and got dressed in his nicest dress shirt and freshly pressed slacks. If there's one thing the minions of Hell did well, it was laundry. He then opened his closet and retrieved a navy blazer from the rack of rarely worn articles, and brushed it off. He put it on, adjusted it, and considered himself in the heavily smudged mirror. "Not half bad," he mused to himself. "Not half bad at all."

As I'm sure most of you have already guessed, it wasn't the Thorpes whom he wanted to impress. He could care less about looking suave for three undertakers who were, by all accounts, decidedly odd. In fact, if circumstances were different, he probably would have just gone down in jeans. But circumstances were not different, and the prospect of looking like a slob in front of a certain someone was not an attractive one; hence the effort.

Neil left his room fully immersed in a very pleasant daydream about her, and was so absorbed in said thought that he practically ran into Adam. "Hey watch it man!" Adam chortled indignantly.

"Sorry Ads, ready for your first day?" He looked ready; he was even wearing his "map of Middle Earth" tie.

"Yeah. I guess I am," he began sourly. "Of course I don't quite have the eye candy to look forward to that you do." Adam had been pissed off about Neil's luck of placement since the announcement. Neil knew that his friend would eventually get over it, and that he just needed a few days to sulk, so he let him indulge

"Come on man, you'll love your placement. Haven't you always said that your dream would be to have sex in a library?" Oh yeah, I should mention that Adam got assigned to the Afterlife Book Depository.

"No, the dream is a comic book shop. And anyway, who on the blue team would I get it on with? Mildred Morpod? No thank you!"

"Well I've gotta run, purples are meeting down in the lobby in five. I'll see you tonight though. We'll talk, I promise. Have a good day buddy!" There was a part of Neil that felt guilty for not including Adam in his end-up-with-Emily scheme, but a much larger part of him told the first part to grow up and enjoy the selfishness.

The lobby was the fullest it had been since Fenton's goodbye thingy, as various groups started to assemble.

"Neil, over here!" It was Emily. Who knew that business casual could look that good?

He fought his way over to her, where she was waiting with a knot of other purple squad employees. "You look nice," he said.

"So do you," she replied with a quick smile. "There's only a few men these days who can rock a blazer."

The flirty small talk would have continued had it not been for the intrusion of Hewitt. At first no one knew it was him, because his usual crimson leisure suit had been replaced by a purple sequined tailcoat and matching accessories. If he looked flamboyant before, now he was downright fruity. "Good morning, Team!"

"Good morning," came a scattered reply with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"Come on, purple!" he yelled, every word soaked in over-exuberant energy. "Let's get a little team spirit sparked. You'll feel much better if you get excited, right?"

To Neil's absolute horror, Hewitt had written a pep rally song for the occasion that he proceeded to force them all to sing. The song was, in fact, so embarrassing that I will not even write it down. It was pretty bad. By the time the last overly cheerful note had faded into silence, the lobby had emptied of all other teams. Neil was sure that none of the other groups had been turned into a glee club, but he did not voice this opinion.