Around the same time...
POV- Maddie
"Next!" Someone, probably a man from the sound of it. called out. My legs felt wobbly. I looked around dazed. Where...? "Next!" The same person yelled again, sounding slightly annoyed. I tried to remember how I got here, but I couldn't remember... What can't I remember? I thought.
"Girl! You're next. Get a move on." I realised the man was talking to me. I spun around towards the voice. At a desk, not ten feet away, sat a man with a scruffy beard. Well, at least I think it was scruffy. I don't really know what scruffy means. His skin was somewhat dark, maybe Indian? I noticed that the floor seemed to be made of white cotton candy.
The man beckoned me to come. I walked up to the desk. "Sit," he commanded. Their was a comfy looking chair on my side of the desk. I sat in it and looked around. Behind me was a short line of people and to the right and left were similar lines leading to identical desks. I couldn't see where the array ended, but I guessed that the desks were spaced about 300 feet apart from each other.
I opened my mouth to tell the man that I had no idea why I was there. The man raised his hand, some sort of hushing gesture. "I know that you are confused," he said. His rmgkdskcjsjfkeodjcdjsodj was making me feeling nervous. "So I'll get right to the point."
"Wait," I interjected. "Where the hell am I?" I demanded.
"No, Hell is east," he explained as if that made any sense. "You're... Well you're dead. You died. Welcome to djdkfkridjrjeodj," he rambled. The way he said it made it sound as though he's recited it a million times.
"I'm not dead. Nice try, but I'm not falling for it. You'd have to get up pretty early to pull that one on me," I exclaimed. "Wait, did you drug me? Is this some show or something?" I looked around for cameras but all I saw were the lines and desks. There didn't even seem to be walls.
"Denial," the man piped up.
"What?" I demanded.
"Denial, the first stage of death," the man said, grinning as if this was some game and he was outwitting me. "To save us time," he began, pulling out a knife. "I'll prove that were dead."
I was about to leap out of my chair and run. This lunatic was going to stab me. To my surprise, however, he plunged the knife into his own chest. I stood up so fast that I nearly fell over. I frantically looked around for help. The closest people were the ones in line behind me. They all seemed to be dazed and confused. They wouldn't be any help.
"Relax, sit down." I whirled around. The man was pulling the knife out. "See? No blood, I'm still here," he explained. "And," he stuck the knife into the desk, "It's a real knife."
I sat back down in the chair. It really was the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. "Okay, I believe you. Just stop stabbing things, alright?" The man chuckled.
"Alright. Now what was next, I always forget. Right, anger." The man looked at me expectantly. "So are you feeling angry?" He asked cautiously.
"Not really," I shrugged.
"Well, not everyone is angry about dying."
"Do I get to go back?" I interrupted again. "Like as an animal or something? I'm too young to just be dead, so you can just send me on back." I smiled. Maybe I could charm him.
The man hesitated for a moment. I was starting to try out puppy eyes on him. "Well, I haven't seen many people trying to bargain like that," he said thoughtfully. "Well that would be bargaining. Feeling depress-" he began.
I started sobbing, as if reality just hit me. I was dead. "My friends-" I mumbled. "I can't just leave them like that. I'm never going to see them again." The man handed me a tissue. It took awhile but I finally started feeling a little better, or at least stopped crying. I wiped a tear away. "Maybe dying won't be horrible, and I could just wait for my friends."
"Well that was depression, and acceptance. You're almost there. One more."
"One more? I thought there are 5 steps to dying." The man just shrugged. I looked around, looking for something. I thought for a second before asking, "Am I in Heaven or hell?"
"The last step is to ask that question." The man smiled. "And to answer your question, neither. You're in Neveah. Like I said, Hell is east, which makes Heaven west of here."
"So this is purgatory?" I asked.
"No, this is where you choose if you want to go north, west, east, or south, but you can always come back here and choose again."
"Well what's north and south?"
"North is... You're a little too young for North. South is eternal slumber. In the south, you pick a time to wake up and sleep until then. A lot of people go there to sleep until their families and friends die."
"Why sleep in the South when you can sleep in heaven?" I asked, perturbed. He answered by explaining that the clouds are softest in the South.
I did a 360 but saw nothing new. "Why would anyone choose to go to hell?" I wondered aloud.
The man, who's name I still didn't know, shrugged. He pulled out another object from what must have been a drawer in his desk. It was a clipboard with some sort of form. "You'll need you to fill this out and then I have a pamphlet that will answer all your questions, and I do mean all of them."
I filled out the form with a pencil from the desk:
First Name (given or chosen): Madison
Age (when you died): 12
Gender (or impartial to): female
Sexuality: none of your beeswax
Species: ...
"Species?" I questioned.
"Of course. Human, elf, mermaid, etc," the man said as if I were stupid.
"You can't be serious," I said, but I wrote down human anyways.
I handed the clipboard back to Mr. Desk Man. He removed the form and handed it back to me. "You keep this." He also handed me a heavy pamphlet.
"Why would I fill out a form about myself, for myself?" I asked.
"Simple. If you forget who you are, you'll stop being you." Great, another riddle.
"So, what? If I believed I was a strawberry blond, my hair would just change to that color?"
"Precisely." Heaven or Purgatory or whatever this is just keeps getting weirder.
"And if I think I'm a strawberry?"
"Strawberries don't think, so you can't think you're a strawberry. Now, I'm very busy so please go sit down on a cushy cloudspot and read the pamphlet so I can serve the next person," the man said, and I did.
