There is a lobby in a place you will never see as long as you live. No, no, you should be glad for that. This lobby is well lit, well decorated and very spacious, which it has to be for reasons we will cover in a moment. There is a lovely coffee machine of undetermined brand roughly in the center of the room, but most days it only has decaf coffee of questionable quality. In terms of flavor it lies somewhere between airplane coffee and high quality transmission fluid.
I know all this, because my name is Larry Longkite, and my job is to brew that coffee every single day. Well, it is one my jobs, anyway. My other job is to sit behind a large metal desk in the middle of this lobby, just across from the coffee machine, and deal with endless waves of people. Dead poeple, to be precise. I process their papers when they arrive and then patiently answer their questions, the first of which is usually… “Where the fuck am I?”.
When they ask that, I simply point to the large sign on the wall behind me. It is twenty feet long, ten feet high, engraved in stone and has a single word: PURGATORY 86. OK, technically that’s a word plus a number but you get the idea. It is huge, it is clear, and it should immediately convey the current location of the inquirer. If that is not clear enough, they can always note the two elevators on either side of the room. One of them is clearly marked HEAVEN. They other one… well, try not to take that one when you get here. The point is, it’s pretty clear where we are.
Except I always end up having to answer about a dozen more questions anyway, because people are idiots and, surprisingly, they don’t get any smarter when they die. The questions vary from moron to moron, but they usually include stuff like “Is this a joke?”, “Who’s in charge here?” and “Why the hell is there an 86 after Purgatory? Are you telling me there are 86 purgatories?” To which I, of course, answer, “Well don’t be absurd, of course not. There are six thousand, seven hundred and twenty five purgatories serving planet Earth at the moment. Would you like some coffee?”
I know, I know. Six thousand, seven hundred and twenty five purgatories seems like a lot, but a lot more people than that die every day for a variety of reasons, the least of which is not sheer stupidity. Shit, there’s probably someone dropping dead right now, not a block from you. So I do have a pretty full plate and I can’t stop to answer every fucking question. That’s why each of the two departments I report to have assigned me an intern.
The intern from Heaven is Carl Shorter. He has an unfortunate name, a rather lousy attitude and he sits next to the Heaven elevator. He’s reading a comic book at the moment and doing his best to ignore the old woman openly weeping on his desk. Turns out not matter how long you live, there’s no such thing as a “timely death”.
Across the room, by the Hell elevator, is the intern from Hell, which I’m pretty sure is a title shared by many still among the living. Her name is Julie Harper and she is helpful, patient and perpetually happy to a degree some, including me, find disturbing. She also has an unhealthy obsession with cats and she’s secretly dating Frank Denmark, one of the case workers for Heaven. Personally, I think she can do better.
Every new arrival must come to my desk first, because it’s the largest desk, because it’s in the middle of the room and because it’s across from the coffee machine and they don’t yet know the coffee is undrinkable. They arrive at the Soul Summoning Chamber, which is across the room from my desk on the other side of the coffee machine and, due to an inexplicable architectural mix-up, also doubles as the janitor’s closet. I can usually tell when we have a new arrival from the sound of them tripping over the mop bucket.
Once the paperwork has been processed and forwarded to the Inquisitor, I make a careful assessment of the applicant and send them to the appropriate intern, based on which department I believe they will eventually end up in. By careful assessment of course, I mean wild guess. I’d say I’m right about fifty percent of the time. In fact my success rate has actually decreased since I stopped just flipping a coin.
Thirty seconds ago the door to the janitor closet swung open and a middle-aged gentleman stumbled out. He’s just been standing there, looking around and trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. They do that a lot. I hear a familiar swish and his file drops through the clear tube that runs from the ceiling down to a tray on my desk. I pick it up and open it.
-“Harold Lake?” the mention of his name startles him. After a moment, he walks around the coffee machine and towards my desk.
“Uh… hi, I’m no sure where I am…” he mumbles, still looking around. I’m about to point to the sign behind me, but he finds it on his own. “Is that… am I in Purgatory?”
“You’re in Purgatory 86, Mr. Lake, can I call you Harold?”
“Uh… sure?”
“Harold, a few moment ago a man in St. Louis named… Jack Remington… wow, seriously? Uh… so… Jack returned to his house unexpectedly and found you in the living room, having sex with his wife… umm… reverse cowgirl style, I’m not sure why that’s even in the file. Anyway, he made you both get dressed at gun point, gave a short, sappy talk about love and betrayal, and then killed you, his wife and himself. It was quite tragic… I’m sure… you screwed the wife of a guy named Jack Remington?”
“She was a gymnast. You can’t imagine the positions they… ummm..so wait… I’m…like, dead?” asks Harold.
“Harold you were shot point blank three times. You’re definitely like, dead.”
“Are… are you St. Peter?”
“Do I bloody look like St. Peter?” I ask. “Do you see pearly gates anywhere?”
“Well… no…”
“Of course not, what you see is an elevator over there that says Heaven and another one that way that says Hell. Now, since you died in the middle of adulterous gymnastic sex, I think we both know where you’re most likely headed.”
“Please… I don’t want to go to Hell…” whimpers Harold. If I had a dime for every time I hear that.
“Well of course you don’t want to go to Hell, Harold. That’s why they call it Hell and not Las Vegas. No one wants to go there. But that will be for the Inquisitor to determine. For now, I need you to go talk to Julie, over by the Hell elevator.”
“Oh God… is she going to torture me?”
-“Only if you mention cats.” Hesitant, Harold turned to leave. “Seriously, don’t mention cats. She will never stop talking. You will jump in the elevator to Hell just to make it stop.”
Harold walks away and thirty seconds later he is sitting in front of Julie’s desk. Thirty seconds after that he mentions his cat and I know he is lost to us. On the other side of the room, Carl is still reading his comic book, but the old lady has finally wandered off, seeking to lament her fate on more sympathetic ears.
I lean back on my chair, enjoying the momentary interlude on Earth’s death symphony. This time it is just a ten second interlude and then a file drops on my desk as, from the janitor’s closet, comes the familiar sound of someone tripping over the mop bucket.