The Memories of a Pale Man

Chapter Two: The Paperwork Purgatory

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First I felt nothing, not the darkness that I thought would come after death, a conscious prison for the rest of time, but a feeling of nothing. After an amount of time, I felt, or rather I believed I should have felt, a pulling at the center of my chest. And as this feeling grew stronger I felt as though I was moving. Faster and faster I went until I felt that I had hit a wall.

I woke up jolting out of my seat, I looked around there were small wooden chairs spreading out in a large liner pattern. Almost all of them were filled with people that looked... odd, to say in the least.

“A kid why don’t yous sit down” I heard a gruff voice say behind me say

I turned around, in front of me there was a middle aged man with greying combed back hair and pencil thin mustache, he looked like he was Italian and his accent proved it. He wore a pea-green suit and matching fedora, a burning cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, out of the corner of my eye I saw the strap of a shoulder holster. I blinked at him a little confused, because clashing with the color of his suit were fifteen holes going across his midsection. As I looked at the red stain clashing with the green of the suit I noticed that none of the holes were letting out the life blood that so many of us needed.

“Yous gunna look at me all day or is you gonna sit the fuck down” The stout man said

“Um, uh, sit down” I said returning to my seat, I looked at the man for a few more seconds before saying “I don’t mean to be a bother but, where are we?” I said punctuating the sentence with a wave of my hand encompassing the white void.

The man looked at me “You ain’t too bright is yous kid” the man said in a matter-of-fact way “You is dead as a doornail an’ this here, this is... uh” the man seemed confused “Ah, yeah that’s right, this here is Pug-i-tery”

I looked at the man Trying to define what he was saying, after a few short seconds with a confused look on my face I lit up. “You must mean Purgatory” I said

“Yous always that much of a ass to the people yous just met?” the man said crossing his arms and leaning back letting a few wisps of smoke escape from the holes on his chest as he took a long drag of his cigarette

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.” I stuttered

“Nah, it ain't no problem” said the man “Name’s Larry the Fish” the man said sticking out a hand. I grabbed it and as he shook it wildly he said “Tommy Gun Missfire at the bank downtown”

“Jacob Stansbury” I responded

Larry the Fish let go and looked at me waiting for something, I looked back. Finally he said breaking the silence like a hammer on ice. “You know it’s polite to tell other people how yous died” he said looking rather irritated.

“Oh, sorry” I stammered taken off guard “Murdered with my own gun in an attempted murder”

Larry the Fish whistled “That sounds pretty bad”

“Yeah” I said rubbing the back of my neck, I looked down at the ground “Hey Larry?”

“What?”

“Is this sand?” I said leaning over and scooping up the pure white sand letting it sift through my fingers

“What the hell do yous think it is” Larry the Fish responded

“Yes?”

“Is you askin me or tellin me?”

“Telling you?”

“God dammit, if yous is gunna act this goddamn stupid all the fucking time just get the fuck away from me” he said as he grabbed the collar of my shirt and threw me from my chair.

I got up and dusted myself off, I turned to look at him and opened my mouth to speak, but before I could a loud voice sounding like it was coming from a loudspeaker but careful inspection would prove that there were none, the voice repeated its words “Larry Stromlinie” the voice said “Report to the front desk for evaluation and departure”

Larry the Fish in the direction of a small oak desk around two hundred feet from his location. He looked back at me and made a “forget you, n’ your fancy ass words” kind of sound and ran towards the desk

I watched him go and turned around, I proceeded to wander around the grounds of purgatory. The residents were kind enough and I had more than a few conversations including one with an accountant killed in a house fire, a soldier backed over with a tank (he was a little flat (pun intended), and a civil war reenactor who had his gun explode in his hands. The result of this was two bloodied stumps. All of them had interesting things to say, as did I. When you were dead you didn’t really care about what the other people on earth and surrounding dimensions thought about you.

I heard some odd thoughts on the prison that we had all been placed in. Some believed that it was a sort of “Celestia Waiting Room” and they were all on their way to heaven or hell once they were “Evaluated and marked for departure”. Speaking to a priest I was able to find what the Christian Community thought. He had thought that god had decided to give us all a test, a test of patience. And those who remained calm for however long they were there would be allowed into heaven. Most of the other Monotheistic religions thought the same, I spoke with a good thirty holy men from each religion. Although one of the Rabbis just yelled at me for not greeting him properly. Finally after having hundreds of conversations  I sat down tired beyond comparison and looked at my watch. When I pulled it out I saw a major problem, the hands were not moving. I shook it and put my ear to it, hearing nothing I wound it with the same result.

“It won't work you know” a small voice with a faint british accent said

I turned to the side and saw nothing, the other side yielded no results.

“To you left” the voice said

I turned once again in confusion, there sat a man that I had overlooked. He was plain, so plain in fact that my mind simply didn’t take him into acount. Forcing myself to focus on him I noticed that he was a man of average height and weight in his early forties, he had a fair complexion and black hair worn in a nicely combed but plain way. He had a thin mustache that looked rather plain. His Clothing was of a brown wool sport coat and white shirt matched with grey trousers. His shoes were of a black leather that was polished to a dull and plain sheen. But the defining feature of this man was the hangman’s noose hanging limply around his neck, which was bent slightly to the left with a small protrusion from the side .

“Sorry” I said “I didn’t see you there” I said looking at the man and feeling my concentration trying to slid off of him

He sighed “No one ever does” he said turning to me “Arthur Silkends, hung at the neck until dead as per order of the Vermont Court of Law”

He paused as the voice spoke up “Ronald Green report to the front desk for evaluation and departure”

I stopped and listened to the voice oddly compelled to listen “Jacob Stansbury” I responded “Shot with my own gun in an attempted murder”

Arthur looked at me appraisingly “You don’t look like the type to murder for profit Mr. Stansbury”

“I didn’t” I said “I did it for a personal vendetta and fun”

Arthur said nothing for a minute before saying “Good to see another man that does it for his own means” he said as he stuck out his hand and shook mine firmly “How many of the buggers did you get”

I responded with a smile and a laugh as I said “Five, all of them a bloody as you could get”

“Good, good” he said letting go of my hand “Nothing compared to my thirty-seven” he said patting me on the shoulder “But still good”

“Thank you sir” I said looking down at my hand and seeing the pocket watch, forgetting about it for the moment and asking a different question “Thirty-seven? Why did you kill so many?”

Arthur looked back at me and adjusted his hangman’s noose that was secured tightly around his neck “Let me tell you my life story, because telling it any other way wouldn't make sense” he paused stroking his mustache “I was born on august twenty-first, nineteen eighteen. My childhood was a lonely one. Always to be the last one chosen for the rugby match, if I was chosen at all. So many people just couldn't see me. Through the rest of my life I spent it trying to be noticed, not for attention, but only to have people know I existed.” He coughed, a loud ragged sound a result of a life of cigarettes and a death of a broken neck “It worked out for me  I suppose, living a normal life I mean,”

The voice started again “Stepone Jackson report to the front desk for evaluation and departure”

He continued seemingly unphased by the interruption.”I got a job and lived quite happily for a while. But eventually I guess I was fed up with being invisible. So I started killing people, but the most frustrating thing was their expressions as they were killed, as though someone had just told them that they were out of their favorite spread at the market kind of like they were saying. “Oh dear, I’m being bludgeoned to death with this fifteenth century mace, what are the odds of that?” and “I can’t believe my luck getting run over with a crop harvester.” And I would yell at them “My name is Arthur Silkends, I am killing you now, will you please take some bloody notice” shaking his fist for emphasis. He paused and turned to me making sure I was listening, I was. “I’ve actually had police officers in my house looking at me covered head to toe in blood and asking me if I’d seen my neighbor recently. “Why yes, it was when I stabbed her to death with this very letter opener” “Well thank you very much sir, we have many more houses to visit, have a nice day.” He laid his head in his hands, silent and sullen.

I looked at him, and decided to not disturb him, I waited for seemed like years, eons even. We sat in perfect silence  until I decided to speak up “What was that about it not working” I said looking at him

“Time doesn't work here” he said raising his head with some effort and pulling out his watch to show “It’s my theory that we are in some kind of a pocket dimension”

“Pocket dimension?” I said looking at him raising an eyebrow

“Yes, a kind of a waiting room” he pointed at the small desk in the distance “You see that man there?”

I looked at the speck in the distance, turning back to him “Yeah, what of it?”

“I think that’s the “Saint Peter” of this world, the person that deals out judgment that determines our fate. And he is the sort of ruler of this world, this dimension which takes all of the people who die on the east coast of the United States”

“Huh, really?” I said looking back at the small man at the desk “How does it work, the judging and such?”

“Oh, well I think that once you arrive here you’re put on a sort of list which he calls off every so often” he said

The odd loudspeaker voice spoke up “Henry Mancini report to the front desk for evaluation and departure”

“Like that” Arthur said pointing upward “He calls out a name every so often usually a few minutes apart”

“Well how long have you been waiting?” I asked

“Well that depends, what year is it?” he said adjusting his tie slightly

“Well” I paused thinking “When I was killed it was the june of twenty fifteen”

Arthur hummed to himself as he scratched his head “I was killed in nineteen fifty six” he paused doing some math in his head “so I’ve been here for at least fifty nine years” he paused “yep, fifty nine years”

“What?” I said exasperated “Fifty nine years?”

“Well a lot of people die Mr. Stansbury” he looked at me again “as a murderer you of all people should know that” he leaned back in his seat. I tried to talk to him more with no success. So I slumped back into my chair, defeated. Arthur Silkends just looked at me as though I was crazy for a few minutes he stayed like that, but of course when you were dead time is very liquid in thought. He stood up and just walked away as though we had never spoken. I said nothing, I was too tired. I stayed there talking to a few people t of them kind of just faded into chairs and awoke as though they were sleeping. Some wildly and some vaguely quiet. I guessed it had something to do with your acceptance of death. The other thing I noted is that though you were of the same age that you were at death, any physical problems were gone. Everything from arthritis to heart burn faded away as soon as you arrived in this “Celestial Waiting” room.

As time passed none of the occupants aged or grew hungry. The only noise was one of several polite and quiet conversations scattered through the room. Looking at the impossibly empty sky I heard the voice pipe up from the invisible loudspeaker system

“Jacob Stansbury report to the front desk for evaluation and departure” it said as lifeless as ever.

I stood, untouched by the time I had spent sitting in the wooden chairs. I walked to the small oak desk feeling no fatigue as I moved through the sea of people, as I arrived at the desk after the three mile hike that it took me to get there. I looked for the occupant, first I saw and heard nothing, until a small man climbed onto the chair carrying a bottle of bourbon that he placed on his table. He was short no taller than three feet. He wore a grey pinstripe waistcoat with matching pants. A small gold chain extended from one of the waistcoats pockets to the other. His shirt was a pressed white linen that was almost as pure as the sand that this world was made from, around both of his arms at the elbow was a small gold band that kept his sleeves from dipping into the ink that was in bottles on every available surface. His skin was a deep olive and his hair was a deep black that that was kept in place by a small green visor. He was clean shaven though he had a thin shine of stubble that gave him a haggard appearance. He got atop his chair and tossed a large leather-bound book onto the table. The book itself, like the man who carried it looked very old and haggard in appearance, worn at the edges and stained in several areas, not all of them ink. Moving slowly and methodically, he picked up one of the many quills on the desk and dipped it in one of the ink bottles.

“Name?” he said with a thick spanish accent

A little surprised at both his appearance and his voice I hesitated slightly

“Name?” he repeated a little peeved at my hesitation

“Oh um, sorry” I said stammering coughing at the dust that seemed to accumulate in my lungs in their lack of use “Jacob Stansbury”

He opened the book with little effort to a page that was filled with names “Age?” he asked

“Eighteen” I said fiddling with my thumbs

He scribbled some writing down followed by some numbers “Religion at time of death?”

I paused, thinking on what my religion was, I had prayed to Celestia and Luna after I had prayed to them on one occasion and said prayer was, so to speak, answered. but I didn't know if it had a name. “I prayed to Celestia and Luna” I said finally

He didn’t look up and simply pulled a second book from a drawer of the desk. He placed it on the book and flipped through it stopping on a single page and dragging his finger down the side stopping on a single one for a few moments mouthing some words. As I tried to read his lips he finished, closed the book, and looked up at me “The forty third door on you left” he said abruptly. Pushing a small button on the desk and pulling the  ticket that came from it “There you go, put the ticket into the slot next to the door, if you get lost the doors are numbered along with your ticket” he handed me the ticket, and took a swig from the waiting bottle of bourbon

I walked past him to the small hallway that was filled with doors. I looked back to see the man pull a small intercom from a drawer and speak into it. Only to hear it a few moments afterward. I decided to keep walking. I looked at my ticket, in curvy font it said “Door 86.” I looked at the closest door in the same font it said “Door 12.” It was going to be a long while before I reached my destination.

I kept walking along reading off all of the doors “Door 18, Door 19.” I thought about what had happened up to this point “Door 23, Door 24.” The people that I had killed, my friends and family “Door 61, Door 62.” Wondering if I regretted it or not

“Door 86.” I slid the ticket into the small slot next to the door I waited. I remembered one of the things I had learned in life, a sort of self owned philosophy. “Know what you're doing when you’re doing it, Learn from your mistakes to not make them, and never regret the things in the past.” The past was unchanging and silent.

The door swung open revealing a fiery pit and screams of pain, I looked into it and shrugged, if this was to be my new home, so be it, seeing as there was little to chose from. Death had made me uncaring for my well being.

I stepped forward and fell into the pit, landing on my face as I hit the ground I felt my soul or simply my mind being knocked back into me to me. I pulled myself up to see hanging cadavers of all shapes and sizes, all of them screaming. I was in a very bad place. I rushed to my feet and turned around, to fast it would seem as I fell over again. Scrambling to me feet once again I decided to feverishly try to find out where I was. if I knew that I could at least know what to expect. I looked in all directions seeing nothing I saw the door and moved to get to it, the sanctity of the white sand-filled world. I then started looking around to find something to climb up to the door, hanging in the slight breeze of this fire filled world.

I ran about lost in the world, until I felt the ground shake under my feet. I stopped until I  heard a loud sound come from behind me, it sounded rather like someone clearing their throat. I remained silent and still as a stone.

“You there” a low rumbling voice called. I turned and pointed at my chest “Yes you, what is it that you think you're doing in this area?” There standing or maybe growing from the ground was a massive flaming beast that was in an almost humanoid shape. He was a bright orange and radiated heat as tough an oven would. How he could talk on the other hand was a mystery, he didn’t seem to have a mouth or nose, just two large gaps in his being that showed the flames and pain behind him.

I paused thinking, what could I say to such a thing “I..I ju..just arrived” I finally said pointing at the door

The thing looked at me in a sort of way and materialized a large clipboard made from flames, the thing stood there with the clipboard for a few moments before saying “Well? When do you think you’ll grace me with your name? I haven't got a millennia to waste”

“J...Jacob Stansbury” I said staring at the flaming monster

It looked through the flaming clipboard pausing “Dammit Simmons” it said aloud before looking at me “Well it’s your lucky...” it paused looking at me very aggravated “It’s very rude to stare you know” it said materializing a whip and hitting me across the chest. I doubled over in pain. “Now that I have your attention” the thing continued as though nothing had happened  “I was saying todays your lucky day, your not on our roster which means that Simmons made

another mistake” before I could say anything the ground I was standing on rose up into the air and zipped to the open door.

Flying back into the white hallway the thing rose up to the opening “Go tell Simmons you got the wrong room” it said slamming the door shut, as it shut a ticket slid from under the door. I looked at it and snached it up running back to the front of the hallway.

“Wrong one?” the man said looking at the ticket. I had arrived a few seconds earlier handing him the ticket. He pulled a book from his desk and flipped through it “Fate of Murderer, worship Christian, Muslim, Jewish..” he mumbled for a few more minutes before going “Aha!, Celestial and Lunar Worship; see Pagan” he flipped back and pointed to a line “See? Pagan worshiping murderers sent to door number 86”

“But I’m not a Pagan” I said “I worship Princess Celestia and Princess Luna”

He paused, scratching his head and flipping through the book. “I can’t seem to find it... oh nevermind.” Reading through it finally saying “Well it says no matter what happens you’re to go to Door Number 37” pulling out another ticket from his desk and snatching the one in my hand and stamping it with a large void sign. “Off you go, nineteenth door on your right” he said as he ushered me back to the hallway.

I walked back down the hallway a little more carefully, my mind was still with me from my little encounter with the flaming beast. I arrived at door 37 in due time sliding the ticket into the slot and waiting as the door creaked open. I saw a blue sky with cotton ball clouds in the distance. I looked through the door and saw I was a good twenty feet above the ground, I considered going back for a ladder of some sort but before I could I felt a strong push at my back. With the bulk of my weight leaning over the threshold I fell forward, but not before waving my arms frantically for a handle with no avail.

I fell into the forest that was below the door landing on my back I saw a Janitor of some sort waving at me and smiling. His bushy mustache looking rather the same as his broom. He yelled at me from his perch above me. “Take this! You’re Gonna need it” he said as he lobbed a bottle of spiced rum at me. I caught it but just barely before it slammed into my skull. Looking up again I saw the man waving at me again, I waved back this time. He laughed at my response and turned around muttering. I couldn't make out the bulk of it but I did make out “Poor bastard” and “As if Lucifer and David Bowie had a kid.” I raised an eyebrow in confusion at the last statement as he shut the door behind me and with it the only link to normality.