Love You to Death

Where I thought I might end up after the explosion that killed me, this place wasn’t it.

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Not that I’m not grateful. What this cold, featureless, all-white room lacks in personality, it more than makes up for in lack of obvious eternal damnation.

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“How long do you think they’ll keep us here?” The man dressed in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat has been pacing this small space since we arrived. When we shared pleasantries earlier, he introduced himself as a politician I vaguely recognize by name. A politician, and a monster like me, ending up in the same place after death is probably the least surprising thing that’s happened to me all year.

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His is a fair question. There is no clock in this room, but it feels like we’ve been here for hours. Days, maybe? Church sermons from my childhood painted elaborate pictures of Heaven and Hell, but none addressed how formless time feels after dying.

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“Well, they can keep me here as long as they like.” The third man here with us is a murderer whose name I know from the papers. He has a mouthful of missing teeth, giving him a pronounced lisp. He sits beside me at a low wooden table that takes up most of the room. Neither of us feels much like standing. “At least it ain’t Hell.”

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“I just wish someone would explain what is happening,” the politician says, still pacing. The room is no more than ten feet by ten feet and the man’s legs are quite long. After a few strides, he’s forced to turn back around and pace in the opposite direction. “We’ve deduced that we’re dead. We suspect our souls are not ultimately bound for…pleasant locations.” At that, the murderer snorts. “Why keep the three of us waiting?”

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A bedraggled woman who refused to introduce herself earlier pointedly clears her throat from her cross-legged position on the floor.

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“Why keep the four of us waiting?” the politician amends. And then, in a contrite voice, he adds, “No offense, ma’am.”

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The woman mutely inclines her head as if to say None taken. I’d try to guess what she did during her lifetime to earn a spot here, but I’ve never been good at reading people.

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“I have a theory,” I say.

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Everyone stares at me in surprise. It’s the first I’ve spoken in hours— days? I suppose I can’t blame them.

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“Let’s hear it,” the politician says.

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“If we were all bound for Hell— ” I begin.

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“Which we were,” the murderer chimes in.