You get all kinds here. Artists, doctors, sailors, people from France and Italy and everywhere. It's almost enough to make one want to stay forever, just to watch. Half of them are disillusioned. Those people make up the portion of our happy little world that thinks it's still alive. Most of the time, these "little ghosts," as we call them, they were dissatisfied with life. Sometimes, they're so convinced that this can't possibly be the afterlife that they just can't accept it, now that they're here. It happens a lot with Catholics. No offense, if you're Catholic. Really.

Examples:
    A construction worker, taking a drag on a cigarette that's not there: "Nothing ever stays the same, man. If you used to be the biggest, baddest kid on the block, now you're working for the geek you used to beat up every day. You're hauling his trash, or, if you're lucky, fixing his electricity. In the meantime, he's getting laid by a babe with double-D tits and a degree in tantric sex. And she used to be the fat chick with braces and glasses you always made fun of. And that blonde girl you always wanted to bone, well, she's a lesbian with a wife and a kid. Christ."
    A 40-something peroxide blonde in runny mascara: "He loved me. He will again. I know he will. Don't you think he will? I'm so sure of it. All he has to do is leave that hussy. I'm the mother of his children, for godsakes."
    A few million religious missionaries, kneeling down all in a little room together, eyes squinted shut to keep from seeing the plain gray walls: (Prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, etc.)

    Here, we are all sexless and raceless. Here, people become tiny through their little delusions, because here, that's all they're made of. Hence, "little ghosts." Otherwise they take up space that should be used for the tons of paperwork we get in every nanosecond.
    This is the afterlife, but it's nothing like you'd imagined it. Me? Once I learned all about this place, I got bored. I signed on to be one of the volunteers. I file lives.
    I can already see the bile churning in your stomach at the idea of the afterlife being one big office building in the sky. Well, before you decide to rant and rave and throw this piece of thought away, hear me out. I'm going to tell you a little about how religion is here. Yeah, where all that faith of yours goes when you're dead. In the toilet and down the drain with all of your other earthly sh-- hey. Stop. Don't get mad at me, that's just how things are.
    I'm not saying there aren't gods and goddesses. There are. Your faith is not unfounded, whatever faith you've got. Jesus, the Dagda, Zeus, Thor, the Buddha, Isis and Osiris. Every single one of your beliefs is probably true up here, somewhere away from the filing cabinets and corridors. Every deity that people believe in hard enough, he or she or it exists. All of 'em, they wander around and do their jobs, blessing and unblessing, being and unbeing, creating and falling away to vanished hopes and dreams. They are created by faith which is created by a collectively unconscious force. I don't entirely get it, who created who and what did what in the beginning and all that, but I was never a big fan of ancient history anyway.
    Just one thing. All you Satanists out there? You're out of luck. Pure evil's got no place in here. It would just get in the way. Then again, Satan probably thought it was too boring and that's how he left. The Christian God, I hear, has a picture of him up on her wall. But that might be just office gossip.
    Heh. I try to explain this to the little ghosts, in the moments when they nearly realize where they are, and they treat me like a homeless lunatic. I tell them, the universe is not what you think it is, so get over it. Life cannot be what you want it to be, so grow up and move on. They retreat into their fantasy ramblings, grow smaller again. I laugh and go about my business. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. I can be a mean SOB, but it doesn't do too much harm.

    You, you're probably wondering how I got here. You're one sick puppy if that really is the first thought that occurred to you, but I may as well tell my story. I drowned. Well, I drowned myself. I threw myself in a river, took a big deep brackish breath, coughed on water, and kept doing that until things went black and I showed up in the void, facing the Great Centrifugal Orb of Non-Delusion.
    What the frick is that, you ask? Simple. It's the big final exam you never wanted to take. It's an injection of everything about everything. Everything you ever wanted to know. Everything you never wanted to know. It's Truth, and it smacks you in the sprit-face before you've had half a chance to think anything like, "Holy hell, I'm dead."
    Let me explain.
    First, picture yourself in a fully black void. There's nothing. It's like space but emptier. It's loneliness and cold and hunger and guilt and pain. You're there just for a moment, hardly even long enough to make a memory. Then, faster than you can register it, pow! Imagine this huge ball of white light appearing in front of you, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything your mortal eyes could possibly take without making you go blind in an instant. It sucks you in. Slurp. And you're inside, covered in this too-bright light that clings to you with a kind of substance light just can't have. A little like a blanket, or an embrace. And you're all happy and squishy for a few moments, then pow! again. Your senses are sucked away. You can't feel or see or hear, all you can do is think. Now, that's all you are. You are only left with your thought, and let me tell you, that's all you need. Everything's being fed to you at the speed of light, pardon the pun. Truth upon Truth upon Truth. You know everything, you know too much. You can't take it. You try to block it out, but it keeps coming, who you are, what you've done wrong, how things are, what life is, why we're here and what's going to happen next.
    And you wake up in a room, maybe a cup of something you like to drink in your hand. Then you look down and realize, well, there's your hand given back to you. And you can't remember a bit of the information you were just force-fed. And trust me. If you haven't gotten zapped up to stay in that Orb for the rest of eternity, you'll have failed. And you'll probably be glad.

    "Big... Sucking Bubble of... Bull. Big... big thing that sucks. Sucks you in and spits you out. Big thing that chews on you. Like... like you're a piece of Wrigley's. Or something."
    I'm painting. Nothing much, just a seascape. The chick next to me who's playing with clay and ranting incoherently at the moment, that's Tanya. She was a friend of mine from high school. Died when she OD'd on some very badly cut drugs. We're on break. Some amenities the workers and I had when we were still living, we have now. Painting is something I don't think I could live-- exist without. It's not real paint, of course. And that's not real rock candy she's crunching. It'll drive me nuts, though, real or not.
    "Hey, Theiry, your favorite show's on." Oh, yeah. Theiry. That's me. "See, Jeff keeps coming around to visit, but everyone blames that big boating accident on him. And they found out coma dude's sister's got--"
    "Sod off, Tanya. I'm not interested in that brainrot."
    "When did you become British?" Crunch crunch. Crunch.
    "Maybe I was in a past life, hm? You think about that?" Anything to get her off of the subject of that horrid soap opera. Ugh. Annoyance.
    "Bollocks. I was a British major general in a past life. And not a very good one, I admit. Drank and smoked a lot and played patty-fingers with the ladies. You were just an Italian fisherman and a French whore."
    "Don't forget the starving artist in Idaho."
    "Oh. Right. Gods, you're a loser."
    "Gods? Still wiccan, are you?"
    "I'm trying it for a week. Buddhism's next. I'll probably switch back to Christianity by the end of the month." Crunch. "I wish they would give me something better than rock candy. 'Nother kind of rock. I couldn't die from it, not again."
    "Dude, there's no drugs up here. And you can't smoke, you've got no lungs."
    "I've got no teeth, either." Crunch. "All this, my man, it's all in our heads. Our bodies are products of our imagination. Nothing better than a little ghost, we are. Just a slight bit less delusional. And not much less, at that." Tanya's looking at me with a seriousness I'm not used to, coming from her.
    "Delusional my big white ass," I say.
    "Ghetto booty," she responds.
    "Bitch."
    "Whore."
    "Cunt."
    "Ho."
    "Rake."
    Same as it ever was.

    Break's over, and I'm going filing again. When I get back to my office room, there's a stack of files as high as my chin on my desk. I look at the number and name of the top folder. Mr. Richard Peter Murphrey is dying, though whether it's cancer or euthanasia I don't know, and I go to one end of the room to file him. This is how it works. As I shove his manilla folder into the correctly numbered slot, at what just happens to be the moment of death back on Earth, the contents of the folder get all glowey. You know all that stuff they say about auras in the paperback psychic handbooks they sell for way too much money in bookstores? Well, that glowey aura light comes from inside Murphrey's manilla envelope and shoots out against a gray wall behind me. It goes "sploot," slides down the wall, and there's an old balding guy sitting in a chair holding a mug of prune juice. I turn around, and as I do, a great gash across his throat heals up, and he de-ages a bit. Rather attractive man, brown-haired and fit. Not my type, but attractive. I fold my arms and put my weight on one hip.
    "Hello, Mr. Murphrey. Feeling all right?"
    "I'm rather... er. Where am I?"
    "Welcome to the afterlife, Mr. Murphrey. You've just experienced what we call 'The Great Centrifugal Orb of Non-Delusion.' As you are not yet ready for complete understanding, you are in what some would call Purgatory, though the concept is uniquely different, a bit more like the basic concept of Limbo. You will be here until your next incarnation. With me so far?"
    "Er. I'm not entirely... That is, I... um." He gulps, staring at me.
    "Good. You're pretty normal, Mr. Murphrey. Most people don't get it for about a year or two, and some never do. It'll be a while before the universe decides on your next incarnation, so just relax, have a drink, and wait a while. Feel free to explore the building and ask anyone any questions you like. Things will come to you slowly. You'll never remember everything the Orb taught you, but you'll start to understand a portion of the things that you may have retained, such as your past lives and how this whole death thing works."
    For a few moments, he looks down, and I let him absorb things. I can't wait too long before filing the next life, but I can give him a good few seconds at least. His eyes look all watery, like he's going to cry, and I hope to god(s) that he doesn't. "Am I going to hell?"
    "There is no hell that I know of, Mr. Murphrey. Not much use for it, really. You can't do wrong here. Even the most dangerous homicidal maniacs can't do anything that'll have much effect to the negative on things, where we are. And you're not going to be punished for your pre-death transgressions, whether you deserve punishment or not. That life's over, the past is over and gone. There's no use dwelling on it." He nods, stares down into his cup, then takes a tentative drink. It'll relax him. Maybe he'll go find his dead wife, if he has one. Some of the afterlife reunions can be pretty touching, but only the first few times you see them. After that, it's not a novelty anymore.
    I leave Mr. Murphrey to his prune juice, and repeat the same process, the same speech, a hundred more times. Madame Mourseille, a rich snob, immediately turns into a little ghost. Jercel, a country fella who won't let me call him Mr. Richardson, thinks it's just great that things work out so "orderly-like," and walks off to look for his runaway hunting dog. Oshogari-sama, a quiet, kind-eyed woman, simply sits and waits for understanding. She probably almost passed the Orb's big test. You look at her, and you know, one more life should do it.

    Filing lives isn't exactly tiring, since I don't have a body. But the monotony of it, like any good job, can wear down one's mental resources. Every time I'm through with the next gargantuan stack of files, it's break time again. Sleep? No, we don't do that here. We don't eat, either, except to remember our sense of taste. Come on, it's the freaking afterlife.
    Due to the extensive number of souls up here, there are several break rooms, and we get to choose which ones we habituate daily, if you can call a period of time a "day" despite lack of sun or nightfall. Some contain pinball or other arcade-ish games, some contain foozball or pool tables, some contain libraries full of any kind of book you could want. There are music rooms and art rooms and big toy rooms for kids who died or were aborted. Since most remember their past lives, though, they're extraordinarily intelligent for children, and it can be awfully creepy talking to them.
    Oh, yeah. And every single damned break room has a big-screen TV. And each one is playing the same damned soap opera.
    "Hey, Theiry. Long time no see, there." That's Jack, a pedophile who was shot dead by the father of a little girl he molested. Thank whomever made this place that he's got no sex drive here. Then again, I don't think anyone does. Don't know. I never really had much of one to begin with.
    "Hey, Jack. How's it hanging?" I drop down into a beanbag chair next to him and run a hand through my hair. Brown, I remember.
    "Oh, pretty well. I'm starting my next life in a month or so." His eyes are glued to the soap, even though nothing's going on right now. Just the same guy in a coma, as always, nothing but white sheets and emaciated arms poking out. His face is bluish, nearly matching the frumpy hospital gown. Black eyes stare straight back at us, unblinking. It's unnerving. I look over at my current companion.
    "Really? Any word on how it'll be?"
    "Yeah... Heh. Sneaked a peek at my file, there. Irony of ironies, I'm going to be a girlie who gets knocked up a lot. Gonna have like seven kids. And even worse, I'm getting married to the son of one of the boys I... hurt." He chuckles a little, but his face shows no humor.
    "It doesn't sound like so bad a life, Jack."
    "It's better than I deserve, ya know? But let's not talk about me so much. Any kind of idea when yours is coming up, Theiry?"
    "No clue, no desire to find out."
    "Aww, now that's a real shame, there. I mean, other than filing your life away, you've really got nothing--"
    Jack stops dead in the middle of berating me, looking slack-jawed at the screen. I follow his gaze. A woman, a well-dressed brunette with pale, slightly jaundiced skin, has apparently entered the hospital room. She's sitting in a chair next to the comatose guy and holding his hand, but she's... she's going into convulsions. Her eyes are rolling back into her head, and her mouth is open as if in a scream. The camera zooms in, and spit starts to dribble out over her tongue and onto her royal blue dress shirt and all the while she's shaking, shaking. No one's there to tilt her head forward or wipe her chin, to hold her and call for a nurse, except for that staring skeleton. She's choking on her own saliva. It's sickening.
    Someone behind me screams, "Somebody call 911!" at the television, but it's not as if anyone's going to hear. That's a world of actors and directors. In this unreality, help will come all too quickly, and people will make a big deal out of the whole thing and speak in deep worried voices whether they're concerned or not. Screw it. I'm not watching. I'm going back to my work.

    I'm back in my room. The walls look even more blank gray than usual. I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that if I were alive, I wouldn't feel well. Can't quite be sure. I don't even know why I wouldn't feel well, but I remember a certain quivering in the stomach that was supposed to indicate... something. Nausea, maybe. Or that strange weakness hunger brings.
    My movements are numb and memorized. I hardly notice filing the folder, or the name that flies past my lips as I welcome the newcomer. There's a woman there. She's wearing blue.
    "Hello, Miss Mercantice. Feeling all right?"
    "Theiry?" She stands, baffled. No need to heal or de-age. She's young and beautiful, she's died unmarked. Only her skin changes itself, flushes her freckled cheeks and restores itself to a healthy pallor. She looks down at her drink, a glass of brown soda tainted red, then back up at me, accusingly. "Theiry, what's going on?" I back up against the filing cabinets, banging my head against a handle. This should normally cause my ears to ring, my hand to fly up to clutch skull and hair (brown), but it does not.
    "Who are you?" I ask. I know the answer already. She's simply the beautiful actress from the soap opera, all skin and bones and makeup and silky brown hair. Lights, camera, action, unreality commences. They're filming the quirky afterlife scene, and I'm the star.
    "Theiry... Theiry, honey, of course you know me. I'm your sister. What's happening? What's going on, where are we?" She stands up in a panic, and her glass of Cherry Coke spills onto the floor. I start my ramblings. Maybe that'll turn things back to normal.
    "Welcome to the afterlife, Miss Mercantice. You've just experienced what we call 'The Great Centrifugal Orb of Non-Delusion.' As you are not yet ready for complete understanding--"
    "Shut up, shut up! This isn't... you're here. You're not dead. I was visiting with you and I had... I had a seizure, I had..." She trails off, hand flying to her lips.
    I pause, panting. This was not in the job description. I shout, "Get out. Get out get out get out!!!" She backs out of the room, slowly, awkwardly, and is likely led by that hall into an adjoining break room. She'll see the soap there, the comatose man and the dead seizure victim. Maybe she'll sit down with Jack and Tanya and watch.
    A few moments pass. I stare blankly at the wall, and pick up the next file. The name on it is "Theiry Mercantice." The file falls to the ground, immunization records and papers and pictures of the comatose man spilling out of it. I run through the back door of the room, a door like many others that leads to a random hallway.
    Far away, a woman screams.

    The universe is not what you think it is. I'm walking away, fast, swerving through the halls like a drunk teenager on a driving binge. They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you're dying, well, maybe I am. Again. Maybe not. This could be an unannounced reincarnation. That would, at least, fit.

Example:
    An Italian fisherman: Imagining what the sea is like as a small boy, ankles dipped into the water of a swimming pool, small feet kicking. I wondered if the sea was this curious fake pale blue, or if it was clear like drinking water, or green like the pool is after a rain. Mommy and Daddy were ignoring me while they carried on a tête-à-tête upstairs. This gave them an excuse to blame themselves for all my faults, once I became a man. They'd give me a boat, one day when I was broke, as an attempt at self-absolution.
    A French whore: Sexually everything and personally nothing, on my knees while he grabbed my ears and twitched. I was a pleasure robot. I forced myself to put up with salt and gagging while convinced that it was something meaningful. For a time.
    A starving artist in Idaho: Eating small donuts covered in chocolate that tasted like plastic and stuck to my fingers and the insides of my mouth with the strength of Elmer's glue. Lunch came from a vending machine downstairs from my apartment and cost sixty cents. My restaurant was the laundry room, perfumed by the persistent smell of bleach and dryer sheets.

    Then, a memory so vivid that I begin to run. Just to get away from it.
    A blur of green congeals to form shapes, green to pigment the quiet reality of things. I know this place... He lives here. Behind blades of grass so straight that it seems like they could cut but simply cushion every footstep. When I'm walking on it, I'm walking on air. Because he's there. Behind blue shutters and white siding. Beautiful, dark-skinned and dark-haired... blue eyes as clear as the morning sky when you know you've woken up too early, when you know you have the chance to sleep in and just be with whomever you're with. He's right there, behind the plaster-coated walls and peeling feather-print wallpaper. There's a pink tone to his house, trapped in the paint and wallpaper and carpet, as if his presence were the sun's sigh, the coming of the new night.
    He's there, and he doesn't want me to be.
    Once that reality dawns, I leave. I go sailing to clear my head. The sky is blue, the sea is green. It's a starving artist's rendition of a clear painted day in France or Italy. It's a painting of a boating "accident." The eccentric artist jumps into blue paint and starts to dream.

    Life is not what you think it is. My right arm itches, but my arms are hanging stiffly at my sides, now. This makes running difficult. People are bumping into me. I'm bumping into them. I'm getting weaker by the moment, but I'm running, and not tiring from the action. Small ghosts of voices assail me.
    "Doctor, he's going into cardiac arrest."
    "Everybody clear!"
    Running, leg muscles getting bigger underneath my skin, arm muscles getting smaller, weaker, the bird muscles of an old man still hanging useless at my sides. The inside of my right elbow itches. Then my chest hurts. I've never felt this kind of pain before. I shouldn't be feeling at all.
    "Theiry!" a man wails, weak-voiced. I turn a corner. The man has blue eyes. Jeff. The soap opera is being broadcast on the wall to my left by way of some projector. Characters are moving about the hospital room with great importance and efficiency. I keep running, loose-armed like an ape. As I run, a row of windows appears to my right, showing darkness and rain outside.
    "Still no good. Clear!"
    I do not want this televised unreality.
    I do not want this non-delusion.
    I'm the star. If the star jumps through the window of his office building to get away from fire or terrorists, he always survives.

    When I come to, I see blue eyes. A dead woman is covered by a white cloth, riding out on a gurney. My skin's been all asleep. Pins and needles. An extra needle is stuck into my arm, pumping IV juice into my veins. Doctors are welcoming me back, faces masked in uniform blue. Jeff is crumpled over me, crying. He had wanted me there that morning, after all, he sobs. He's always loved me. He just couldn't get over that whole guy thing at first. But I took his fear of himself so personally. He just didn't understand how things were.
    The universe is not what you think it is, so get over it. Life cannot be what you want it to be, so grow up and move on. The past is over and gone. I'm weak, Jeff's mourning over me and for me and I'm crying just to prove that I can, mourning without words for Jeff and myself and my sister. There's a window to my right, showing blue sky and shredded white clouds, a clear painted day stuck in the middle of reality.