“So your name is Joseph is it, Joseph Campbell?”

“Er yes, yes it is ma’am” I replied, trying to keep my cool.

Everything about the room in which we sat was normal. I was seated in a normal brown leather chair. The receptionist was seated behind a standard metal desk wearing a average gray sweater shooting me a very familiar frown.

Indeed, everything about the scene before me looked perfectly ordinary, if a little manufactured.

With one big asterisk.

The entire office, this perfect replica of a normal human office… was situated atop a single puffy white cloud in the heavens.

All that surrounded me was a wide open blue sky and a thousand foot drop into God only knows what and where.

Oh and what else? I was pretty sure I had just died.

While I was taking in my surroundings the receptionist had begun rooting through a filing cabinet and had, by the time I turned back to her, pulled out a large manila folder which she opened onto the desk.

She coughed loudly, getting lost in a fit. I wondered if I should help her but thought better of it. She seemed like she wouldn’t be the type to appreciate it.

I clasped my hands tight in my lap, ignoring the sound of the deep wet coughs until they finally petered out.

She wiped her mouth with a handkerchief and began to read from my file:

“Ah yes, Joseph Campbell, died at age 32. Single. Worked as a programmer. Lived alone with his two cats. Loved videogames, vaping, low quality sushi and busty-milf pornography.”

She took off her glasses and looked me up and down, the ghost of a smirk on her lips.

“That sounds about right, does it Joseph?”

For a moment I was embarrassed, feeling her gaze upon me but quickly I shook it off. More pressing concerns flooding my thoughts.

“Wait lady.. I’m really dead?”

She gestured around her to the clouds, “What the hell does it look like kid? Think I’m just sitting up here for the heck of it? Spooking normies?”

I shook my head.

“Ok so…” my heart was beating fast. “This is… this is like heaven right? I’m going to go to heaven now?”

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Heaven didn’t sound so bad! I was already up in the clouds, perhaps there would be good food, cute girls… oh boy, I bet NO-ONE gets rejected in heaven.

My fantasies were interrupted by loud raucous laughter from across the desk.

“Heaven? You? Mr. Backdoor Sluts 9? Mr. missed-his-mom’s-birthday-five-years-in a row? Mr. spent his whole paycheck on video games every year instead of giving to his destitute Aunt Jill?”

I frowned, aunt Jill was a low blow. She had once pinched my cheeks as a kid so hard that they bled, it had been traumatizing. But the lady had a point. I’d not been generous to those in my life, nor kind or free with my time. Ok I was an asshole, fair. I was selfish. I lived for myself. But was that a sin or was that just honesty? I mean we were all selfish, right? I was just better at it than most.

“Joseph, listen. Ever heard of a hero’s journey?”

I shook my head.

“Well look, you have two choices. I can send you straight to hell right now, and that suits me fine. Less paperwork really.”

A door opened at my feet and I could feel the heat rising from it, flames flickered below, it was deep and dark and red. I heard a scream rise from it. I kicked my chair back from the hole.

I did not want to fall in whatever the hell that was.

The lady chuckled.

“Startle easy don’t you? Well that's hell, if you want in, just say the word. But there is one other option, and I’m required to give it to you. Union rules.” She rolled her eyes.

“But honestly, it's long and hard and I’ve never had any of my applicants succeeding.”

“Jesus Christ lady what is it?”

She snorted derisively.

“You are darn lucky that this isn’t an Abrahamic version of purgatory, or that kind of talk would send you straight down that portal! Thankfully God is a little more complicated than all that.”

I was starting to see that for myself.

“Anyways, as I was saying there is another option. I don’t advise it, but here it is.”

A blue portal opened beside the red one, it was hard to make out anything below. I thought I saw green, a hint of grass perhaps? It certainly looked more inviting than the hell portal. I was ready to sign up right away.

“That portal will give you your own customized hero’s journey. You will need to go through each step, and if you can succeed. If you can complete each part of the journey, then you will be granted an audience with the big man himself. And given a chance to go to Heaven.”

I felt my pulse racing, a sweat breaking out on my brow. There must be a mistake. There was no way this was real.

“This is crazy, can’t I just go back? I’m young! Hell this must be a dream. This is so damn ridiculous”

She laughed. “Refusal of the call? It’s a little early, usually it happens once you are in the world but I’ll take it. She pulled out a checklist and put down a mark.”

I stood up.

I opened my mouth in utter disbelief. This was my life! Heck, my afterlife! And she didn’t seem to take any of it seriously at all. A fresh chorus of screams echoed upwards from the hell portal and I swore I smelt burning hotdogs.

God I hoped it was hotdogs.

“Fine! I’ll do it.” She grinned.

“Alright. Before you step into the portal, one thing. You’ll want to look for The Oracle. Not an original name, I know, but what can I say… God is a busy man. We tend to recycle plot archetypes and names. Hence the Hero’s Journey.”

“The Oracle? Look I’m going to need a lot more informa-”

But the lady had had enough. She pressed a button on her desk and the chair catapulted me forward into the blue portal.

“Bye now, you have fun Joseph!”

I tried to curse her as I fell but the words were sucked out of my mouth the moment I hit the strange portal and winked out of existence.

Into another world.