"Wait a second… This isn't Heaven."

I wasn't certain why I knew this, but I was as confident as confused people could be. The room I was in wasn't Heaven. Obviously. It had all the celestial splendor of a freshly scrubbed dentist office. Yet, where was I, and why was I thinking about Heaven all of a sudden?

Well, there was the room itself. It wasn't exactly screaming cloud couture, but there was something otherworldly about it. It was small, antisceptic, and had an inner glow. All the walls were white. The desk and chairs were white. The pencils and notepads on the desk were white. The cushions on the luxurious leather-like couch that I was sitting on were white. Everything was squeaky clean and luminous. On the wall was a white picture frame surrounding a team of people. They were, of course, all dressed in white, but their multi-racial smiles and faces showed me that my sense of color was still working. There was also a yellow and purple plant in the corner that broke up the white motif and made me wonder where on earth I was. I had never seen anything like this plant in my life, with its purple, bee-like rings and rippling leaves, hunched out of its white flower pot like a vulture tracking its prey. Yet even the soil it was planted in was white. The interior designers were seriously committed to this monochromatic color scheme.

The door to the room slid open and a prim and tall man entered the room while looking over a glowing stone tablet. He was dressed in a long, flowing white robe with a suit jacket top. His tie was white as well. Looking down at my chest, I discovered I was wearing a tie. I had never tied a tie for as long as I breathed. What was going on here? The man looked from the tablet to me, then back again, frowned, and then starting taking notes on the tablet.

"Mr. Thomas." His voice startled me out of my reverie. Since arriving, I hadn't thought to test my vocal cords and had forgotten that speech was a thing.

"Thomas?" I coughed. "That's not my name."

"Everybody has a name, and yours is Thomas."

"I'm pretty sure that it was something else."

"Oh?" The man leaned forward in his seat and looked down his nose at me. "What, pray tell, is your name, then?"

"I c…" I'm not going to admit I can't remember! I won't give that smug jerk the satisfaction. But as I looked around the room, and avoided eye contact with the man with the tablet, I couldn't recall anything. How did I end up here?

"Mr. Thomas. There is the Before where you had a name, the Then where you had another name, and the Now, where I get to pick names depending on my mood. You are in the Now. Let's focus in. There's an awful lot of information to cover." The man looked down on the stone tablet again and laughed softly to himself.

"I may not know my name at the moment, but I know I don't like you much."

The man gave me a thin smile, then continued.

"As you have likely surmised, you are in the Afterlife. There are many destinations in the Afterlife, not all of them good. Would you like to take a guess as to which direction your path is taking you?"

I just glared at him in reply. Smug. Jerk.

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"As I look over your life of accomplishments, I don't see very many that stand out as great and noble. Most of your accomplishments on Earth benefited only you. Well, there was one incident. It is this one incident that has earned you a meeting with me instead of instant obliteration. You once gave your last loaf of bread to your sister who was destitute and starving at the time. Your selfless act of charity that weekend swayed her to not end her life."

The man looked down at his stone tablet and swiped his finger across the surface, then nodded his head with an air of reluctance. I guess he didn't want to admit that I was a good person deserving better treatment.

"Mr. Thomas," he continued. "What a shame. There is just the one incident. You lived a colorful life, met colorful people, then picked fights with them. You shared your life with no one, not even a girlfriend. At least you fathered and abandoned no children out of wedlock. But you hoarded your wealth. Mocked the sick and infirm. Stepped over the poor–sometimes literally. Cheated the just. And…" The man peered closer at his tablet, his eyes wide. "And spent your ill-gotten gains on obscenely expensive fountain pens."

"Wait! Fountain pens! Yes, that's right! I remember now!" I leaned forward in my seat and clenched my hands into fists. "The golden nibs…the gold encrusted barrels. So gorgeous! So stately! I did important things with my fountain pens, I'm sure of it!" This guy, maybe I'll call him Mr. Prim Smugly, just didn't understand. Who wouldn't spend their life's savings on handheld perfection?

"You make it seem like buying rare collectibles is a bad thing. The fountain pen industry employs thousands world wide. I performed a vital service by supporting the industry. Yes! It's all coming back to me." I could almost see the rows and rows of pens that lined my living room wall in display cases. "Think of all the people I kept employed. I helped keep their families fed while their hard earned money sustained their local economies!" Why can I remember all that, but not my own name? My past was still a bit fuzzy, but I was sure that he was just being negative.

"A vital service‽ Mr. Thomas, your last moments on Earth were spent in a fist fight in the middle of a pen convention. You had just tried to sell somebody an exclusive, one-of-a-kind fountain pen that you claimed had been used by Ben Franklin to sign the Declaration of Independence, and this despite the year "1923" clearly stamped on the pen itself. You became so incensed at being accused of fraud that you bludgeoned the would-be customer with a cheap plastic fountain pen while screaming, "Die, you pen Nazi!". It was at this point—when security tried to tear your bloody hands off of your victim—that you had a cardiac arrest and blessed the world by moving on."

"It probably wasn't my best day."

"Mr. Thomas, you had no best days unless it involved spreading misery and malice to everyone you met. I wish I was sorry to inform you, but you have failed your tenure on Earth. You have had access to a body revoked. You won't be joining your family in the Happy Beyond."

"Actually, that's the first good news I've heard all day."

Mr. Smugly, who I assumed was some sort of parole angel, suddenly cocked his head and stared at me with a mysterious expression. Then a smile slowly spread across his thin lips. I immediately regretted my wisecrack about my family. If this guy had a sense of humor, it was dark and twisted.

"I was of a mind to fast track you to erasure because, honestly, we have no use for souls like you, but I've got a far better fate in mind for you now."

"Erasure?"

"Erasure. Deletion. Annihilation. It doesn't really matter. We have a world you're just going to love." The man poured over his stone tablet and then with a look of very pleased surprise, said, "Yes, excellent. All the conditions for placement have been met." Placing his tablet down, he gave me his full attention.

"Good bye, Mr. Thomas. I don't expect to ever see you again. Enjoy your world of quill pens for as long as you're able to."

"Wait! Wait! What do you mean?"

Mr. Smugly placed two fingers on his stone tablet and spread them with a rapid flick. In an instant, I was both sitting and moving at extreme velocity. The smug jerk became infinitesimally small as the white room moved away from me as if at the end of an expanding tunnel, its white walls streaking into a world of white that rotated around me. There was a roar of wind in my ears, and then the light faded as dark, murky colors came into focus.