“This isn’t right. There’s been a mistake,” says Penelope Church, clutching the spiral-bound booklet to her chest.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. But it’s all explained in your welcome packet.” The woman behind the desk barely looks up from her screen as she says this. Her long, pointed fingernails clack away on the keyboard. When she does look up, her green skin shimmers in the artificial glow lights bobbing above her head. She is not moved by the prickle of tears in Penelope’s eyes, nor does she seem concerned about the red, splotchy hives that adorn her neck.
Penelope blinks back the tears once, twice, but then they flow. She can feel her skin getting warmer and redder, like it always does when she cries, and she takes a shaky breath. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she says again, but the words get lost in her throat. She can hear her mother’s voice in her head, admonishing her for crying in public. Really, Penelope, there’s no use in crying. You’ll only make your mascara run.
In the midst of the fear and worry about finding herself suddenly not-alive, Penelope feels a splinter of gratefulness at the thought that, perhaps, she might never have to hear that voice in person again—that her compendium of mother-isms repeating constantly in her head will begin to wither away in the face of starvation.
But then the coldness of Death, the buzzing globes of lights (which are surely highlighting the dark circles under her eyes), and the green-skinned, pointy-eared woman staring impassively at her bring the lump back to her throat. Her chest hurts with held-in tears, and so she lets them flow even more, her face crumpled and shiny.
An image of her mother, with perfectly coiffed hair, French manicured nails, and perfume that smells of flowers and money, rises annoyingly from her self-consciousness, to remind her that self-pity is not an attractive look on her.
Penelope sniffs loudly and straightens her shoulders, taking note of the name plaque on the desk. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she says, “Johnsoniela, I would like to speak to your supervisor.”
Penelope is always quite embarrassed when her mother says this, and yet, despite the audacity of the action, it has never failed. And indeed, the approach is once again proven effective when Johnsoniela shrugs and picks up the phone, wagging her fingers dismissively toward the low-backed bench to the left of the desk.
Penelope sits down on the very edge of the bench (blue with a clear plastic covering; tacky but sensible) and crosses her legs primly. While trying not to eavesdrop on Johnsoniela’s conversation, she looks around the office, noting the dark wood-paneled walls with gilt-framed inspirational posters and the plush crimson carpet that makes her feel like she is walking on air.
Opposite the desk, there is a large window, and something like sunlight filters in through the tree outside. There is nothing beyond the tree branches, just a pale blue expanse. The angle of the branches makes her uncomfortable, and it takes her a few seconds to realize why: they stretch forward into the sky and not sideways or toward her.
She wonders if they are actually inside the tree. She hadn’t seen the way in, after all, as she stood on the deck of a ferry, amidst a crowd of nameless faces and malformed figures, and tried very hard to prevent the panic attack rising in her chest. When they arrived, they were shuffled forward by a stern-faced attendant, and it was all Penelope could do to take a step forward without falling against the back of the large, purple-skinned person in front of her.
She tries to remember what happened before she found herself on a boat in the middle of the stars and the inky black river that had borne her, and so many others, to this strange, cold office. She remembers the cocktail that Beau made her after dinner when they went back to his house. His parents were away, and he raided his dad’s liquor cabinet, producing a questionably dusty bottle of vodka. It tasted funny, but she drank it, feeling the fire of it burning against her sternum as she swallowed.
Perhaps he drugged her, and this is all a hallucination? No, drugs aren’t really Beau’s style, she thinks.
Maybe she choked on a canapé? Did they have canapés with their drinks? She shivers, for once, from uncertainty and not from the temperature in the room. She hates not remembering what happened. Penelope has an impeccable memory, but the minutes leading up to her death are absent. She brings her hand to her necklace and twists the chain around her fingers until they are tangled, then untangled and tangled again.
Regardless of how her death occurred, Beau must be devastated. She imagines him leaning over her lifeless body, his tears splashing onto her pale cheeks. He won’t know how to go on without her. He’ll spiral, falling into a life of addiction or something equally life-ruining, like bird watching. Her death will condemn Beau to a life of mediocrity.
She has to get home.
There is a clock on the wall, but there are no numbers and no hands to denote the passage of time. Just a soft ticking sound, barely loud enough to let her know she is still here and present, even if that present is in Death. To distract herself from the obscurity of time, she flips through her welcome packet, reading snippets here and there.
Welcome to the Next Step.
You may be dead, but you don’t have to stop living. Here at the Next Step Office (Room 100), we appreciate our past while looking forward to the future.
Over the next few weeks, you may get flashbacks to your timely or untimely demise. Don’t panic. This is completely normal and to be expected.
At the end of orientation, you will be given a few options for moving forward. First…
She tosses the packet down on the bench, annoyed by its very presence. The squeak of rubber-soled shoes draws Penelope’s attention back to the office. Johnsoniela motions toward Penelope. “This is her.”
Johnsoniela’s supervisor introduces himself as Maxwell Fergus—Mr. Fergus—and he gives Penelope a wan smile before folding his hands together in front of his chest. His attire is tidy, a simple wool suit in a pleasing shade of brown, and his hair is brushed back neatly. He smiles tightly, showing a row of white, even teeth. She dislikes him immensely, even before he asks, “How can I help you?” with barely concealed boredom.
“Thank you for taking the time to see me,” she says. “I know you must be busy. There’s been a mistake, and I’m not supposed to be here. I want to go home.”
Mr. Fergus gives her a gentle smile rife with condescension. “I see. I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss Church. I assure you that we take accusations such as this incredibly seriously, but our system for determining new arrivals is, quite frankly, foolproof.”
“Well, I regret to inform you that you are wrong. And I would like to speak to your supervisor.” Her voice is a high-pitched whine that hurts even her own ears, but she can’t seem to control her volume. Her throat is tight with emotion. She hides an incoming hiccup by crossing her arms over her chest and settling her features into as stern a pout as she can muster.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Miss Church—” he begins, but his voice falters against the tears gathering in her eyes and when he continues, his expression shifts into a distinct shade of discomfort at her emotional display. “Miss Church, I regret to inform you that there is nothing that can be done. Now, I understand that this can be a rough transition. I can provide you with some literature regarding our counseling services if you’d like.”
“No, I would not like that, thank you.”
Penelope suddenly feels annoyingly young. She is monumentally insignificant compared to Mr. Fergus’s sneer. But the cold of Death has not yet sunk into her limbs, let alone her soul. She shouldn’t be here, she reminds herself. She knows this is a mistake. A clerical error. A case of mistaken identity. It doesn’t matter what the reason is; she feels the truth in her heart.
She takes a shaky breath, more out of habit than necessity, and exhales roughly, eyes closed as she straightens her spine and places her hands on her hips. Her mother’s voice resounds in her head: You can do this, Penelope Marie Church. You will do this.
She opens her eyes to a darkened room, as if a cloud has just passed by the window. She thinks little of it as she wipes deftly at the tears still in the corners of her eyes.
Equally she pays little attention to the crackle of energy that gathers at her fingertips, sparking against the fabric of her dress and fizzling down her body, crashing against the wood floor. She takes a step closer to Mr. Fergus, her body oddly numb, her focus so narrow she doesn’t notice the ground vibrating beneath her wedge heels. The walls seem to bend inward, creaking like a ship caught in a storm.
Mr. Fergus takes a step backward, reaching blindly for the door frame, huddling against it like a raft in rough waters.
“If you can’t help me,” she says stiffly, as a crack of lightning strikes the tree branch outside the window, “then find someone who can.”
He swallows thickly, eyes flitting from Penelope to Johnsoniela and then back to Penelope. “Yes, of course,” he says, the words sticking to the back of his throat, “I’ll be right back.”
She’s sure he means to walk away with some measure of poise, but the action falls decidedly on the scampering side of ways to leave a room. Penelope chances a glance at Johnsoniela, who hurriedly redirects her gaze back to her computer screen. The clock ticks twenty-two times before Penelope hears footsteps coming down the hall again, and Mr. Fergus returns, his hands clasped in front of him. “If you’ll come with me…”
She follows Mr. Fergus and they leave the office, taking an immediate turn to the right to continue down the hallway. She mentally catalogs the path, beginning to form a mental map of the office should she need to know the way back. (Never rely on men for directions; you are more than capable of remembering the way, Penelope).
The more they walk, the more she thinks they must be inside a large, hollowed-out tree. The walls are smooth, polished wood that flows down to the floors. The floors were originally wood as well—a completely round solid tunnel until linoleum was added. Penelope can see the edges of the tiles peeling up where floor becomes wall.
Mr. Fergus notices her gaze. “An attempt to modernize.”
She thinks it looks cheap, and, considering Mr. Fergus’s tone, he would agree. She wonders how the tree was hollowed out and imagines a large worm chomping away at the wood until it becomes pulp and sawdust. Is the worm still here, wandering the halls? If she gets lost, will the worm swallow her up? She suppresses a shiver and hugs her arms around her torso. When she selected her outfit for the night—a red sleeveless dress that tucks in tightly at her waist and hits just below her knees—it was with a balmy summer evening in mind.
Not…this.
“I’m sorry about the temperature,” says Mr. Fergus. “It will take some time to get used to, I’m afraid.”
“I won’t have the time to get used to it,” she insists. “I’ll be leaving soon.”
Mr. Fergus merely raises an eyebrow, his earlier fear seemingly forgotten with each step farther into the heartwood of the tree. They pass several other rooms, each with their own style of entryway.
There is a bright blue door marked “Room 146: Housing Services - we accept walk-ins!” and down from that is a rusty metal door labeled “Room 189: Torture Assignments - we accept walk-ins!”
The elevator is located at the end of the hallway, and Penelope watches her watery reflection in the stained-glass doors as they approach. She hesitates on the threshold, but Mr. Fergus motions for her to continue forward.
“The trip should only take a few seconds,” he assures her, mistaking her reticence for fear of enclosed spaces. Really, it’s that she feels a bit nervous not knowing exactly where they are heading. She’s trying to leave this place, after all, not make her way farther in.
Mr. Fergus punches a button on the brass panel affixed to the wall and the elevator begins its ascent with a judder.
“How far up are we going?” She holds her torso tighter and focuses on the shadows of the floors as they move upward, shapes of the people beyond tinted blue, olive, and pale gold as she and Mr. Fergus travel from the first floor to the second and beyond. She instinctively counts the floors as they pass, losing her focus as the elevator gains speed.
“All the way to the top,” says Mr. Fergus, eyes trained on the brass panel. There are rows of unlabeled red light bulbs, activating quickly as they pass the corresponding floor. There are too many red lights to count individually, but she estimates that there are at least five hundred floors in this tree—maybe more if one considers that not all of them may be accessible from this elevator. Crowning the rows of red is one white bulb framed in a brass star. It reminds Penelope of a Christmas tree.
“Are we going to…Heaven?”
He chuckles smugly and leans back on his heels, hands in his pockets. Mr. Fergus has regained the upper hand, and he is clearly capitalizing on it. “There is only one afterlife, and that’s Death.”
“Are we going to meet God? Or the Devil? Are they even real?”
“Probably. But they’re not in charge around here.”
“So, who is?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he mumbles. “Ah, here we are. The top.”
The white star light flickers on and the doors open with a ding. He motions for her to exit first. To her left is a railing overlooking a large atrium, and she leans over to catch a glimpse. The metal of the railing is cold against her palm.
Below her is the bustling hub of the top floor. At first, the scene is mundane: the frantic energy of people heading to work, rushing to meetings, gulping coffee along the way, or waving to coworkers before rushing to catch an elevator.
But amid the activity, Penelope glimpses the occasional pointy ear, tail, or winged back that belies their current location. She sees green-skinned fae and reddish imps. She sees tall men with single eyes and very small creatures that zip about like fireflies. She sees combinations of half-human, half-beasts rushing to their next appointments, while animals walk upright and wear ties.
She follows Mr. Fergus down the ramp, descending into the atrium. Penelope sticks close to him, though she doesn’t give in to her instinct to grab onto the back of his shirt. Their path briefly crosses with a mustachioed cat walking on two legs and his companion, a cloven-footed man.
“Look,” she hears the cat saying, “Days of the week are artificial, human constructs that don’t apply to thaumaturgic dimensions that exist outside of space and time, and Mondays should be illegal, don’t you think?”
The cloven-footed companion opens his mouth to respond, but the answer is snatched away from Penelope’s ears as their paths uncross. Penelope and Mr. Fergus make their way toward a desk in the middle of the cavernous space, dodging fish-tailed employees in wheeled water tanks and see-through apparitions floating to important meetings.
“We’re here to see Mr. Montague and Mr. Capulet,” he says to the administrative assistant, a large tawny owl that blinks twice at them before pecking at the switchboard on her desk. Then, to Penelope, he adds, “Shakespeare has made quite a splash here recently, with his new play, Macbeth III: Duncan’s Revenge. However, our current managers are quite the fans of his original works.”
The administrative assistant hoots three times.With a pop, a door appears next to the desk, so suddenly that a few people walking by are forced to pivot, bumping into others with a murmur of annoyance.
“After you,” says Mr. Fergus.
Penelope grips the handle and pushes the door inward.