“Unth-”
His mouth is cotton. Dry coarse cotton.
“Ugh,” he let out at the sensation, moving his tongue and spit around to moisten his mouth. His eyes were closed but he could still see the light through his eyelids.
He sat up and opened his eyes before he froze. The bed was good, it was actually better than the bed he owned, but the white walls gave him cause to pause.
“What?”
He looked around and noticed that he was in a white room. For a second he wondered if he was in jail, then shook his head at the thought. It was too clean to be a jail. Next, he wondered if he was in a rehabilitation center. He’s seen a few flicks that helped make the idea seem credible but it still didn’t fit.
He ran his hand through his hair-
He quickly brought up his other hand and began to feel around his head. It was smooth.
His mouth slowly fell open in shock and felt a creeping sense of dread. He moved his hands to his face and felt that it was smooth where his eyebrows should be. Down to his mouth and felt no beard, just a smooth chin. He looked at his tanned forearms and saw they were hairless too. He was about to check somewhere else to see if it too had its hair removed when he noticed he was wearing white shorts.
Someone had dressed him in a white sleeveless shirt and shorts. No underwear.
His mind was running wild with every scenario he could think of. Someone had removed every hair on his body, seen him naked before dressing him without underwear, and put him god knows where.
Overall, it was terrifying!
He got out of the comfortable bed and desperately looked around, hoping to find something that would make sense. He saw a pair of white slippers on the floor. He put those on without thinking, but after he did think on it he figured that there really wasn’t a point to being barefoot. Slippers on he kept looking around.
When he found nothing else he started to breathe a little fast.
He tried to calm down but it wasn’t working. So instead he tried to see if could remember anything or try to come up with a plan. He checked his pockets, he’s seen it in the movies where a group of buddies pieced things together after being drugged in Las Vegas, he hoped he might be able to do the same. He could feel the blood drain from his face when he found that his shorts didn’t have pockets.
“Party,” he told himself, “I was at a party, then….fuck!” That was all he could remember. It was a Friday night, an old coworker invited him to a house party of someone he knew, he drank a few beers, had some shots, met a girl and then…he couldn’t remember anything else.
He wasn’t hungover, he did feel hungry and had a terrible thirst but nothing that let him know if he was drugged.
He looked at his arms again, legs too, checking to see if he had any markings. Still hairle-
VA-RMMMMMM
He jumped when he heard the sound and quickly turned around. The door had opened. He had seen it but for some reason it escaped his mind in the panic.
Someone walked in. He was a short man, at least shorter than Brian by an inch. He wore a pair of black slacks and a blue button-up shirt, leaving the collar unbuttoned, with suspenders running down his shoulders.
“Brian Sosa,” he announced as he read from a tablet in his large meaty hands. His bald dome shining a little, not completely bald, he had dark hair around the side, but bald all the same. He looked up and adjusted his glasses as he did so, “up and about I see.”
OH GOOD! A PERSON! Brian thought, “Um-”
“Follow me and we can get this over with,” he said turning around and leaving Brain’s sights.
“Uh-HEY!” Brian hollered as he ran up to the door, feeling weaker than he should. He summed it down to being hungry and proceeded at his current and most important task. Trying to find out what the hell is going on!
After he left the door, he found that the man had short but fast strides as he walked down a fairly long hallway. He also didn’t seem interested in slowing down.
“Um, EXCUSE ME!” He hollered but the man ignored him.
As Brian followed him down the hallway and he noticed two things. The first thing was a painting hung on the wall to his right. The other thing he noticed was that he was really weak. Brian would be the first to admit that he is not an active person, at least not as active as he used to be, but he was far from being the kind of person that would be out of breath this quick! He still played sports once in a blue moon!
As he caught his breath he looked at the painting. It was of a blond knight with short but stylized hair with a sword and shield fighting a red and black fire breathing dragon with a lady in a long pink dress, a lover maybe, at his back. The more he looked at it, the more details he noticed. The dragon had green eyes with black pits, menacing without a doubt but it felt like there was more to it. The knight had narrow eyes that didn’t quite look like determination but he didn’t know what else to call it. And the lady in the pink dress, she didn’t seem afraid. Yes her face reflected terror but her body didn’t. Initially it looked like she was clutching the knight in fear, but now that he looked at it closer it was more like she was trying to pull the knight.
A sharp whistle pulled him out of his thoughts.
He looked up to see the man from earlier standing by the door giving him an annoyed look.
“C’mon let’s go! I got more of these to do!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Brian remembered his goal and quickly ran to catch up to the man, once again when he caught up he was out of breath.
The man led him through the door into another room, a small room with a desk and a fold-up chair on either side. It was a rectangular room with three doors, the one he entered which was in the middle of the room, one on the far left of the room and the last one on the far right.
“Alright, have a seat,” the man said as he moved to the other side of the desk. Brian politely obeyed and eyed the desk’s contents as he did so. It was a wooden table made from plywood. There was a glass pitcher full of water with a glass cup nearby, a bowl filled to the brim with peanuts that still had their shell on, an empty bowl beside that bowl, and a plate of crackers. Brian eyed the pitcher with a greedy look.
“May,” he coughed and cleared his throat. “May I have a glass of water?”
The man eyed him, grabbed the pitcher and poured it’s contents into the cup, not once breaking eye contact with Brian. It was unsettling to say the least.
He finally pushed the glass to Brian who grabbed it and quickly swallowed the contents.
“Alright then, let’s get down to business,” the man said. “My name is Lester Garfield, but I go by Lester. Call me anything else and I’ll shove my foot so far up yer ass you’ll have Athlete’s Foot in your throat. Got it!”
Brian nodded but now that he got a better look at Lester he noticed that the man is wide without being fat, actually quite the opposite, Brian could see the muscle bulging beneath the shirt. Lester also sported a short box beard that needed a little trimming and a bit of neckbeard.
“Um, my name is Brian Sosa-”
“Yes, I know that numbnuts, it’s on your resume,” he glanced down at the tablet he set on the table.
“I’m sorry, my what?” Brian leaned in little. Lester turned the tablet around pushed it towards him.
“Your resume,” he repeated, “is this accurate?”
“Um,” Brian skimmed it, it was one page and the tablet was large enough that he didn’t need to scroll down. He definitely wrote it but...“Yeah, but, it’s not recent,” he answered as he leaned back.
“Oh, that so? What have you been up to since then,” Lester asked, leaning back into his chair.
“Oh, I, I’ve worked at ah plastic injection molding company for a few years now. We specialise in overflow work and, look-Ah. I’m-I’m sorry, is this a job interview?” He asked in confusion.
“Yes. Tell me, Brian, why should we hire you?” Lester asked, indifferent to his confusion.
“Why should I work here!?” Brian asked loudly. “Look, Lester-man, what’s going on, why is my hair gone, where are my clothes, where am I?”
Lester tsked as he leaned forward and took the tablet back, “well, it says here you….” he trailed off as he tapped on the tablet, “drowned in your own vomit. Nice,” he said sarcastically as put the tablet down.
“...I’m sorry what?”
“See Sosa,” Lester paused as he licked his lips, “you’re dead. Right now, we’re,” he motioned himself and Brian, “figuring out what comes next. Alright?”
Brian nodded a little with his mouth open. Then he began to shake his head.
“Ah uh. Ah uh,” he kept shaking his head, “I, I’m not-”
“HEY!” Lester clapped his hands causing Brian to flinch. “Have your existential crisis later, I got more of these to do!”
“Wha-” Brian let out in confusion. He shook it off, “okay, look, this isn’t funny!”
“No shit,” Lester replied angrily, “your dead, deal with it.”
“Okay, assuming I am dead-”
“You are,” Lester interrupted.
“Okay, let’s assume that I-”
“You are dead,” Lester repeated.
“If I’m dead wouldn’t-wouldn’t you be a little more-”
“More what?” Lester asked loudly in frustration. “You want fanfare-an obituary? Brain Sosa, drowned in his own vomit, dead as a doorknob! I cannot be any clearer than that!”
“I’m living and breathing right here!” Brian argued while pointing at himself.
“That’s because-NO! Alright, look, I’m not going to repeat this crap over and over again. You don’t wanna believe you're dead, fine with me. Whatever floats your boat, Sosa! But we need to move this along! I got a shit more of these to do!”
“What even is this? Like, are you supposed to be god or-”
“NO!” Lester stood up while pointing a finger at him. “No, no, I’m not god, or a divine judge or the judge, or the herald for Flying Spaghetti Monster! I’m just a guy trying to see if you’ll be a fit for our company.”
“....I didn’t apply here,” Brian said jabbing his finger down on top of the table. Lester closed his eyes and took a deep audible breath from his nose. And then let out in a silent curse that Brian didn’t quite catch.
“Do you know what Zombie Debt is?” Lester finally asked as he sat back down while rubbing the bridge of his nose. That stumped Brian, he shook his head.
“First time hearing it,” he replied earnestly.
“Telemarketing?” Brian nodded to that. “Alright, good,” Lester said as he pushed his glasses up. “You see, ‘people’ compiled your name and phone number along with a bunch of others into a list. They sell that list to other people and then they use it to give you a call and try to sell you something. That’s basically your situation in a nutshell. We bought the list with your name on it and we dialled you up to see if you could be an asset for our company.”
Brian was silent as he listened to the explanation. If he followed it correctly, and believed he wasn’t in some sick joke, then he was basically sold to some organization in the afterlife.
“...what’s the job,” he asked, more to get a full sense of the situation than an actual interest.
“Depends on what you are good at,” Lester replied. “From what I skimmed off your sheet,” he glanced back down at his tablet, pressed something, then looked up. “Proooobably a full-time operator, unless, you learned something new in that plastic molding company of yours.”
“I...learned to drive the forklift,” Brian added with a shrug. He worked with the machines but he only learned quick fixes for simple problems that anyone else could do. However, if the machine broke down or malfunctioned in a manner that required messing with the actual parts and software, then he wasn’t the man for it.
“Full-time operator,” Lester said with more certainty. “We do have other positions in the company, but you’ll have to check those out later.”
“Operator for-”
“You’ll find that out later, next you’re going to ask about the product or business right?” Brian nodded. “Well, it’s basically colonizing.”
“I’m sorry what?”
“Look, Sosa, we’re moving to a new world in something of an alternate reality. When we do, we need to make sure we have the right people with us," Lester explained.
“Do I get a say?” Brian asked. “I mean all this shit is weird and-”
“Oh, definitely weird,” Lester agreed, “and you definitely get a say if you want to come with us. If you don’t want to go, then we don’t want to keep you.”
Brian didn’t say anything and just digested what he heard. It didn’t make any sense. He died, but he was still alive. He had a normal job interview that was anything but normal. The job would be operating something, something physical considering his background, that would help colonize a world in a different reality. So was he kidnapped by a shady interdimensional company in the afterlife or did someone just enjoy going the extra mile for a bad joke?