[Journal of Pandora Guardsman Daniel Isaac Mason. Annotations made by Angel Ignostiel.]

  I will not bore you with the details that led up to my death. As days of my once life were, that one was perfectly average. I was walking to work, crossed a street I’d crossed countless times before, a screech of tires, cries of alarm and… that’s that. A brief yet excruciating pain filled my senses, filled my everything, followed by a feeling of being separated, no, torn from my very self, like the last page of a paperback being ripped away, an ending unreached. What came next however, was where the story begins.

  My vision faded to blackness, nothingness, and then with the snap of a light switch, it returned, and I found myself standing at the end of a long line of people. I was not outside a pair of pearly gates with an old bearded man in a robe there to greet me, but instead inside a crowded, and badly ventilated, office building. A sign on the wall read: ‘You are dead. Please wait for Judgement.’

  It turns out, when you die, there’s a whole lot of queueing.

  I was an atheist in an afterlife. I guess belief was not a requirement. Lucky me. This revelation set my curiosity spiralling. I wondered what it would be like, how it would work, and which religion got it the closest? All while a voice in the back of my head screamed at me that I was dead and that I should probably have a minor to major panic over that. Instead, I reread the sign, and, taking it in this time, felt my blood turn to ice as I saw the final word. ‘Judgement’. Capital ‘J’.

  Beads of sweat formed just before a heavy ball of lead dropped into the pit of my stomach. Every bad decision I’d ever made in life movie-montaged rapidly in my mind. From shoplifting sweets when I was a kid*, to my more ambitious thieveries as an adult. From the people I’d hurt, to how I’d reacted to those who hurt me. The choices I had made in my life were going to haunt me in death as well, I just knew it. Before I began to panic over every minor pain I ever bestowed on another, or laughing at my own use of the word haunt, I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. Panic when you know there's something to panic about, until then, learn. My grandfather had been full of life advice. Ironic that it could help me pass the point the life in question was over. I let my curiosity retake the wheel, and started inspecting my surroundings, desperate for anything to distract myself.

  *This is expected and does not count against you.

  It looked like an office where I used to work. Actually, it was identical to a call centre where I worked for a week back in college. I’d left after the eighth or ninth time I got yelled at by someone who got a phone call from a company they’d given their phone number to (and ticked the box that they could call them). Something greyed out the windows to the outside world, windows I used to stare out of while waiting for anything interesting to happen.* It wasn’t as though someone placed something over the glass, but as if there was no longer anything to see. No light, no dark, simply emptiness. A void. The room’s air smelled stagnant and stale, like the ventilation had issues that needed to be fixed. Probably could’ve done with some air conditioning too. With so many people queuing, and there had to be over two hundred, with more arriving every few moments, the heat started to make my skin itch. I didn’t think it was as hot as hell, though mostly because I didn’t want my mind wandering down that particular avenue.

  *This is something we should take notice of. If certain mortals manifestations of the waiting room are generating windows that look out into the nothingness, then the reports of madness that have cropped up the last few centuries make sense (see: The creation of glass windows and how it’s our problem)

  The man people queued to meet had a beard at least. Sat behind a desk at the far back wall near the only doors I could see. As the queue moved and I got closer, I began to make out details. He wore a crease-covered, white collared shirt, with his top button undone behind a navy tie, and his grey jacket slung over the back of the chair. He had the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his bespectacled eyes, and both his beard and temples had a light dusting of silver hair mixed amongst the black. The beard wasn’t groomed, it just looked like he didn’t care to shave. His was the only occupied desk in the office. There were others, but they were all empty, so I assumed I was in the correct line. It didn’t feel right to ask anyone. Considering over a hundred people waited in the line ahead of me, there should have been someone talking. Someone chatting to someone else or loudly asking questions as to what was going on? Should I have? No. If I had spoken, I’d have drawn attention. I knew the eyes of a hundred dead souls would turn to me, silent and staring. I chose to avoid that.

  I spent what felt like an hour silently waiting in line, taking a single shuffling step every few moments. Though, looking around, I got the feeling time didn’t matter much in this place. It could have been less than twenty minutes. It didn’t get any darker or lighter. There were no clouds to cover the sun in the sky… also there was no sun, or sky. I watched people approach the man’s desk. They exchanged brief words with him, then proceeded through one of two doors on the wall behind the desk on either side. Both were made of polished dark wood, identical in every way down to the curves in the grain, and neither had been part of the office when I’d worked there. It took me most of the time I watched to notice that after speaking with him, every single person went through the door on the right. I didn’t know enough about this place to apply logic to it, but I couldn't help staring at the left door, wondering what would be the reason that one opened? Come to think of it, I didn't know the reason the right door opened. I looked around again for someone, anyone one else to talk to. Surely there must be someone on hand to answer questions? I was used to keeping my head in the sand and carrying on, no questions asked, but that was when I understood how the world around me worked.

  As the silence that surrounded me began to feel far too macabre, I felt a sudden need to break it. So, I tried to strike up a conversation with the woman behind me. She had appeared a moment or two after me, which had not startled me in the least, I swear. In response to my half-whispered greeting, she shrieked, a noise that amplified a million-fold in the tentative silence. I hadn’t noticed before I spoke, but she had all but been pulling her own hair from her head, eyes wide as she looked around in fear. She shrieked, called me a demon, then while staggering away from me, bumped into an elderly man behind her. Overwhelmed, she curled up in a ball on the floor. I got a few funny (and a few suspicious) looks from those near us. I played it calmly, shrugged and turned to face forwards once more, rubbing away the sweat that had broken out on my forehead, and my back, and also my neck. The line continued to move around her, but even after I was much further away, I could still hear her weeping. On the plus side, the problem of the mind numbing silence had been dealt with…hooray…

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  As I neared the front of the queue, I got to listen to those ahead of me interact with the man behind the desk now. Most simply had muttered conversations with him, but one middle aged man broke down sobbing. He wore a ragged business suit, the cloth torn to shreds, with one of his shoes missing, and a large bloodstain in the centre of the bright white shirt. He kept asking the man behind the desk to let him see his family, getting more and more hysterical through his tears. The man behind the desk did not move a muscle to help him, his facial expression that of any bored customer service representative: unchanging. At the time that struck me as heartless, but now looking back, his reaction was because he had seen far, far worse. I wanted to rush forward and help, but restrained myself. Don’t get involved with other people's problems if you don’t think you can help. More sage advice from Grandad. Those towards the front of the queue could clearly hear the sound of the man’s cries, and they continued far too long for mine or anyone else's comfort. After he sank to his knees following a particularly hysterical tirade, I lost the restraint I’d held tight, and (sorry Gramps) got involved.

  “For the love of God!” I shouted, taking a step to my right. “Help him.” The man behind the desk locked gazes with me. Life remained behind those eyes, but little else. A moment passed, and the man on his knees blessedly ended his sobs, but did not regain any more composure. Eventually, the passionless, desk bound man looked from me to the ragged man on his knees and said something I didn’t catch, the door on the right opening on its own. The crying man leapt to his feet and sprinted through the open door, which slowly swung shut the second he stepped out of sight.

  I took a step back into line and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder as, to my surprise, the elderly man I’d seen before jabbed me hard with his stiffened fingers. “Kid,” he said, an American twang to his voice, “this might not be the best place to take the Lord's name in vain, ya think?”

  I looked at him, my shoulder, then back at him, and settled for simply saying “ow”, before turning back around. I hated to admit it, but he was probably right, and committed to staring into the empty void out the window for the rest of the wait.

  When at last my turn came, I stepped up to the desk and made eye contact once again with the man behind it, the same way you might try to do at the post office. The look that says, “Hey, I know your job is rubbish, but I’m one of the nice ones.”

  “Hello,” I said, perhaps extending the ‘hell’ part of that word a little too much. I don’t know if he noticed or not, but he wasn’t giving much away via facial expressions. The guy wasn’t even blinking, at all… or breathing for that matter. You never really notice when people breathe, your mind just expects the action, but you for sure notice when they don't.

  “Name?” he asked, in that routine way that people who deal with the general public, but aren’t selling anything, have mastered.

  “Daniel,” I said. He cocked his head and smiled patiently. Very patiently. “Mason, Daniel Mason...Isaac. Daniel Isaac Mason.” I tried a grin but the expression felt forced. He blinked. Since I had begun to suspect blinking wasn’t something he needed to do, it knocked the forced grin right off my face. He turned towards an old nineties style computer on his desk that, a second ago, had sat empty. A few clicks and a gentle, if firm, smack on the side of the monitor later, the clerk began typing away.

  “Found you,” he said, reading the screen. “Last minute addition to today’s list.” He turned to face me. “Accident, was it?” His voice now held something I hadn’t heard from him so far. Sympathy? Compassion? I wasn’t sure.

  I nodded, not sure what to add. He stared at me, unblinking. I stared back, occasionally blinking.

  “Well,” he said a short, if ridiculous, time later, “off you go then." Behind him, the door on the left slowly slid open.

  I looked back down at him sharply. “Wait.” My heart began to race despite not actually beating. “Why aren’t I going through the same door as everyone else?”

  “You still can go through that one later, if you want,” he said, already looking past me at the next person. “But you’ll want to hear what they have to say first."

  I looked at the two doors; one open, one closed. The man waited patiently, while I did my stone statue impersonation. One door for heaven and one door for hell seemed wrong, since everyone went through the same one. I can't see how I’d be special enough to be singled out. I didn’t know the meaning behind the two doors yet, and wouldn’t know until I walked through. I took a breath, met the patient expression of the man once more, and when he said nothing, I shrugged… and walked through the open door.

  I found myself in a small, sterile office. The kind where you’d expect to find a middle manager who gets transferred a lot. As soon as I walked through the door, I was startled to find myself at the room’s centre, one foot still raised to cross over the threshold now several feet behind me. I turned, and the door was nowhere to be seen. The office was empty apart from myself, a large unoccupied desk, some filing cabinets dotted along the right hand side wall, and an oversized window behind the desk that showed nothing but a bright light, not like the dull grey of the windows in the first room. I stared at the light for a moment, but my eyes soon began watering. I blinked rapidly, then tears formed as the light began to burn at my eyes, and I had to look away. I rubbed hard at my eyes and my vision came back into focus a few seconds later. The name plaque on the desk read ‘Ignostiel, Mortal Resources Department.’ I stood in front of the desk for a moment, still trying to process everything. I mean, a lot happened. I woke up late, burnt my toast, got hit by a large motorised vehicle, and was probably about to go to hell. Not the worst Thursday, but certainly in the bottom ten. Maybe even bottom five.

  “Hello, Daniel.”

  I couldn’t help but jump, and anyone would have done the same, believe me. Behind the desk now sat a young woman, dark skinned, with very short, bright white, curly hair. She wore a well tailored suit of midnight black, with a single button jacket, a bright white pocket square, a black collared shirt, and a matching skinny tie. And her face. That face.* Her features were neither the beauty you see in a magazine, or in the movies, but that’s only because human beings have an upper limit. Skin without a single blemish, mark, or pore in sight. Cheekbones so sharp she couldn’t have been able to bring them through an airport, with eyes so dark I expected to see stars. She stared at me, unblinking, in much the same way as the clerk outside, but somehow, more deeply. As though she not simply saw me, but saw everything about me, what I was thinking, what I had for breakfast, and the wall behind me, all at the same time.

  * Oh Daniel. He portrayed me quite accurately I must say.

  I’d found myself in a room, in the afterlife, with an angel.

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