What is the last thing to go through a persons head when they die? I assume it’s different for everyone. However, if you fell from the roof of a 75 story sky-scrapper that you were performing routine maintenance on, as 24 year old Joe Brown did, then the last thing to go through your head is probably your knee bones. And that would be true regardless of landing on your feet or your head. Knee bones were not Joe’s cause of death, actually. He had died of a heart attack while falling somewhere around floor 23 where Samantha, a friend of Joe’s who helped him get the job in maintenance, was busy putting on lipstick using her reflection in the window. Needless to say Samantha’s lipstick found itself suddenly decorating her right cheek as she calmly observed the image of her friend falling to his death.

  Such is the start of our story and Joe’s adventure. A more unlikely beginning I can hardly imagine, but Joe suddenly came to his senses seated on a stiff plastic seat that was fixed to a concrete wall behind him. He patted himself down quickly searching for evidence of the impact that certainly must have taken his life. He found nothing. Just his workman’s overalls and perfectly fine knee bones that were not in his head. He sat up and looked around, He was in an absolutely massive waiting room of a governmental-like building that seemed to stretch on to his right and left farther than any eye could see. The ceiling had to have been 40 meters high, and lined with all sorts of supports, pipes, wires, and glowing lines.

  About 300 meters in front of him he saw a massive line of governmental service counters, complete with plexi-glass protective screens and 1000’s upon 1000’s of VERY bored looking secretaries processing long lines of clients. The cacophony of old typewriters in action floated up from the area.

  ‘What?’ Joe thought to himself while chuckling slightly at this sudden dramatic change. ‘What’ seemed like the most useful and appropriate thought that he could muster at the moment. He stood up and looked around from a higher vantage point, while everyone around him just stared at him in boredom. Yes, everyone. And there were a lot of ‘everyones’ there. Rows upon rows upon rows of slightly worn out, tough, worn plastic, governmental seating was filled to the absolute brim with just about every imaginable kind of person that… well that Joe could imagine. They had every kind of clothes that you could imagine and many that were so other-worldly that you frankly couldn’t imagine them.

  Up went an eyebrow as he gazed and looked around in confusion. Soon, his other eyebrow joined in the fun as he spun in place looking everywhere at this ‘un-imaginable’ scene. Finally, one short haired, bulky, annoyed looking lady said “Your dead, take a number”

  Joe stood there mouth agape as his eyebrows slowly lowered to their previous position, pondering. There was something supremely fascinating, no… Zen like in the words “Your dead, take a number”. It seemed, somehow so fitting. If one was dead, then certainly one should simply take a number, right?

  “A nu-number?” he stuttered out vaguely to the frowning lady who looked as if she wanted to speak to his manager.

  “Yes, a number! Take a number and wait, we’ve been waiting 5 years.” She insisted as she pointed to a wall behind her where a ticket dispenser was attached. It was a bulky chunk of metal that had a little opening in the bottom with a small ticket stub visibly sticking out.

  “What” he said again, sure that this was indeed the best thing he could possibly say at this moment. He reached up a hand and tugged on the ticket stub that was partly sticking out. A one meter-long ticket proceeded to slide out with the number 523,278,377,564,111,....003 written upon it. It took him several moments to process what he was looking at.

  His forehead wrinkled into a quizzical and faintly disgusted knot as he stared at the absurd number. His head swung around looking for some other clue to his location in the grey repetitive atmosphere that pervaded his surroundings. Frustration began to grow in his heart and mind as he continued to stare at this absurd scene. His eyes focused on the counters in front of him where he noticed a small sign over every secretaries head;

  D.O.D.

  Department of the Dead

  ‘Dead! What the double what with a side of what! Does that mean I’m dead!’ He thought ‘Wait, “Your dead, take a number”, that’s what this means.’ Memories of his fall began to resurface. ‘I died and got sent to the D.O.D.?!?’

  “I’m dead?!?!” he questioned with a raised voice.

  “At least your brain appears to be.” huffed the same woman who had so useful pointed him in the direction of the tickets.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Shut up, Martha” said a tired looking small, skinny old man sitting next to the lady “You just can’t let anything rest, can you?”

  “What! It’s your fault we died in the first place, you should have been watching where you were going” Screeched Martha.

  “How could I with you flappin’ that never ending pie-hole of yours” rebutted Wilbur.

  “You watch your mouth, Wilbur, or I’ll… I’ll…” She stammered.

  “Or you’ll what?” scoffed Wilbur “I said ‘Till death do we part’. I don’t owe you a thing any more.” A smile broke out on Ol’ Wilbur’s face as the weight of his own words sunk in. He got up and began to dance a bit of a jig, singing “Ding, Dong, the witch is dead, the mean ol’ witch, the witch is dea…”

  About that time Martha, having stood to her feet completely red faced, drew back her arm and began to launch one punch after another at the suddenly jubilant Ol’ Wilbur as she chased him around the seats. Ol’ Wilbur ran for it with loud laughs and pained screams, depending on whether her punches connected or not. Slowly they disappeared into the distance.

  Joe’s mouth finally closed. He stood there processing… Then He looked down. Martha had dropped a ticket with number 3592. Joe blinked. He blinked again. Slowly his upper processor caught up to a bit of the reality he was in. He at least realized that number 3592 was a lot closer to talking with someone than his current ticket. He did what any self respecting person would do, he picked up that ticket.

  About that moment, an announcement sounded out, “Number 3592, Number 3592, please come to Kiosk 597,359.”

  ‘That is UNUSUALLY lucky!’ Joe thought to himself. He was never lucky. Instantly he vanished from where he was and reappeared in a different location. When he looked around, he saw he was in front of one of the governmental counters that he had seen earlier. Glaring at him from behind the very scratched plexi-glass wall was an old looking lady who was wearing wing tip glasses and an ugly turtle neck sweater. Here name tag read ‘Susan’

  “Name?” (Susan)

  “What?” (Joe)

  “Okay, What it is. Last Name?” (Susan)

  “NO, Wait!” (Joe)

  “Okay Mr. What No Wait” Please put your hand on this panel. (Susan)

  “No, my name isn’t what no wait, It’s Joe Brown” (Joe)

  “Make up your mind, would ya (she huffed) Fine, Mr. Joe Brown, please put your hand on this panel” (Susan)

  Joe looked down to see a glowing blue hand sized panel in the counter top. He looked back up at Susan with hesitance in his eyes.

  “For someone named ‘No Wait’, you sure do wait a lot” Susan said while drumming her fingers in frustrated boredom on the counter top.

  “What is this all about? What is going on? Where am I? Why do you want me to put my hand here?” Joe started to finally let the deluge of questions that he had held in his head flow out.

  Susan looked at him with a quizzical eye and stared at him for a solid minute. “It seems to me that you should have figured all of that out while you waited. How long has it been since you died? Usually people stop asking or caring after being here for a couple of years.” She began to reach for an old rotary phone near her as she kept her eye on Joe. “Please wait a moment, I need to call my supervisor.”

  Joe realized he might have made a mistake and stepped in bit of trouble. Which actually was quite common for him. Just how long did the dead have to wait?? As Susan mumbled into the telephone, suddenly there was a series of blaring siren blasts that came over the intercom speakers. Panic gripped every secretary that Joe could see. Susan quickly slammed the phone down and said to the secretary to her left “An Audit!?! They just finished the last one 300 years ago, what do they mean by doing it again so soon?” They all began to scramble and stuff papers into shredders.

  Joe said “Ma’am, what should I do?”

  Susan popped her head up from under the counter where she was scrambling, looking at him with her glasses tilted diagonally across her face. “What?” It seemed she had also found out how useful this word was. “O, no, we have to get you out of here. No time for the scan”. She tossed 5 forms on the table, filled them out in a matter of seconds, slammed her stamp on each, filed them, turned and looked at Joe saying “We didn’t have time to process you correctly, so you get sent on-wards to a new life right now. You will get a game-like system meant to help you. Normally it would be a best fit for you, but I’m afraid I didn’t have time for the scan. Good luck, literally, you’re really going to need it”. With that she slammed her hand down on a red button to her right and Joe’s left.

  “What?” Joe iconically muttered as he felt himself begin to fall. The floor underneath Joe’s feet had opened up, and for the second time in less than a 10 minutes he found himself falling through the air for a great distance.

  As Joe fell, He thought to himself. ‘Restarting life is good. Now I don’t have to deal with all the money I owe. Things were just about to get really difficult in my life.’

  He smiled, closed his eyes and surrendered to the process. ‘How Lucky, Joe thought. I’ve never been lucky’.

  There was no impact. Feeling and thought slowly returned to him. He stayed that way with his eyes closed for a while. He needed time to think. ‘Okay, I died. Check. I was transported to a strange universal governmental department. Check!?!. People are crazy and weird even after death. Double Check!! I’ve been sent onward to a new body to begin a new life. Check! I supposedly have received a game like system that will help me. Check? No, I need to check that. Joe opened his eyes and looked around.

  He was staring up past a sky-scrapper to a beautiful blue sky above. He moved his head and he could see that he was lying on a sidewalk. People were standing around him.

  ‘Hmm, it appears that someone has died on a sidewalk and I have taken over their life.’ He searched for a fragment of the previous owners memories to try to make sense of what had happened to him. Strangely he could find no memories but his own. Joe wondered what world he had been transported to. Would it be full of magic and dragons? It had sky-scrappers, though… …! ‘Why does that building look so familiar?’

  Just then a nice lady with the name tag Samantha and red lipstick on her right cheek said something that sounded familiar. He focused in and listened.

  “Joe! Joe! Your alive, how is this possible. I saw you fallin’!! It’s a Christmas miracle and it’s the middle of summer! Joe!”

  Joe blinked. Joe blinked again. “Samantha?? He managed to mutter, before passing out due to the sheer shock of realizing that he had been sent right back to his own life.

  Looks like Joe will not, actually escape the debt that he needs to repay. But, at least he has a system to help him now, right?? Right???