When the woman came to awareness, her already open eyes were observing a waiting room of some kind. The room was vast, stretching as far as the eye could see. It was also long, and she couldn’t see an end to it. Numerous ceiling lights hung down in a perfect line, fading off into the green tinted distance. The waiting room was broken into smaller sections that consisted of blue chairs, boring plants, and the occasional poster on the wall. Many of the chairs were empty, but many were also occupied with people, animals, and creatures she had never seen before.

  Directly across from the waiting area was a marble counter that stretched to seemingly infinite lengths. People of all shapes and sizes stood behind the counter. While they didn’t have a similar uniform, or seemingly any other physical trait in common, they did all appear bored and exasperated. They were also all talking to various beings. The woman drew her attention in and looked down, where she noticed that she was holding a small ticket with the number 65,409 in between her thumb and forefinger.

  Where am I? She thought as her head spun. How did I get here? A quiet humming interrupted her musings and she looked to her left, where an old man covered in wrinkles was sitting in the blue chair next to hers. He was mostly bald, but had a rim of tufty white hair wrapped around his head. From where she was sitting, the woman could see that the man had odd black hairs growing out of the tip of his nose. He was staring straight up toward the ceiling and giving it a wide gummy smile. He also had a ticket in his hand, with a similarly obscenely large number on it.

  She turned from the old man and continued inspecting her subdivision of this endless waiting room. Next to the old man sat a golden retriever. The golden was actually on the chair, which was surprising to her, until she noticed that the dog also had a ticket pressed between its paw and the cushion of the blue chair it was sitting on. It noticed her gaze, and cocked its head to the side questioningly, its tongue rolling out of the side of its mouth as it panted.

  She looked back down into her own lap and felt her face flush, as she had just been caught staring at the dog. Why am I embarrassed about looking at a dog? It seemed so intelligent… As the old man continued to hum what sounded like an old army tune, she took a closer look at her hands. They weren’t as she remembered them. Wrinkles and sunspots adorned the top of her palm. They trembled. She took a deep breath.

  The woman looked around for a mirror but didn’t find one. Instead, there were some magazines and information pamphlets strewn about the table in front of her.

  The magazines had a myriad of pictures and titles, and she realized that she didn’t recognize any of them. She reached out and sifted through them with wrinkled hands. One was called “Top Dungeon Worlds” and had a cover picture of an ominous looking cave. Another was called, “Abilities Today”, and had a picture of a woman on a stage, playing the violin in front of a massive audience. Eventually she settled on a small pamphlet that she picked up and brought back to her lap.

  On the front cover, there were two smiling women and a child. All three were dressed to go to the beach, which was behind them in the distance. They were standing on a hill above what appeared to be an enormous floating resort. It looked like a travel advertisement from a fantasy novel. On the top of the brochure and in large blue script, it read, “Come to Elysium Today!”.

  “That’s where I hope to go!” A voice broke through the woman’s concentration, and she turned to see the old man staring at her with his gummy smile. “I’ve been through here at least four times now, and never had enough tokens. Hopefully I do this time! I’m getting sick of this song and dance.”

  “Tokens?” She responded, trying to return the old man's smile, but ending up with a constipated looking smirk. The old man nodded, and the woman asked the question that she truly wanted to ask. “Do you know where this is? Um, I mean… Where we are?” She gestured around the enormous waiting room for emphasis.

  The old man chuckled before responding, “It must be your first time here. I felt the same way my first time. It’s not quite what you expected, is it?” The man’s eyes were kind and knowing.

  “Your first time?” She asked.

  “Yes, the first time I passed away!” The old man replied, smacking his lips together and grinning.

  “Passed away…” The woman’s head spun. “You mean like… died?”

  The man chuckled. “Of course! What else does ‘pass away’ mean? Anyway…” The old man kept talking, gesturing, and laughing, but she slowly tuned him out as she stared at his mouth.

  Am I really dead? The woman heard a faint ringing, the idle chatter of the huge room blending into a churning mass of sound. Her breath quickened, and a black ring started to enclose her vision. How did I die? She wracked her brain, but the clearest memory she had was on a bus, with her peers - other students. She couldn’t remember anything clearly after that, but knew that there was more. It was as if a steady and impenetrable haze filled with vague impressions and half remembered conversations had settled over her memories. Something was wrong with her. With her memories. She looked again at her hands, wrinkled and old.

  A low whine broke through the chaos in her head, and she looked down to see the golden retriever sitting on the floor in front of her, its head resting on the top of her knee. She looked into the kindly dog's eyes and took a deep breath, then patted the dog's head. Slowly, she brought her surroundings back into focus.

  She turned back to the old man, who was somehow still talking without having realised what his words had put her through. She cleared her throat, and interrupted the man asking, “How old do I look to you?”

  He paused, and scratched at the bald patch on top of his head. “Well I’m no good at these games, young miss, but I’d say you’re about sixty. No, sixty five?” He chuckled, “Or I guess you were… How about it, am I right?”

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  Sixty five?! She did some simple math, and realized that, if what the man said was true, that she was missing over forty years of her life. How could that be? “Umm… I don’t know, exactly.” She responded

  “You don’t know how old you were?” The man replied, confusion marring his jolly expression. “Odd.”

  The woman shook her head slightly. “I remember being on a bus. a band trip with other students.” She looked up to see the old man’s mouth close, and his forehead scrunch. “Anyway,” she diverted, “you said something about tokens?”

  The man hesitated before continuing, “Yes. Tokens are used to-“

  “Number 65,407, please come up to the nearest window!” A booming voice interrupted, echoing across the large room. The woman jumped and looked around. She noticed that the dog she had been absentmindedly petting had bent over, and now held its ticket in its mouth. It looked up at her, and then winked - before making its way up to the counter.

  The woman strained to hear what the person at the counter said as the golden briefly stood on its hind legs in order to put its front paws up onto the counter. The clerk mumbled something, looked down, and then back at the dog.

  “It looks like you’ve been a good boy!” The clerk said, and the dog’s tail started wagging furiously.

  She looked back to the old man, who was still talking. “-anyway, I hope to use mine to go to Elysium! I think I finally have enough.”

  Embarrassed that she missed the answer to her question, the woman flushed. The old man didn’t seem to notice, so she asked something else.

  “How many times did you say you’ve been here?”

  The old man paused in his ramblings, and gazed toward the ceiling. “Oh I’m not sure exactly. It’s hard to remember. At least six.”

  “I’m sorry. This is just a little too much. You’re saying that I died, and now I’m waiting in line for judgement at some kind of mystical DMV?” She shook her head. “On top of that, someone’s pet dog was in line ahead of me?”

  The man shook his head and chuckled. “Yes, I suppose that’s an accurate summary. I don’t know why they make the dogs wait though - all dogs go to Elysium after all.”

  The woman continued to chat with the old man, but it wasn’t too long until he was called up as well. He said farewell and wished her luck when he left, then walked away down the room to an open counter.

  So if this is real, then I’m dead. The woman thought to herself. I also died at a much older age than I have memories for. The idea scared her, but she realized that if it was real, then she was already dead. There shouldn’t be too much to worry about. What else could happen?

  A loud slam interrupted her train of thought, and the woman looked off down the counter to a middle aged man slamming his fist into the counter. “Atonement?! There’s no way in hell I’m choosing that. I don’t care about the damn tokens!” The clerk in front of him did not react as the man’s eyes glared around the room, a wild and unhinged gleam in them.

  She thought that she recognized the man, but couldn’t put a name to the face. When the clerk said something - the woman couldn’t make out what it was from this distance - the man angrily reached back and punched the clerk.

  Well, he tried to punch the clerk. When his hand reached a few inches from the clerk’s face, a barrier materialized, and stopped the man’s extended fist in an instant. It looked as if he had punched a concrete wall. It was obviously painful, as he immediately dropped to the ground clutching his hand and wrist to his abdomen, his face twisting in shock and pain.

  He frantically looked around, before lunging forward and onto his feet, sprinting directly towards her. The look of panic as he fled twinged a memory in her mind, and she placed his image. He had been on the news before she had… before she was here. He was a wanted criminal and serial killer, infamous for murdering transient people at truck stops. He was much older now, but his sharp nose and shark-like black eyes - it was definitely him. The woman started breathing heavily, fear taking over as she stood up and backed towards the wall. The man was getting closer and closer.

  The woman frantically looked around, but no one seemed to notice or even pay him any mind. No reaction what-so-ever. Didn’t they realize that a murderer was here? That he was insane and probably going to try to kill someone?

  How can he kill them if they are already dead? A faint voice whispered from the back of her mind, but the panic blocked it out. The man drew ever nearer, he must have noticed that she was reacting when no one else was, and for some reason it seemed to draw him to her.

  The woman stumbled and tripped backwards, falling into one of the cheap blue chairs as he reached her section of the waiting room. He let out a yell, his eyes red, crazed, and appeared as if they would bulge out from his eye sockets as he lifted a chair above his head.

  Then he froze. He just froze in place. It looked like he was suspended in time. The chair was lifted above his head, his face a mask of insane rage. The only thing that didn’t seem to freeze completely were his eyes. Just a minute ago they held anger and rage, but now only shock and panic. They darted around the room, searching for understanding of what was happening.

  A being appeared next to him. The woman didn’t know what else to call the creature. It was completely white, and humanoid, but lacked any and all features on its person. It had no mouth, no lips, or nose. Where its eyes should have been, there was strange scarring - as if pieces of its glowing white flesh had grown and knitted together over the eye sockets from where its cheekbones would have been up to its brow.

  The creature stepped from a crack in the air, and stood right next to the frozen murderer. His eyes stared at it, and low whimpering came from his still form. The woman was pretty sure that if he wasn’t frozen, he would have been soiling himself at this moment.

  The creature slowly reached out towards the man, and touched his exposed collarbone. From the point of contact and extending outwards, the man’s flesh rapidly decayed. Crusted black skin flecked off of his form slowly at first, and then all at once. In the blink of an eye, he had completely turned to ash and vanished.

  The chair clattered to the floor, before flashing in and out of existence, and appearing back in its original location. The creature turned to the woman and seemed to take her in, before it vanished as well.

  The woman, who was still in the chair, unclenched her white knuckles from the frame of the chair she was cowering in, taking deep breaths and looking around. No one else - human or otherwise - seemed to have noticed what had happened, and if they did, they did not acknowledge it.