Dream 1 (Patreon)

My apologies for the short detour before I get back to the Ateri/Jakari/Sur’an porn and the scene requests. I had a weird dream and needed to get it out.

———

Seth was driving when everything went black. Then he was sitting in a waiting room. The other seats were open and the receptionist at one edge of the room was tapping away on an electric typewriter.

Seth blinked a few times. He hadn’t seen a typewriter in so many years. It was an electric model instead of manual, but even then, that dated it to the eighties.

Not sure what to do nor why he was there; he stood and crossed the small room until he was standing in front of the blonde at the typewriter.

“Excuse—”

“One second,” she said without looking up.

“Do you know—”

“I’ll be right with you,” she interrupted again. “Almost done now.”

So, Seth waited, feeling foolish. He looked around the room but couldn’t for the life of him place where he was or how he got there. She had a classic kitten “Hang in There” poster taped up behind her, a calendar of puppies, an analog clock on the wall. Two metal filing cabinets stood in the corner. On her desk, she had an in-file and an out-file. The in-file was stacked high with manilla binders and the out-file had only a few.

After a minute or two, the receptionist finished. She removed the report from the typewriter, stuck it in a folder, and put it in her out-file. From her in-file, she grabbed a new binder.

“Excuse me—” said Seth.

“Seth Romanes?” she asked without looking up from the file.

“Um, yes?”

“I’m Rebecca with H.R.,” she said. “You’re dead.”

“W-what?” he gasped. “There must be some kind—”

“No mistake, Mr. Romanes. You died in a car crash.” She paused, biting her lip while she did some mental calculations. “You lived forty-seven years, three months, two days. That’s about four hundred and fourteen thousand hours of life.”

Seth blinked, stunned. “You just figured that out in your head?”

“I do this a lot Mr. Romanes. It’s my job,” she explained. “Now that you’re dead, you’ll be expected to pay off all that life by working an equal number of hours.”

Seth felt like he’d been hit with a brick. Sitting seemed like an excellent option, so he grabbed one of the waiting room chairs and pulled it up to the desk. “I have to work in the afterlife?” he gasped. “This is the afterlife, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” said Rebecca. “I know. It takes a bit to accept, but you’ll get used to it quick enough. The long-and-short of it is: you live, you die, you have to work an equal number of hours to pay back all the life you got. Then you get reincarnated and get to live again.”

“But…” Seth scratched his head. “I’ve been working for like thirty years. Doesn’t that—”

“No. You’ve been living for forty-seven years. What you’ve done during them is irrelevant.”

Face white, Seth finally managed, “I can’t believe they make you work in heaven—”

“This is not heaven,” she corrected him.

“I-I’m in hell?” he stammered.

Rebecca nodded. Setting Seth’s file aside, she stood and stepped to the door. “If you could follow me, I’ll show you to your office.”

Hesitant, but not knowing what else to do, he stood and went with her. Through the door and some hallways that Seth was too dazed to focus on, she led him outside, but instead of emerging into a cave filled with smoke and brimstone, he found himself in a rather ordinary looking downtown area. The sky overhead was grey and threatening. The air was chill but not cold.

They walked side-by-side down the sidewalk as Rebecca asked, “Have you ever wondered whether life evolved or whether it was created by some divine being?”

“Well, um,” he said, “my folks were Lutheran, but I’ve never really believed—”

Rebecca didn’t seem to be listening. “Truth is that the correct answer was ‘both’. Most intelligent beings in the universe were created by God. Like you, they’re born, they live, they die, and then they face the afterlife. Those that lived a virtuous life are then rewarded with an equal amount of heaven. If they lived a hundred years, then they get a hundred years of bliss in heaven.”

“And then?”

“And then, like you, Mr. Romanes, they get to go back and live again. Life, afterlife, life, afterlife. Reward or punishment each time depending on whether they lived a virtuous life, and then the cycle continues.”

“And if they weren’t virtuous?”

“Then they end up here in hell,” she said. “But again, damnation isn’t eternal. It’s horrible, definitely. Beings come here and are tortured day and night, but only for as long as they lived. Then they reincarnate and live again—hopefully having learned something after all that punishment. Hopefully, they do better the next time and won’t end up back here after their next death.”

“Whoa,” said Seth, shaking his head. “This is a lot to take in.”

“It’s really quite simple,” she assured him. “Life and then afterlife, repeating forever. A good afterlife for the virtuous and hell for the rest.”

Seth hung his head as he walked. They waited at an intersection until the light turned green. “Wow,” he sighed. “I guess I really screwed up. I mean, I tried to live a good life, but I really didn’t think I did anything so bad—”

“Oh no, not us,” she said. “Most races, you see, were created by God. Whole worlds, rocks, plants, animals, people, all made by God.”

Seth stared at her. “But not humans?”

“Nope,” she said. “Earth was just a rock, floating in space and life evolved on it. Evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest, and all that. Sort of like our world was forgotten at the back of God’s fridge and left to grow mold and stuff.”

“Okay…” he said, drawing the sound out while his mind raced. There was a god, but people weren’t made by him? This was enough to make his head spin from his shoulders. “So, since we weren’t created by God, we aren’t judged in the afterlife?”

“Essentially,” she said. “We have a similar life-afterlife-reincarnation cycle, but we don’t go to heaven. We can’t have a measure of bliss for living a virtuous life.”

“Well, that sucks.” He covered his mouth, unsure if he should be saying that things “suck” to anyone working in human resources.

“True,” she said without reacting to him saying “sucks”. “But then again, we just have to work in hell. We don’t get a measure of torment either, no matter how bad we might have been.” She shrugged. “Could be worse, I suppose.”

Rebecca gestured to a nondescript office building with mirrored windows on the next block. “So, for the next two hundred and seven years, you’ll be working there. The schedule will be familiar; eight hours a day, five days a week, two weeks off per year. It pays minimum wage and there’s no overtime, but then again, you’re dead, so at least you’ll save a lot on food.”

“Great. Two hundred and seven years at minimum wage. This is hell,” he grumbled.

She smiled at his joke. “It’s really not so bad. There’s also no growing old, no diseases, no pregnancy. We try to be flexible about working hours, so if you meet someone you like, you can get on the same shift, date, fall in love, all that good stuff. Two hundred and seven years is a long time for you to spend together before you reincarnate.”

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t suppose—” But before he could finish his question, she showed him her left hand and the gold band she wore. “Ah. Gotcha. Congrats.”

“Thanks!” she said with a second smile. “You’ll be working in here, torturing the souls of the damned.”

Seth stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“Torturing the souls of the damned,” she repeated. “There are other jobs, sure, but most of us humans will spend our afterlife-careers torturing. There’s an awful lot of the damned, so we need a lot of people to do all that torturing.”

“I’m not gonna torture someone!” Seth shouted, his face turning red.

Rebecca shrugged. “Then you’re gonna be here an awful long time. You still have four hundred and fourteen thousand hours of life to work off. It’s only two hundred and seven years if you’re actually working. You need to log four hundred and fourteen thousand hours of torturing before you get to reincarnate.”

“What? No!” he shouted. “I’m not gonna do that.”

Rebecca sighed and put her hand to his arm. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you will be torturing the damned. It’s not like you’ll be hurting those that lived virtuous lives.”

Seth stared at her in horror. “That … doesn’t make me feel much better.”

She put a hand on the door, preparing to open it for him. “And also, remember, the damned are stuck here, just like you. They’ve got their own hours to burn off. If we stopped torturing them, then they wouldn’t be making any progress toward reincarnation.”

They stopped at a desk and Rebecca helped him fill out his timecard, then they went up in an elevator with seventy-eight floors to choose from. “Pick any floor that’s lit up. All of those have someone available to be tortured.”

They got off on the fourteenth floor to a sea of closed office doors, each with a light above the room number. Most lights were off, but a few were lit.

Seth looked at all the doors, feeling panic rising within him. Could he really do this?

“W-what am I supposed to do?”

“Just pick a room. Go in and torture them for eight hours. You get a fifteen-minute break after two, four, and six hours.”

He put his hands on his head. “Just … torture someone?”

“Yup. Pretty much.”

“Um, how?” he asked.

“However you like,” said Rebecca. “I mean that literally. We’re in hell. If you feel like sodomizing them with a red-hot poker, just pick up the phone in there and they’ll send one up. They’re already dead, so it’s not like you can kill them. And they regenerate if you cut anything off, so … be creative.”

Seth just stared at her, speechless.

“The only rule is, don’t ask them what they did to deserve damnation.” She smiled. “That’s it.”

“W-why is that?” asked Seth.

“Every workplace has rules, and that’s the only one we have,” she explained. “Honestly, it’s best to just not talk to them at all. Just get your work done, clock out, get paid for the day, and drink a beer.”

Just then, a light over one of the doors lit, and out stepped a shirtless man wearing a necklace of fangs. Sweat and filth glistened from his skin. In his hand, he held a fresh fang, one end still smeared with blood the color of used engine oil.

“Oh, hello!” said Rebecca in a cheerful tone. “This is Seth Romanes. Today’s his first day.”

“Robert,” said the shirtless man as he shook Seth’s hand. “Welcome aboard.” Then holding up the tooth, he explained, “You can’t really keep any trophies you get while you’re working. They fade as the damned regenerate. But if you take one right as you leave…”

“Clever!” said Rebecca. Then she waved goodbye to Robert. “Your boss will be Shelley Anderson. She’ll check in on you later.” She smiled, then opening the door, she gestured him in. “Go get him, Mr. Romanes.”

The door clicked shut behind Seth. The room was the size of a typical office, though the floor was made of concrete and featured a grateless drain in the center.

A man with blue and violet skin hung by the wrists from a pair of chains. Two more chains shackled his ankles to the floor. Though clearly humanoid, his shape was still alien. His face was too long, jaws extending into a muzzle. His ears were long too, draped behind him like a frightened rabbit’s. His arms and legs were twig-like, his hands and feet weirdly shaped. Though bones showed through his skin, his torso was broad and barrel shaped.

An oil-stain of blood dripped from his mouth to the filth-stained floor beneath him, and he panted like someone who’d just finished running a marathon.

Seth stood motionless, watching, until the creature’s panting finally slowed.

“What?” asked the creature suddenly. “Never seen a naked guy before?”

———

Reviewer’s link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bYiHj2a_ZkC-9WEKBPlnYeX-_eF1496Rc3WREGJtMqc/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?