1. Out
No matter what the disembodied chose at the end of the incarnate line, they regretted it upon return. Doreen ordered her workspace as she began her shift. She lined up her parting gifts, lip gloss tubes, stress rings, portable metal straws, and reusable bags on one side of the desk and her stack of clean paperwork on the other. She thought for the millionth time how the liminal space between lives really needed an interior designer to splash it with color, or at least add some throw pillows. You had to focus on the souls themselves or you’d die again of boredom staring at the pale gray hall, absent of texture.
Her first case complained. Not uncommon. It was the fish flopping in the feedback loop, the tick on the toothpick, the feather in the ear of the universe that all gifts offered had holes in them.
Doreen scrambled to hand the newly dead their consolation swag bags before they unleashed their scorn. Today, they shot arrows at each other as they inched back into universal oneness. It really got them grouchy to be separated from their bodies. Doreen couldn’t understand why. She hadn’t had a proper body since 1452 and good riddance.
“You lose your beauty in the end, no matter what.”
“That’s just it. They trick you, don’t they!”
“Not as well as I tricked my husband, the poor sap,” a throaty old beauty cackled.
An ordinary day. So many chose beauty. Doreen saw them all as women, perhaps because she missed being one, but even souls that planned to be other genders chose beauty.
She didn’t bother correcting them about the form, which explicitly mentions that exclusions may apply.
“How did it work out for you?” Doreen smiled while she assembled their bags, comfort totes they could grip as they completed their merge into ultimate being.
They shrugged.
“It caused as much sorrow as it did joy.”
“The guarantee didn’t amount to much.”
Some sniffed. Others sniffled. Searched the bags for something good.
Doreen nodded sympathetically and adopted a professional tone in order to move them along.
2. In
Doreen turned toward the ones on their way back into embodiment. That line was thick with romantic beings who fantasized about pink grapefruit and wet sandy feet and outdoor music festivals and were willing to suffer every loss imaginable to experience them again. Doreen shook her head and handed the dreamers their forms. They didn’t get consolation bags on the way in, though Doreen thought they should.
The forms she thrust their way offered the soon-born souls three choices. They could apply for one ease-enhancing package: beauty, smarts, or a thriving family. As mentioned, most selected beauty. Over and over.
Beauty standards varied among the living, and the form didn’t promise your beauty would match local or individual preferences. Doreen never revealed that snafu. She used to, but it didn’t change anyone’s mind. The beauty seekers were stubborn gamblers. For some it paid off and they were in sync with their time and place, or they found other ease enhancements once alive. Some lost the form or got lost in line and didn’t get any ease at all.
“Next,” Doreen said. She smiled her business smile. But she was unable to complete the processing with the patient spirit entering life, because jostling arose from the newly dead line on the other side.
3. Left
Doreen swiveled her chair over.
“You can’t go around cutting people. It’s ridiculatta!”
“I wasn’t cutting. You stepped out of the line.”
“I was just looking in the mirror!”
“Why? Your face is wrinkled. Your hair is white. Also, you’re dead.”
One beauty stepped in to defend the other. “Hey! Stop with the body terrorism! She’s perfect as is!” The dead woman smiled gratefully into the mirror, waving her lip gloss aloft like a sad joke.
“You’ll all get through,” Doreen interrupted in a soothing register. These disputes were common. “You have no choice in the matter.” She cleared her throat and prepared the pen basket for her next soon-born beauty.
Doreen couldn’t remember dying so well. But coping with death as a concept had been hard when she was alive. That she remembered.
The soon-born signed and waved as she disappeared down the long hall.
When Doreen last lived, she lost a friend as a child. She spent weeks painting portraits of her friend alongside her grieving mother. Her beauty hadn’t done her any good. They used thick clumps of black and crimson. They built wooden frames and kneeled over the images weeping with dissatisfaction, only to start painting again. All these centuries later, she still ached when she smelled linseed oil. Ah, but what was a century?
4. Right
Doreen’s reverie was interrupted, this time by an entering soul that leaned in close to Doreen’s face.
The miffed beings in the dead line still bickered. She greeted the new distraction. It would be a long, endless day.
“Yes?”
“I would like option four,” the soul whispered.
Ah.
“It requires a different application,” Doreen said, hoping to discourage the soon-born in service of efficiency.
“I’ll wait.”
Doreen nodded, rummaging in her filing cabinet, but the fighting beauties called her over again.
“What is option four?” The mirror-starer crossed her arms. “I wasn’t offered option four!”
“It isn’t offered. It’s a silent option.” Doreen hoped to pat out the fire.
“A silent option?”
“If you know, you know.” Doreen brushed her hands together.
“That’s not fair!”
The smart ones and their “fair.” You’d think they’d learn.
“It used to be on the form, but so few chose it.”
“I might have chosen it!”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Oh, yeah. What is it?” The dueling beauty thrust her chest out.
“Sleep,” the soon-born whispered from the other line. Her carriage was so gentle, her voice so serene, they almost missed it.
“Right,” said Doreen. “The gift of falling asleep. Easily and deeply.”
5. Down
The beauties stared into space for a beat.
“Not very glamorous is it,” one scoffed.
“Sounds a little boring,” said the smart one. “I think you should reconsider.” She enunciated in case the sleep craving soul on the other side of the desk was dull.
The sleep hopeful just smiled. “Option four, thanks.”
Doreen secretly thought option four a wise one. “Of course, sweetheart.” If Doreen ever went back, though, she’d choose five. Artistry. Or perhaps six. Patience. Or seven, the most complicated form, which offered the option of being born a non-human life form. It gathered dust in the bottom drawer. No one wanted to be stuck containing great quantities of love while stuck with humans anymore, though for thousands of years many had tried. Doreen hated to admit she was relieved not to have to collaborate across departments. Sometimes, when the old applications yellowed, Doreen copied fresh sheets and took the crisping old ones home for a little decoupage. It took time, but her papered lamps really spruced the place up.
6. Up
The dear snoozy one signed with black ink.
“Keep the pen, darling,” Doreen said. “And enjoy your restful life!” Everyone within earshot pictured a fluffy bed and questioned themselves for a moment before they forgot and busily sought their seeking again.
The sleepy being drifted calmly toward her birth, knowing that no matter the pitch of this life, slipping into dream would carry her on.
7. On
Jessica Lee Richardson goes by Jess/she/her and her fictions can be found or are forthcoming in Adroit, the Commuter at Electric Lit, EX/POST, Neon Door, New Delta Review, the Rupture, Slice, in a story collection with FC2, and other places. She’s an Associate Professor of Fiction at Coastal Carolina University where she lives precariously sandwiched between bodies of water with a magician and a dog that probably wants to French you.