Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Afterlife

Out of the elevator came another girl, and this time it was my turn to be surprised at her appearance. I mean, expecting angels in the afterlife wasn’t that unusual, but catgirl-heaven had a bit more of niche appeal if I wasn’t misremembering - which, yeah, could definitely be the case - but hey, I wasn’t complaining about this turn of events; she was pretty cute after all.

The angel beside me, though, didn’t seem so much surprised as annoyed at the new girl being there and soon enough, they were having a heated debate about... something. I still hadn’t learned the language in the few minutes I was here and, as such, did not know why they were about to throw punches at each other. Before I could contemplate for very long though, the catgirl suddenly grabbed onto one of my arms and pulled me into the still open door behind her.

The angel hadn’t expected that either and was too surprised to stop the cat from jumping in herself and pressing a few buttons on the panel beside the door. The elevator doors closed with alarming speed, but before they had even closed completely, we were already shooting up. I, for my part, was just too stunned about what happened to do much more than look at the girl. She took a moment to catch her breath and then turned towards me with a smug grin.

“Umm... hi?” I repeated the same words I had said to the angel and again, it seemed I wasn’t understood. Her head tilt was pretty cute though, and the way her ears shifted around kind of gave me the urge to pet her. Also, inspecting her appearance, I noticed a common trait with the angel she had replaced as my guide. One half of her face seemed to be kept in black and white - dark grey ear, lighter greyish eye and even her clothes seemed to be an almost black shade of grey - while her other side was more colorful with brown hair and ear, a green eye and her clothes on that side were a matte blue. The clothes also looked a lot more business-like than the casual attire I had seen on the angel.

After a few more minutes of her jumping around me, she seemed to lose interest, however. I didn’t know how long the elevator ride would take, but I was also getting kind of bored myself. So I just stood there and leaned against the back wall. The inside of the elevator was covered in soft cushions with a coloring scheme that was getting rather overdone at this point.

Another few minutes later, the cat pulled out a phone of her own and started texting someone. Her phone seemed a bit more modern than the angel's, but it was still older than what I was used to. Eventually, the ride had to end though and a soft ding announced our arrival. When the doors opened, I had expected another corridor, but all I saw was a dark void with a single slit of light coming out of a half-opened door.

The catgirl just motioned for me to go on and once I left the elevator, closed the doors behind me again. She didn’t follow me and I was soon standing alone in the dark with only the light coming through the gap to guide me forwards.

Approaching the door, I could hear someone talk loud enough for me to overhear them from outside, and I was surprised that I could understand them.

“- sure you can’t stay just a bit longer?” Similar to the books, I could ‘feel’ the meaning more than actually understand what was said, but this time the words seemed to exert a physical pressure on me that couldn’t be easily described. It was like being subjected to an outside pressure, while my brain was pushing against my skull from the inside. It hurt like hell, but as soon as the woman had stopped speaking, it was gone again.

“You do realize I have my own job to attend to, right?” A second voice, again female, but it seemed younger somehow, and again that weird pressure, though this time a lot more subdued, “besides shouldn’t you be doing yours right now?”

“Ahh... don’t be like that, Destie. You know how rarely the others visit!” I was getting used to the pressure rather quickly, as I felt little more than a light headache by now.

“Maybe if you stopped it with the weird names, they might actually think you’re sincere about wanting to see them.” Even I could hear the amusement in the second voice.

I was standing just before the door now, and I guess I should knock, right? Doing just that, I heard a light shuffling from the inside and a “Just a moment!” from the first voice.

Before I had even stepped back again, though, the door was already opening by itself. For a few seconds, the light coming from inside was blinding, but after blinking a few times, I saw what looked like the office of a boss in some big company. The centerpiece was an enormous wooden desk with an equally impressive chair behind it. On one side of the room was a row of filing cabinets and drawers, and on the other was a sort of minibar with a lot of empty bottles lying around. The desk space itself seemed to be split similarly, with a stack of paper on one side and an expensive-looking bottle and drinking glass on the other. Right in the middle was a small golden nameplate: Afterlife.

Like with the books, reading the word caused my head to fill with weird images and most of them overlapped with the girl sitting in the chair behind the desk. She had the same coloring scheme as the rooms I saw before, but on her, it looked a lot more natural, the black and white of one side made the colors of the other pop out somehow and the colors, in turn, accentuated the simplicity of her monochrome side.

She motioned for me to sit down in the seat before her, and I hurried to do just that. The girl felt like the epicenter of the pressure I had felt in front of the door and even though it wasn’t as overwhelming as before, it still made me unable to open my mouth.

“Welcome, I am sure you have an idea of where you are right now,” I just gave a small nod in reply, “and I am also sure you have a lot of questions, but first things first: I’ll need your name!”

Suddenly, the pressure dropped, and I felt like I could breathe again - not that I actually needed to. But that had been the question I asked myself before I had arrived here, hadn’t it? Thinking about it now still brought on the same headache, but I tried to hold out against it. The only thing I could make out with any clarity was a crying teenage girl and two words etched into my mind ‘your fault’. Anything besides that was wrapped up in too much pain but when I tried to blend it out as I had done before, the pain abruptly jumped up in intensity and before I realized it I felt paralyzed - like my heart had suddenly stopped beating and if I could, I would have screamed at that moment.

Suddenly, though, I felt a weight on my shoulder, and upon focusing on it, I was back in the office. The pain getting swept away again.

“It’s alright, dear. Just breathe.” I felt the hand give me a reassuring squeeze and realized I was crying, as well as my breathing coming out as wild gasps for air. “It’s alright now.”

The girl who said that wasn’t Afterlife - if that was really her name - instead it was the owner of the voice she had been talking to before my arrival, Destie, as she had called her.

“And you,” she turned her head to the girl in the seat, “I thought you stopped doing things this way. I swear, sometimes you’re worse than my sister.” Turning my head, I saw that Afterlife actually had a pretty scary-looking smile on her face and seemed unbothered by what had just happened to me.

“What can I say? I am my parent’s child, after all! Besides, it’s not like she could seriously hurt herself... much.” I was still trying to get my breathing under control, and it felt like if I opened my mouth to say something, I would have started crying again, so I just tried to make myself appear as small as possible.

“Just do your fucking job!” The girl on my side of the table seemed to get annoyed at Afterlife, as she glared at the sitting girl.

“Yeah, yeah, Destie” and with that Afterlife sat up herself and made her way over to the cabinets. She seemed outright cheerful at that moment.

“And don’t call me that! Especially not in front of mortals!” Destie called out. She seemed pretty flustered about that name, but quickly hid her face from my view. If it hadn’t been for the mental torture, I was just put through, I might have actually enjoyed this comedy routine.

As the owner of the office made her way away from me, I noticed something weird going on with the colors of the room. The office had, of course, also been painted in the weird split way that the rest of the rooms I had seen were, but as Afterlife went through the room, the split seemed to follow her. The previously monochrome areas suddenly gained coloration and life seemed to return to the few plants that were at the far side of the room.

“Let’s see... humans... humans... Ah, here, humans!” Afterlife pulled out one of the drawers and started looking through the documents inside. “Male, I guess... age? Hmm, probably less than thirty... Ah, here we go.” She pulled out a thick folder and slammed the drawer closed.

As she went back to her seat, I saw the life get sucked out of that half of the room again and it soon looked like when I had first entered. Afterlife was flipping through the pages quicker than I could even count them and I seriously doubted she read what was written on any of them, but once she had flipped to the last page, she confidently proclaimed: “Congratulations! You’re not in the system.”

“Okay?” I may be developing a weird mental habit where the first thing I said to new people was a one-worded question, but besides that, what exactly did she mean? Did I not have an afterlife or something? I mean, I hadn’t really been religious, so maybe that’s why.

“Hang on. What do you mean, he’s not in the system?” Destie apparently thought the situation was a lot more serious than the other girl.

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“It just means exactly that. I don’t have a file on him... unless... you are human, right?” I just nodded my head in response, but the girl hadn’t even looked in my direction. “Or are you one of Tira’s clique? No, then I should have been informed by them... maybe one of Derius’... Hmm...” She actually did that weird thinker pose with her chin rested on her hand as she scrunched her eyebrows in an admittedly pretty cute display.

“Ah, I got it!” She suddenly snapped her fingers and had a triumphant grin on her face. “We’ll just re-register you!”

“No, no, no! That’s a terrible idea. If your father realizes you did that, you could get in serious trouble!” But Afterlife ignored her concern and pulled out what looked like an old typewriter, only with a clear crystal ball where the keys were supposed to be.

“Relax, Destie. What’s he gonna do? Kill me? And you,” she pointed at me, “Just place your hand on the crystal.” I hesitated for a few seconds, but the girl was deceptively strong as she suddenly jumped up and grabbed my hand herself. The ball shined in a weird purplish hue before letters appeared on the paper of the machine. It was the same language I had seen on the books again.

NAME: CRITICAL ERROR

SPECIES: CRITICAL ERROR

PARENTS: CRITICAL ERROR

CHILDREN: CRITICAL ERROR

TITLES: CRITICAL ERROR

PATRON: CRITICAL ERROR

D.O.B.: CRITICAL ERROR

D.O.D.: CRITICAL ERROR

CONFIDENCE: CRITICAL ERROR%

That didn’t seem right. I mean, I don’t think my name was CRITICAL ERROR, unless my parents really, really hated me... or maybe it was a family tradition, considering they were also named that.

“Mother-dammit, did this thing break again?!?” The way Afterlife said that had me thinking that this scenario wasn't actuall all that uncommon. As if to test her hypothesis, Afterlife put her own hand on the crystal and it started shining similarly to before, just a lot more intense in its brightness and a few seconds later I saw a new document getting filled out.

NAME: Afterlife

SPECIES: Divine Manakin

PARENTS: Deity of Life, Deity of the Dead

CHILDREN: ERROR

TITLES: Goddess of the Afterlife, Daughter of Life, Child of the Dead, Original Split, The Grey Death, ERROR

PATRON: Deity of Life, Deity of the Dead

D.O.B.: 21,687 years ago

D.O.D.: N/A

CONFIDENCE: ERROR%

“Okay, yeah, it’s definitely broken again.”

Her name really was Afterlife? And her parents were the Deities of Life and Death? No, wait Deity of the Dead? But damn, I hope I look that good, once I reach my twenty-second millennia... or my first one... or, you know, my second century, for that matter.

“Could you not misuse sensitive machinery like that, please? Do you know how many favors I had to pull just to get this thing for you?” Destie looked rather annoyed at the girl that was apparently lost in thought again. The range of emotions she could display while only moving her eyebrows was impressive, though.

"What to do? What to do?" Afterlife muttered to no one in particular and I just awkwardly waited in my chair. After a few seconds, however, a mask of emotionlessness seemed to descend onto her features. It reminded me of those creepy uncanny-valley dolls back in the first room... and in retrospect, they probably weren’t dolls at all.

“I got it.” She abruptly said and stood up from her chair, going around to my side. With no warning, she pressed a finger against my forehead and the last coherent thought I had was that all color seemed to have vanished from her figure, as well as from the room. After that, I lost consciousness.

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