In Hell

 

        Jeremy sat with his head in his hands and a feeling of sickness in the middle of his chest. For the fifty-five years of his too short life, he never gave any thought to what would happen after death. From anyone else’s perspective, he had it all together. He was stunningly handsome, ridiculously healthy, and incredibly gifted at predicting his investments. Most would have called his wife a trophy wife but he knew better. Megan was a bitter, selfish, and vain woman.

        Even on his wedding day, he knew he was making a mistake. The woman had no discernible skills other than buying overpriced clothes and makeup. The fact that he now sat here all alone meant that the car crash, if he remembered correctly, took only him. It was the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass that remained in his memory as he sat there on the hard concrete.

        He scraped at his chest to try to drive away the stabbing sickness and ache that filled every ounce of his being. He stood up and began wandering but every street, every corner, and every storefront looked exactly the same. He occasionally caught glimpses of others but was never able to catch up to or interact with them. Everything around him was a dull shade of gray with a certain grimy feel to it.

        He eventually stopped in front of a bakery and felt like eating a doughnut but oddly, he was not in the least bit hungry. He tried the door to go inside and order but the door was locked. He returned to the large window display to realize that he could not see his reflection in the glass. He tried multiple doors on the off chance that he could ascend to the top floor of one of the taller buildings to get a different perspective on the city.

        “This is very odd,” he murmured. “Where am I? I don’t remember arriving and why are  there so few people around?” He sat down on the curb, closed his eyes and listened, hoping to hear something, anything but he heard nothing. “How can a huge city like this be silent? No rumble of traffic. No airplanes overhead, and so few people. It seems like everything is closed.”

        He stood up and began walking in a straight line on what seemed to be a main street. After walking for at least an hour, it suddenly occurred to him that the street was not straight after all. He stopped and looked ahead and directly behind to realize that he could only see a few blocks before a curve in the street prevented a long distance view. “Okay, how about a side street?” he thought.

        Once every block a narrow alley existed, looking very much like the typical alley in his home town of New York. Dirty, graffitied, but oddly, contained no homeless people. The end of each one was the same, a chain link fence, at least three stories tall that blocked any chance of continuing past. “This is ridiculous,” he said out loud. With that thought in mind, he began yelling, calling for help, calling for attention. He even began shouting his name. “I am Jeremy,” he shouted over and over. But nothing happened.

        Laying down in the center of the road, he spread himself out like he was making a snow angel. With his eyes closed, he hoped for sleep but he did not feel in the least bit sleepy. He had no idea how long he had been laying there, as the sky did not change, the weather did not change, and his favorite Rolex was no longer on his wrist.

        He returned to the closest alley and began climbing the chain link fence. “If I can just reach the top, I can slide over and hopefully find something different.” With his neck craned upward as he climbed, he finally reached within a couple feet of the top, rotated his neck a few times to work out a kink, only to realize that the fence had somehow extended another full ten feet. “Well, that’s not good,” he thought. “Okay, something different then.”

        He immediately let go of the fence and pushed off with all four limbs, projecting himself into the open air behind him. Following a bright, white flash, he opened his eyes to find himself seated on the curb in the exact same place he was prior.

        “Hello, Jeremy,” he heard behind him. He stood up and looked up at the tallest man he had ever seen. 

        “Uh, hello,” he said. “How do you know my name?”

        “I am Gregory,” the man answered. “I’ve been watching you your entire life. You spent the last fifty-five years doing nothing of value, focused only on yourself, and your comfort. Now, as a consequence of all those decisions you made in life, you are now here. This is the reality you have created for yourself.”

        “In life?” he repeated. “What do you mean, in life?”

        “You have passed into eternity,” the man said. “You had hundreds of thousands of opportunities to do the right, to change your path, and to positively impact others but you always made the wrong choice. And now here you are.”

        “Well, now what?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

        “What you do is, as it always has been, up to you,” Gregory said. “You created a solitary life for yourself. I only stopped by to give you an explanation. This is the only time you will see me. You may occasionally see others but you will never have a chance to interact with them. Because they, like you, chose solitude.”

        Gregory snapped his fingers and disappeared. “Uh, wow, that was weird,” he said. “Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to talk to. Man, this sucks.”

        “I guess I’ll just start looking around,” he said. And with that, he started walking and checked every door and every window, only to find them all locked. He continued to do so for what seemed like hours, as he had nothing to gauge the passing of time. “I guess time only has meaning when you have a rising and setting sun.”

        He moved to the center of the street and looked up where the tops of the buildings met the painfully drab, gray sky. Turning in a slow circle, he eventually came across something that looked like a white glow, somewhere far, far in the distance. “If that’s a sun, why isn’t it moving?” he wondered.

        He started walking toward that glow but remembered that the streets were not straight but slightly curved, so he couldn’t actually approach the light. He entered the nearest alley and rolled a dumpster next to the corner of the building. He originally thought that all of the architecture was the same on all of the buildings, but this one had a groove pattern to the exterior. He stood on the dumpster and managed to get a finger and toe hold in the grooving. 

        He eventually reached the top of the building, around ten stories, he guessed. Sitting on the edge, he could see the white glow as well as the circular shape of the city. Some of the white light had cast a few rays across the top of this building and others similar to it. He walked toward the light and reached into it with one hand, only to immediately pull back as it seemed to burn.

        “Damn, for being such a beautiful light, it sure is hot… or something,” he said. He began to take steps back as the light slowly moved toward him. “That’s not good,” he said, as he watched the distance to the edge of the building behind him diminish. “Okay then, off I go,” he said. With a short sprint, he reached the edge and leapt off, hoping that his arrival at the bottom would be the same as his fall from the chain link fence.

        With his eyes closed, he could feel the wind rushing by his face. The sudden stop at the bottom came as no surprise and he found himself, alone, again, sitting on the curb near a fire hydrant. “I guess I’ll just start walking and hope for something to happen or for someone to show up.”