By Kevin J. Phyland

It had been my biggest mistake and it had been a doozy.

I'd thought, mistakenly, that the gap between the two building roofs was easy enough to cross with a simple run-up and jump, but had badly misjudged the amount the alcohol had affected both my judgement and my co-ordination. 

To be fair, I'd almost made it. The deep grazes on both knees and my fingertips were brief testimony to that, but the drop of five floors between the buildings made those injuries a mere trifle. 

I had just enough time to shout an epithet and wonder what the hell happened next when I hit the ground and whatever happened next became more than an academic exercise.

There was a white light. It wasn't at the end of a tunnel though, and it was a whole bank of white lights. They lit up a huge concourse that my addled mind gradually interpreted as what looked, for all the world, like a large airport check-in.

I was in a long queue and was dressed in an off-white one-piece shift, much like a hospital gown, but it shimmered in my vision so that I couldn't make out its material or how it fastened. The whole area was abuzz with muted conversation and occasionally an announcement came over speakers which I couldn't locate nor make out their meaning. It all seemed both mysterious and normal at the same time.

A woman in a three piece uniform with a cap reminiscent of a 1960s airline hostesses' smiled at me and asked if I needed assistance.

“Yes,” I muttered. “What's going on?” Nothing more pressing occurred to me.

She smiled another glossy magazine smile and pointed to a large map set up on a plinth. It made the unhelpful statement “YOU ARE HERE!” and on closer inspection had directions to different counters up ahead, set out like different airlines: Buddhist (Window 3), Catholic (Window 7) etc. With an ironic smile I noticed that Atheists could report to Window 1.

While the line gradually approached the array of counters, I stared about me and noticed with some surprise that there were a few people I knew in other lines. Clearly time ran on a different track here, as two of them had died years before me. One waved, smiled at me and told me how lucky I'd been.

Above the windows, covering the entire length of the concourse, was an electronic board showing arrivals and departures — names and dates and status — pending, departed, arriving soon — and I scanned it idly until to my surprise I found my own name. My status was pending.

When I reached the counter I noticed I had a keycard. I swiped the card and a monitor showed a whole list of accounts, some in blue, a lot in red. It didn't take Einstein to follow this logic. 

A loud beeping startled me and my status changed to CANCELLED.

Through a haze of pain I woke, as the hospital staff rushed over to me.

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