When you applied, you thought it was a joke. Maybe the eerie directionless light or sulfur-scented mist at the interview should have tipped you off, and maybe the fact that the interviewer seemed to be a bleached skeleton holding a scythe and wearing a torn black robe should have given you second thoughts, but hey, the pay is good, and if you don’t get many vacation days, at least the health insurance is excellent. You’ve just arrived in the Underworld and seen the last guy’s records. (They seem to date back to at least 500 BCE, but there wasn’t time to look at them all.) Describe your first day on the job as the afterlife’s receptionist.
The first person I met on the job was a sailor man, a grizzled old whitebeard who had drowned at sea in bright yellow waders and a sou’wester hat. He came into the reception office soaking wet and smelling like brine, and there was a haggard, wild look in his eyes. I took a look at the Date of Death calendar on my laptop, and found his picture on today’s entry.
“Harley Pinecrest, age fifty-six?” I asked him. His head snapped up, as if he couldn’t believe I’d just said his name.
“How’d you-” he spluttered, confirming my theory.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I apologized, “but today is your Date of Death. Your boat capsized out in a storm, and you drowned.”
Harley looked down at the beads of water sliding off his raincoat and falling to the floor. “Explains why I’m soaked,” he muttered. “So I finally kicked the bucket, huh? Is this Davy Jones’s Locker, then? Looks like the damn DMV.”
“This is the Hereafter Reception Office, sir,” I explained. “I’m, uh, new.”
Harley snorted a bit. “Right,” he said, a little scoff in his tone. “So now what, now that I’m off the mortal coil?” He took a seat in one of the mildly uncomfortable waiting room chairs with his arms crossed, apparently not caring that everything from his hat to his boots was getting water everywhere.
I checked his file. He had been a hard working man in life, a family man who fished to support his loved ones. Gruff with those he disliked, generous with those he was fond of, and his chief vice in life was nipping down to the bar when he should have been taking care of more important things. He was an Irish Catholic, but not particularly spiritual- mind more on his family than on Heaven and Hell. Hmm.
“Well?” he muttered, glaring slightly at me like it was my fault he was a goner. I shrugged.
“You have options, sir,” I said. “You can either take your eternal rest in Fiddler’s Green or the Catholic Quarter of Heaven. Alternatively, you can choose to reincarnate, simply cease to exist, or…”
“Or…?” Harley repeated, arching an eyebrow.
“Or,” I disclosed, “you can go on a Redemption Quest.”
The sailor’s brow furrowed. “And what, in the name of McAlpine’s Fusiliers, is that?”
I ran him through the process: a soul with unfinished business on earth could undertake a Redemption Quest once in their eternal lifespan. If they did, they would be restored to life, ferried to safety, and allowed the rest of their natural lifespan, with one condition: they had to complete a personal goal they had left undone by the time of their death, within the next twelve years of their life. If they failed, it was back to the Hereafter once the time was up.
“Sort of like a high stakes bucket list,” I summed up. “That said, it’s entirely your choice, sir. You can do anything you want.”
Harley frowned and rubbed his scruffy beard, thinking hard. It was sort of a weird experience for me, seeing him thinking about how he wanted to spend the rest of his death. I wondered how easy the decision would be for me, whenever my own time came.
Eventually, he answered. “Put me down for that Redemption thing, lad. I promised my son and daughter I’d get them to his boyfriend in Spain and her gal in the States, and by God I’ll do it. I can’t bear seein’ either of them sad without their dad.”
I smiled. Harley was starting to grow on me. “Right away, sir,” I chirped, pulling open the drawer for Redemption Quest files and getting out a packet.
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