"Eric!"
Who the hell is calling me...?
The voice cut through the fog in my mind like a blade through wet paper.
"Eric! Time to get up, now!"
That sharp, commanding voice snapped my eyes wide open.
There are voices you can ignore, let them roll past you like wind against glass.
But this one—no, this one etched itself into the walls of your skull and rattled your bones like a train about to derail.
I sat up, groggy, only to realize I was on the top bunk of a metal-framed bed.
"Where... is this?"
My eyes, not yet ready to see, blinked through the blur.
The walls were white—too white—and the room stretched long and tall, at least the size of a high school gym.
Row after row of bunk beds lined the place like a dormitory for ghosts.
A woman in a black suit strode between the beds, ledger in hand, calling out names like a headmistress in some purgatorial academy.
She looked like she'd stepped out of a fashion magazine—tall, deathly pale, her figure clean-cut and precise.
Each name she spoke stirred another body awake.
Like me, they slowly climbed down from beds and began shuffling, half-dazed, toward a door far at the end of the hall.
"Eric! If you're awake, move it! You're holding up the line!"
That voice again, sharp as a blade's edge.
She didn't ask. She ordered. Like it was law.
Who the hell does she think she is, bossing me around like I work for her?
I bristled with annoyance, but something about her made my feet move on their own.
I swung down and slipped into the silent procession.
Ahead of me walked an old man, hunched and slow like the last leaf on a winter branch.
I leaned in and whispered, "Hey, sir... where are we?"
He paused, looked over his shoulder. His face was a roadmap of eighty years and ten thousand regrets.
"Beats me... I'm just goin' where they tell me."
And on he shuffled.
Where the hell am I...?
I followed him, unease nesting in my chest like something warm and wrong.
Looking down, I saw I wore a white t-shirt and matching shorts—clean, new, unfamiliar.
I remembered falling. Paint-splattered concrete. The sky tumbling.
But now? No pain. Not a bruise.
Hospital? Maybe I was in a coma...? But this... this doesn't feel like a hospital.
As I walked, I noticed the crowd.
Hundreds of people, all in quiet lines, all heading the same way.
Most were old, sagging like wilted flowers.
But some, like me, were young. Even children. Confused, lost, asking strangers where they were.
"NO TALKING WHILE MOVING!"
The woman in the black suit—no, women—there were more now.
All dressed the same, stationed like statues along the path.
Identical black suits, identical black hair, identical emotionless faces.
And around their waists, belts that held something too large to be pens and too familiar to ignore.
Guns...?
I stepped through the door... and stopped dead.
An endless grid.
Room after room, just like the one I'd woken in.
Lines of people snaked out from each doorway, merging into larger currents that slowly flowed forward like a river of shadows.
It wasn't just us.
From nearby rooms, I heard Korean.
Further down, Japanese.
Even farther, the rolling, sharp syllables of English and Spanish.
Lines sorted by nation.
Lines sorted by death.
And each line bore the mark of its culture:
The Chinese lines were chaotic—people shouting, arguing with the black-suited women.
The Japanese lines were solemn, quiet, orderly.
The Western lines buzzed with conversation and nervous laughter.
"Excuse me, miss?"
A dignified older woman, two places ahead of me, raised a trembling hand.
"I passed peacefully, surrounded by my family at a care center in Koreatown.
Why... why am I here? Where are my children? My husband?"
The suited woman didn't even look at her.
She raised her voice, not with malice, but the cold efficiency of a machine:
"Everyone in this line is dead. You are in the transition zone. You will be judged before proceeding to Hell."
The words hit like a punch to the collective gut.
Gasps. Whimpers. Silence.
The old woman crumpled.
Others just nodded, as if they had suspected all along.
Dead? I'm dead? No...
But then I remembered—
The ladder.
The wind.
The scream that never left my throat.
I stopped walking.
I died.
The realization was heavy, like wet cement pouring into my lungs.
I'd wanted more time.
To make things right.
To live.
A bump behind me—a frail old lady with more scolding than patience.
"Young man! Quit dawdling. Keep moving, now!"
I snapped back into motion.
So… all those people waking up like I did... they died at the same time?
And those other lines—
The Japanese, the Chinese...
They all died too.
No wonder the Chinese lines are longer. Guess the mainland doesn't do subtle exits.
I let the thoughts tumble, trying to make sense of the surreal geometry of death.
"Miss! Miss, excuse me! I was a devout Catholic. I was supposed to go to Heaven! I served soup to the poor, I never missed Mass, I tithed faithfully—this must be a mistake! Jesus, save me!"
A sweet-looking woman traced a trembling cross in the air.
The same suit-clad woman, now visibly annoyed, raised her voice again:
"Whatever you were told in life—there is no Heaven. Only judgment."
That silence?
It shattered.
"Oh Lord! No!"
"Namu Amida Butsu!"
Every faith cried out at once.
A final hymn in the hallway of the damned.
Glad I never joined a church, I thought, with a grim chuckle.
I always figured they just wanted my money anyway.
Felt good—righteous, even—not to be let down by a lie.
For once, I was ahead of the game.
"Continue following the line," the woman barked.
"You will each face judgment. Afterward, your place in Hell will be determined. How long you remain there will also be decided by your sins."
Judgment...
The word sank in like a cold nail through the heart.
It had been years since anyone had judged me for anything.
Middle school, maybe, when I got caught punching a kid.
But since then?
I played it straight.
I obeyed the law.
I didn't even jaywalk.
Wait...
What about that time I peed behind the karaoke bar while drunk...?
Or when I hid expired kimbap at the convenience store so I could eat it after closing...?
Or the time I flipped off that jerk customer at the gas station... behind his back...?
Tiny sins, sure.
But they bloomed in my memory like mold in a dark room.
It's fine, I told myself.
Look at the guy next to me—tattoos up and down his neck, probably stabbed someone.
Compared to that, I'm a saint.
Still, I couldn't shake the feeling—
That every step toward that courtroom was peeling back the skin of who I was.
And when the truth was finally laid bare...
Would I be ready?
I kept walking.