I DID NOT believe in an afterlife until I arrived here, and now there is very little refuting it. I feel as though I have just woken from a restful sleep, yet I am standing upright, poised to move as though I have merely opened my eyes from a blink. Where I am standing is a white, unadorned hallway with textured mint green linoleum floors that stretch on at least as far as I can see in either direction. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to a white brightness that emanates from nowhere in particular; there are neither light fixtures nor windows, and I do not cast a shadow, as though the light pours from the floor and walls themselves. On either side of the hall are doors, spaced about twenty feet apart and staggered so that a person walking would pass one every ten feet, first on one side, then on the other. Between every second and third door on either side of the hallway is a bench, wrought iron frame and wooden slats that looked weathered, although likely not by weather but perhaps by time and asses
A placard hangs
on the wall on either side of me. On it is written “TELL YOUR STORY. KNOW
YOURSELF,” in large, black block letters. Underneath and smaller is scrawled,
“Good luck.” Though it appears to have been added by hand to both of the signs,
they are entirely indistinguishable.
There are only
two directions in this hall – forward and backward relative to the orientation
in which I became conscious – and it seems important that I remember which is
which. To my original left is a bench over which is hung the placard, while to
my right the placard is separated from the nearest bench by a doorway, so as long
as I remember that the bench-placard wall is left, I will know which way is
which.
I sit down on
the bench under the placard and contemplate the door across from me. It is the
same white as the walls and has neither keyhole, nor peephole, nor knocker; its
sole feature is a round brass doorknob.
I think that
this is something momentous, these my first moments in this life. In my last
life, my first moments must have been chaotic with a doctor and nurses and
mother and father and grandparents hovering at the door and orderlies in and
out. But I was barely present at that event, and here I am the only spectator
and the sole celebrant to these minutes in this life. I try to feel the weight
of it. I fail. Instead what I feel is an urge to cry out to the empty hallway,
to ask where I am and to what end and what has happened to bring me to this
place. Where is everyone else? What is behind the doors? And is this place good
or bad? And why am I hungry?
