“What’s going on?” the man asks, looking down at the other man sitting at the desk.
The man at the desk doesn’t look up, just shakes his head, “No this just won’t do” he mutters. To himself, “This will not do at all”.
He turns the letter on the desk over, looks at the blank page and turns it back.
He looks up to the forlorn creature standing before him.
“It seems”, he states, “That there has been an administrative error”. He makes a clicking sound, “Quite the error”
“I don’t”, the other man starts, “I don’t understand”, he looks around and takes the white room in, “Where am I”
The sitting man says nothing, just stares at the piece of paper. He turns it over again and then places both hands on it, looking up.
“It would seem”, he pushes his chair backwards, “That we have a case of mistaken identity”
“I mean”, he continues, “I have never known this to happen before”, he rubs a hand across his smooth chin. “It’s quite the thing really, someone is going to be in trouble”.
“Erm”, the man standing starts again, “I don’t understand, what on earth is happening?”
The sitting man chuckles, “Not on earth, not anymore, that is the nub of the problem really”
The standing man has drifted off, looking around the room; he is taken aback by the unnaturalness of it. White walls meeting white floor, slick, glossy but no obvious join. The ceiling is the same. No windows. And no doors. The table i. front of him seems to be made of the same table and the legs seem to be seamlessly attached to the floor. The man sitting behind the desk is wearing a crisp white three-piece suit with a white shirt and white tie. There’s not a crease or mark in sight. Hi skin his is smooth to the point of being almost doll-like. His hair impeccably styled, rigid and neat but he can’t see any sign of product.
This room is to say the least, weird.
There’s also a weird thrum. Low and almost inaudible, but it’s there nonetheless. He can feel it more than hear it.
Also, why is he wearing this weird white linen get up? Is this some weird hospital? How did he get here?
Tap, Tap, Tap
His reverie is broken by the man at the desk drumming his fingers on the weirdly white desk.
“What we have here”, he says, “Is a quandary”
“What to do?”.
“What”
“To”
“Do”
“I don’t understand”, the man in front of the desk says, “Where am I”
“You’re in processing”, the sitting man replies.
“We seem to have had an administrative hiccup’ he continues.
“You see, you have the same name as another man who was scheduled for erm, processing and the technician went to the wrong house. I mean, you see how it happened, but even s,o it is very shoddy work.”
“There are, sorry, there were two Samuel Blocks in your town. He is 63, you are 36. He lived at 13 Belmont Road, you lived at 31 Beaumont Drive. You can see where the confusion came from”
He shakes his head.
“It’s not very good work at all”
He taps the paper.
“I mean this other Samuel Block is quite the piece of work”, the sitting man seems to roll his tongue around in his mouth, almost as if he had just struggled with the end of the sentence.
“Serial killer, 12 victims so far. Undetected, very good, very discreet. Also a bigamist and fraudster. Your lot were taking too much time catching him, so we had to step in. He was getting carried away”
He looks at the man with a dry smile.
The standing man looks back, “So”
“I’m dead?”
The sitting man nods.
“That’s it, there’s nothing you can do?”, The standing man is trying hard to swallow down the hysteria in his voice. It cracks at the end.
“This is, it’s, I mean. Can I not go back?”
“We can’t send you back. Your girlfriend heard a noise in the middle lf the night, went to wake you and found you unresponsive. She called 999, they sent an ambulance and they pronounced you dead at the scene. A bit of a mess really.”
The two men look each other. Silence seems to swallow the room. The dead man is holding back the urge to cry. He goes to speak but feels the tremble in his voice. He stops. Gathers himself and tries again.
“So what happens now?”
The man behind the desk smiles. A thin, almost tired smile.
“Well, there lies the quandry, you see the reason you have ended up here is because of the other Block’s crimes”, he taps the piece of paper on the desk, “It’s quite the list”
“You only come here for certain reasons; these aren’t petty acts. These are serious. Murder, Rape, Pedophilia, Genocide, Animal Cruelty, Domestic abuse and fraud.”
He continues,
“Stealing and swearing and all that other petty nonsense is religious mumbo jumbo. We don’t care who you love or how you want to live your life. Petty crimes can usually be written off as necessity for some people to survive. We just deal with the heinous stuff. I mean, can you imagine how full this place would be?’ – he chuckles.
He taps the sheet of paper again. “You have nothing here that warrants you being here”
“So I’m in hell?” the dead man asks.
“Hell?”
He holds up his hands and makes quotation marks with his fingers.
“No, we don’t like that word, there is no religion here”
“Hell is a religious construct to impose a set of beliefs and ideas that are morally stupid.”
“Only people who commit the very worst crimes come here.”
“They all come here for processing, and then we send them to their own version of hell.”
The standing man starts to feel a change in the room. The walls seem to be coming in. No that’s not right. There’s more furniture. Filing cabinets jave appeared. They line every wall. On top of each one are stacks and stacks of ledgers balanced precariously. There’s also a chair now, wooden and uncomfortable-looking.
The air in the room has changed as well. The sterile air-conditioned ambience has been replaced by a muggy heat. He feels a bead of sweat drip down from between his shoulder blades to the bottom of his back. There’s also an odour. A combination of dry books, stale cigarette smoke and sweaty socks.
The desk in front of him has changed as well.
It is now covered in files and bits of paper. There’s an overflowing astray that was probably stolen from a pub sometime in the 1970s. There’s barely room for anything. A long disregarded cup with a lid circle of mould sits amongst the leafed debris. The man behind the desk has transformed as well. It’s still the same man but his skin is sallow, his eyes gaunt and drawn. His hair is greasy and dragged back with flecks of dandruff. His pristine three-piece suit has been replaced with a bleak-looking polyester grey suit with an overwashed grey once white shirt. His tie has Bugs Bunny on it.
Pinned to the suit is a badge.
It says, Administrator.
“Maybe your version of hell is a Kafkaesque nightmare of mismanagement bureaucracy and incompetence?”
He smiles, gestures.
“Take a seat, this may take some time”
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