This is a pared down version of an original story I wrote for a class a while back. The prompt was to write about death and/or the afterlife. I'm not really planning on doing anything with the story, but I would like to patch it up (I'm not terribly satisfied with it now) and would love suggestions.
I feel a jarring sensation, and I’m vaguely conscious of light. I sense that I am no longer moving, and that I’m lying on my side on some surface. My arms wrap gently around my knees, pulling them to my chest. I open my eyes with several fluttering blinks. My gaze extends down the entirety of a long, dimly lit corridor, at the end of which is a single set of dark, wood-paneled double doors with brass handles. Above the set of doors sits a little sign, illuminated by its reddish-orange letters glowing somberly in the poor light of the hall: Theater 0. Along the length of the wall closest to my head stretches a wire rack, which terminates at the theater, holding countless reels of film.
“Arise,” a voice from behind me commands. The word rings soft and authoritative, surprisingly comforting yet undoubtedly serious. I unfurl my limbs, stand up and face the owner of the voice. The speaker is a young woman in a flowing brown robe.
“Welcome, Trevor McIntyre,” she says.
“Trevor McIntyre?” I repeat. My voice sounds flimsy, airy. The name pours out of my mouth like vapors.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she replies. Although very young, her face holds an aged expression, one of understanding, knowing. As I take in her face, I stop caring who Trevor McIntyre is, or if he’s who I’m supposed to be. A soothing warmth washes over me, and all I want is for the sensation to continue. She turns toward the wire rack on the wall and grabs one of the reels, revealing a second set of double doors behind her at the other end of the hallway. Another sign, bathed in blue-green light, displays the name Theater 4.
“Please follow me, Trevor,” she motions with a slight tilt of her head. The film reel, clasped snugly to her chest, has a line of tape plastered on its sleek axis. The tape bears the name Trevor McIntyre, and I notice that all of the reels on the rack have a piece of tape across their axes too, each displaying a different name. I must be Trevor McIntyre, I decide, and the reel held by my hostess must be mine.
She leads me along the long corridor towards Theater 0. We pass by thousands upon thousands of named reels without exchanging a single word, though I manage to steal a few glances at my guide. With her face trained forward and the reel grasped tightly in her arms, she could pass for a statue were it not for the slight, up and down bob that accompanies each pair of her soft steps.
“I’m sorry, um, miss, but who exactly are you?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a certainty that causes me to stop. The woman stops as well and turns to me.
“You don’t know who you are?” I ask. My voice sounds so weak compared to hers, hardly exceeding a whisper. She looks at me in her knowing way before responding.
“Can you tell me with any degree of certainty who you are?”
“Yes, Trevor McIntyre. You told me.”
“I did, and you are. But do you really know that you’re Trevor McIntyre?” She waits while I fill the hall with silence.
“When you arrived here, you had no idea who you were. I could have told you that you were Clive Stapleton and you would have believed me.” Once again, her look of deep understanding sends waves of contentment splashing over my being. She’s right. I would have believed her without question.
“So, for the same reason I don’t really know who I am, you don’t know who you are?” I ask. She unlocks one of her arms from my reel and points to the rack.
“No doubt you’ve noticed the reels of film on the wall.”
“Of course.”
“There is a reel for every person who has ever lived on planet Earth. The reels you see on the rack right now are those that belong to people who are recently deceased.”
“People who’ve just died?”
“Correct.”
“I’m dead?”
This thought hadn’t occurred to me. In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to me to question why I was in this corridor in the first place, or why she was leading me around. It had just seemed natural, as it seems now, to accept whatever she said as the truth and obey.
“Yes, Trevor. And now that you’re dead, you’ve come to The Hall. All people come here when they die, and everyone gets to watch one of these,” she tips my reel a bit. “However, you have to actually come here to get a reel. I never arrived here. I’ve always been in The Hall, Trevor, ushering people through who have come here solely for one purpose: to enter Theater 0. Thus, I have no reel.”
“So, you will never know who you are?” I ask.
“It’s the way it has to be,” she says. I want to say that that’s too bad, that it must be awful to know everything except your own identity, but before I can articulate the feeling into words I get swept away from the thought. I wish she would always look at me in this way.
“So what exactly is in Theater 0?” I ask, more out of a desire to make conversation than receive an answer. We are nearly at the double doors now and my guide has moved ahead of me somewhat.
“You are.”
The inside of Theater 0 is darker than The Hall. The only light comes from the large screen, and even that doesn’t provide much. Theater 0 is large and mostly empty. There’s a stage underneath the screen, and a lone chair right in the middle of the room. My hostess instructs me to sit in it, which I do. She then disappears through a swinging door next to the theater’s entrance before reappearing in the projector room window behind me. I watch as she fits my reel into its slot and feeds the beginning of the film into the projector.
“Turn around and face the screen, please,” she calls down without taking her eyes off her work.
“Now,” she says as she flips some switches on the projector and the machine whirs to life, “what you are about to see is a recounting of your life, from your first conscious memory to the moment you took your final breath on Earth. All of this is you, Trevor. However, I must warn you, some of the things you will see are going to make you want to return to your life before you died, and that’s only natural. It’s very human to want to go back before you go forward. But you must resist the urge to go back because, in truth, you can’t. What you learn from this screen can only help you once you go beyond it. When you’re beyond the screen, Trevor, and you’ve seen your life for what it was, that’s when you get the opportunity to truly become.”
I’m not sure exactly what she means by all that, but I believe what she says. Every word. As the film starts, I settle back into my chair, but my chair is not stationary. It’s leaning back, rocking slowly to-and-fro. The headrest cradles my neck and head, and the seat extends out to support my legs. All the while rocking to-and-fro. The seat back presses up against me and starts to jiggle me ever so slightly. I look up at the screen and into a woman’s face. She’s only vaguely familiar, but I get the sense that I’ll recognize her soon. Everything’s coming back to me. Her name’s on the tip of my tongue.
“Mah-mah,” I say.
“Yes, ‘mah-mah’!” Mah-mah says, scrunching her face up into a smile and bouncing me a bit more. “Who loves her baby boy?”
“Mah-mah,” I repeat, giggling. Mah-mah gives me a big kiss and coos softly about how much she loves her baby, Trevor. I can’t describe how good this feels.
The images play on. Now I’m with my older brother, Paul. He’s twelve and I’m seven. We’re running around the block in our neighborhood, and it becomes clear that we’re going to his friend’s house. Paul is taller than me, so he can run faster. I yell for him to slow down.
“Paul!” I shout. “Not so fast!”
“Go home, slowpoke!” Paul yells back. “No one invited you.”
“But Mom said,” I remind him.
“Do you think I care what Mom said? You’re not coming with me.” Paul rounds the corner and I’m only halfway down the block. I slow down, out of breath.
“Paul!” I scream. “Come back!” My eyes start to fill with tears. I walk to the end of the block to look for him. When I turn the corner, I don’t see him.
“Paul?”
“Ahh!” Paul screeches as he leaps from behind some bushes. I jump back and scream so loud it hurts my throat. Paul falls to the sidewalk laughing.
The images play on. I’m in my backyard, age fourteen. I’m kicking a soccer ball for my dog, which she chases. She corrals the ball and tries to bite it, but when she can’t get a hold of it she resorts to barking at it. I walk over and pick up the ball.
“You’re really dumb, you know that?” I say, smiling. She looks at me with her head cocked, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, eyes fixed on the ball. I pretend to throw it and she launches, but stops after a few bounds and looks back at me.
“Oh alright,” I mutter and kick the ball, high into the air. She trails underneath it, her legs a blur of kicked dirt and white fur, but the ball sails over the fence. She stops at the fence line, barks at it, and then turns to look at me as if to say, “You’re really dumb, you know that?”
The images play on. I’m in college, returning from a party early one morning. Dizzy, I manage to spot my hallmate’s bike in the rack with the others outside our dorm.
“Prick.”
I quickly glance around, then dig in my pocket for my lanyard. Keys, bottle opener, Swiss army knife. I fumble with the blade before pulling it all the way out, then I go for the tires, front and back. Bike to bike, down the line. I hear some other students coming up the sidewalk toward me, talking loudly, so I tug my knife from the rubber and slip it back into my pocket. The students pass by me and go into the building. I follow.
The images play on. I’m at my wedding reception now, and I’m the happiest man on Earth. My beautiful wife, Chelsea, dances with me to her favorite song that I decided to like for her sake. I’m concentrating on the dancing footwork I learned in a three week course on ballroom dancing I took at the community center before our wedding. I count under my breath, and Chelsea, smiling leans in to tell me that I’m doing fine. We share a kiss.
The images play on. We have our first child, a daughter we name Camille, four years after our wedding. Two years later we welcome our second child, a boy we name Austin. Three years after that, unexpectedly, our third child arrives, a boy we name Trevor after me.
The images play on. It’s the summer before our eldest child Camille enters middle school. We’re on our way to the beach and stop for some gas and snacks. I’m at the checkout counter, paying for the gas and five slushies when I look out the window and see my youngest son, Trevor, on his tip-toes trying to squeegee the van windows at the pump. I laugh and tell the cashier she can keep the change. The gas station door bursts open, and a man yells at me and the cashier. It takes me half a moment to process what’s happening before I see the glint of metal in the man’s hand. The cashier screams and the man tells her to shut up or he’ll blow her fucking brains out. He tells me to get on the floor or he’ll do the same to me. I comply.
“Empty it!” He shouts at the cashier, pointing his weapon at her the whole time.
“The register’s jammed,” she wails.
“You better open it or I’ll kill you right now!” the man yells, his arm shaking. I can tell he’s scared. In that moment I see a chance, while he’s unguarded, to knock his gun away. I jump up and go for his arm, but he turns and—
The images stop and the screen goes white. I sit up in my chair, gasping, hyperventilating.
“You’ve got to let me go back!” I yell into the projector room when I catch my breath. “I have a family, wife and kids. They need me!”
“I told you, you can’t go back,” the woman says, poking her head out the window. “Now that you’ve seen your life, it’s time for you to go forward.” As she says this, the surface of the movie screen starts to undulate, then spiral, then glow. I begin to feel a force pulling me toward the swirling screen.
“But I can’t go,” I plead, grasping the armrests of my seat as the screen’s tug gets stronger, “there has to be something you can do!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Every film must be watched, and every film must be reviewed.” And with that, she ducks her head back behind the window and disappears out of sight. By now I’m losing my grip on the chair and can’t hold on much longer.
Suddenly, the force dissipates. I drop back into the chair with a thud. The screen stops swirling and returns to normal. I sit up and take a look around Theater 0. Everything’s back to the way it was before the film started. I let out a massive sigh and laugh.
“It appears there has been a mistake,” says the woman from the projector room. She’s stuck her head out the window again and peers down at me.
“A mistake? What do you mean?” I’m shocked to see that the woman looks different, no longer reassuring and warm. She actually looks slightly sheepish.
“It appears,” she pauses for half a moment, “that I have shown you the wrong film.”
“What?”
“You’re not Trevor McIntyre. I showed you his film but you’re not him.”
“How is that possible?”
“I believe,” another pause, “that it’s possible that his film was misplaced in your slot on the rack.”
“So I’m still dead?”
“Yes. And I regret to inform you that you must now watch your own film. Please sit back down again.” She fiddles with the machine again.
I slowly slump back into the chair. “Can you at least tell me what my actual name is, now that you have the correct reel?” I yell out.
“Unknown,” is the answer from the projector room. The second film starts, but the screen is completely black. The seat of the chair folds up, so my legs are pressed tightly into my ribs. The headrest pushes my neck and head forward, thrusting my chin down towards my chest. The armrests pull up, bringing my elbows next to my knees and ribs, and my arms and hands up around my head. Blackness surrounds me on all sides, and my non-sight senses have dulled significantly. I’m still able to hear something in the blackness, something rhythmic, familiar.
Thud thud, thud thud, thud thud.
Then pain. And red and black. More pain. More red. More black. Finally the thudding stops.
The film ends.
“I’m sorry,” the woman says as the screen begins to shimmer and glow once more.
This time, I let the vortex take me without a struggle.
The idea was really interesting. And like dolwright said, nice imagery. Only, I got confused at the end too. What do you mean Unknown? I thought everyone had their reel? Just clear that up, and this'll be pretty awesome.