Clerical

Chapter One

Barry feels strange.

There's a very bizarre feeling surrounding the tiny shred of consciousness he has. It's like a lucid dream: he's aware that he's dreaming, but he can't quite be certain that the succulent taste of the dream pork pie on his tongue isn't real.

That's how he feels right now. All he notices is the absence of all light. He can think of no way to describe it other than the darkest black he's ever seen, and through this darkness he senses that he's floating in thin air. The entirety of his body is relaxed, and a sensation of pure calm is absorbed into him like water to a sponge. It's like the best bath he's ever taken but a thousand times more intense, much like that night he spent with the Serbian woman whose number he found in a phone booth. Then again, she did drug him with ketamine. Put bluntly, Barry is experiencing pure, unadulterated peace of body and mind.

The silence in the air is soothing. All he can hear is his own breathing, low and tranquil. If this is heaven, he thinks, then it's untainted bliss.

But it doesn't last. Slowly, Barry begins to notice something is happening. The darkness begins to fade into the brightest and most angelic white he's ever seen, yet the transition is so smooth and the white so beautiful he has no reason to squint: not even Pantone could create a color this perfect. So clean is this white light that it only increases Barry's joy, he even lets out a little chuckle as his body experiences a tingle and starts to rise upwards.

As he is floating, the white light starts to get brighter. At first it only becomes more wonderful to see, but as the light starts to intensify more, Barry wishes that he would return to the darkness before, as it becomes painful to his sight. Barry covers his eyes with a hand as he is reminded of what discomfort is. It's not enough for him to care though; the pleasure pulsating through him dulls out any painful experience in his weak human body.

The light continues to get brighter. Brighter than anybody, let alone Barry, can comprehend. So bright that Barry needs another hand to cover his face. Before too long, the light engulfs Barry completely, and he is no longer aware of his physical body. All he can surmise is that he is something else. His mind is clear, and everything he has previously worried about, stressed about, complained about – it all becomes so insignificant. But it's fleeting.

Barry lets out a gasp as he returns to normal; the experience of floating has subsided, and bliss becomes bewilderment. No longer blinded by the light, Barry's vision adapts to his surroundings.

He looks around and to his abject confusion, he realises he's in a room resembling a Doctor's waiting area. A similar shade of shiny animated white he witnessed covers the walls of this room as well as the chairs. Everything seems so radiant, but he is aware that the only person in this room is him.

A break in the light reveals a hole in the wall. He takes a few steps towards it and reads the word 'reception' above it. He rings the little white bell on the desk.

“Take a seat, please.” A faint voice calls out from somewhere behind the wall.

He tries to peer over the desk to see where the voice came from.

“Excuse me, where am I?” Barry calls back.

“Just take a seat, please.”

Barry turns on his heels, clearly flustered, but with no other options, he takes his seat.

He notices a coffee table to the right of where he is sitting. He picks up a stack of magazines and flicks through them: Time magazine, 1965; Vogue, 1988; Fly Fishing Monthly, 2017. He puts them back down. He squints to look around the room, it's just more of the same, but the sight of a kids play area in the corner of the room catches his eye. Trepidation sets in as he starts slapping his hands nervously on his thighs.

It only takes a few moments for the gentle voice behind the window to speak up again.

“Mr. Williams?”The voice quietly probes. "Please step this way.”

Barry turns his head to watch a door appear in the wall and open itself slightly. He gets up and nervously walks over. Only another bright light can be seen behind it as a faint trickle of white fog drifts out. The thought of how much the electric bills must cost here crosses Barry's mind. As he pokes his head around the gap of the open door, he hesitates to enter.

“Through here, yeah?”

“Yes, please.”

Barry carefully opens the door completely open, and he slowly steps through.

On the other side of the door, Barry is met by what can be best described as the office of a late 1990s travel agent. And a slimy one at that. A desk rests in the center of the room and a middle-aged man with well-groomed salesman-type white hair sits behind it. The tidy desk has a newtons pendulum tapping away seemingly indefinitely. A watercooler, coffee machine, and a filling cabinet rest nearby. The gentleman types away on his very early model computer and makes no eye contact with the bewildered Barry, who stands by the door.

“Ah, Barry, please do take a seat." The man gestures to the chair on the opposing side of the desk as he speaks.

Barry cautiously takes a seat. He's visibly perplexed by the nature of this situation, but follows the commands to the letter, albeit with a little reluctance.

The man behind the desk continues to type on his computer. Barry takes the time to look around again, noticing the posters on the wall; many different apartment complexes and houses, all with star grades and motivational sales lines, such as "an eternity of pure indulgence". The man finishes typing.

“Right-o! Sorry about that, my friend. Just having a little issue with an unhappy client on the Far East side. Frankly I think he's being rather unreasonable considering the accommodation he's been afforded. Rats go to heaven too, you know?”

The man finally makes eye contact with Barry and smiles nicely.

“Some people are impossible to please it would seem.”

Barry thinks for a second and scratches his head.

“Sorry, did you say Heaven?”

“Ah, yes, sometimes I forget to do the whole speech thing when a client walks in. Yes, this is indeed heaven. Welcome. Would you like a coffee or a tea? Hot chocolate? Mocachino?”

“Wait, so I'm dead?”

“That's right.”The man smiles again. "See, not all that complicated, eh, old bean?”

“To be perfectly honest, I'm a little confused.”

“Perfectly natural at this point, Barry. All will be revealed in due course, we try not to bombard the recently departed with all the information at once. It tends to cause a bit of a migraine you see. So please bear with me.”

With a groan of an aching back the man reaches into the filing cabinet behind his desk and rummages through it, muttering under his breath about the quality of the filing. After a few moments he re-emerges with a small file and plonks it on the desk. He taps it and smiles.

“There we go, let's have a look at you, eh?”

Barry still looks lost. The man opens the brown file and scans it, he then types something into his computer.

“Okie dokie. Right. Barry Williams, bus accident, uneventful life, not a terrible HAT score.”

Barry squints.“HAT score?”

“Heaven Aptitude Test. It’s a scale we use to judge your life after you pass. Everything you've done up till this point is marked down: Charitable acts, kindness, participation in acts of g******e, that sort of thing. The computer then tots it all up and gives you a score which we use to assign you to a certain level of the afterlife.” The man smiles again. “Clever, isn't it?”

“And… mines… good?”

The man tilts his head side to side and "Ehh, you've got committed any g******e… But I have seen better.”

He starts typing on his computer again.

“So, what now?”

The man finishes typing again. "Now, I show you where you'll be staying. Stand up, and take a deep breath.”

Barry does as he's told as the man snaps his fingers. A blinding bright white light quickly fills the room.

As the light disappears, Barry shrieks as he notices he has been teleported to the outside of a small apartment block. The building resides on a quaint little American-esque suburban street, perfect in every way. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and a little boy rides a bicycle delivering newspapers.

The houses on the street are modern in appearance, each with a vehicle on the driveway alongside their perfectly cut lawns.

Barry vomits all over the floor.

“Very natural after your first teleportation, nothing to worry about.”The man quips.

Barry vomits again.

“Oh, god!”Barry says gruffly.“Ah, blasphemy, s**t, sorry!”

The man laughs.“Oh, don't worry about that. If we got upset about that sort of thing there'd be nobody up here." He says with an uplifting tone.“We're quite alright with a little effin' and jeffin' as long as it's not taken too far. Now come along, let me show you around.”

The man walks up the pathway to the complex, Barry follows closely behind as they enter the building. He immediately notices just how clean and perfect everything is, it's obvious that nothing here is broken or in any shape other than perfect working order. The man leads Barry into the elevator and presses floor four.

“Ok. I gotta ask. What's the deal? What's your game?”Barry asks, forwardly.

The man seems confused. He raises his eyebrows and looks Barry directly in the eyes.

“I'm afraid I don't follow your language. My game?”

“You know, the deal with all of this. Why am I being given an apartment in the same neighborhood as the Real Housewives of Suburbia. Why's it so modern and clean? I don't understand what's actually happening and you aren't really explaining anything. Barry's getting more frustrated and it shows in his voice.

The elevator dings to a stop on the fourth floor. The man smiles, refusing to answer Barry's question. He holds out a set of keys in front of Barry.

“All you have to do is take them.”The man speaks softly.“The reality of the situation is this: You're dead. There is literally no way to change that fact, even the big man himself would struggle. Everybody gets assigned somewhere to live, this is yours.”

Barry hesitates. His eyes dart between the door of apartment number sixteen and the man holding out the keys. Reality is setting in for him. He’d certainly expected more from heaven than a medium-size apartment in the middle of a residential street. Where's the grandeur? The angelic hordes playing harps? It's all so wrong. So mediocre.

“I know it's not much, but it's a darn sight better than what's-“ The man pokes his finger down. “Down there.”

The man jingles the keys and smiles again. Barry nods his head in acceptance of his new fate; after all, it surely could be worse than this. He reaches out slowly and takes the keys, he takes his time feeling the weight of them in his hand; they're very real.

“Well done, Barry. Now, go on in, have a little look around at your new home. Induction is at 8 o'clock this evening.”

Barry walks to his door and enters his key in the lock. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The man watches him from behind, and places his comforting hand on Barry's shoulder.

“Ah, balls to it.”

Barry twists the key and opens the door. He walks into the apartment. It's the kind of apartment you'd expect to find in Florida, with cream being the colour of choice for near enough everything. Big French windows expose the property to a beautiful view of the suburban area, with bright blue sky's cascading through the glass. It looks brand new, it smells brand new: it is brand new.

Barry finds himself nodding along as he walks around the one-bedroom apartment. He's pretty pleased with the solid three star approach the architect took, it's certainly better than the dump he was used to living in anyway. For one, he's not seen any rats bigger than his arm yet and to him that's a big plus.

The man in white, however, seems rather concerned as he walks through the apartment. He frantically checks all the rooms and the closets. Eventually, Barry notices this behavior, and even plucks up a little chuckle.

“You lost something?”

The man is out a breath and looks very worried. His cheerful demeanor and smile have been eradicated from him completely.

“There's no belongings. There should be belongings.” The man whimpers.

That worry washes onto Barry, whose brief moment of happiness is replaced with fear.

“So?” Barry queries, concerned.

“The buildings assigned to our guests are not assigned to 'you' per se.” The man clambers for words. “How to explain this. They're assigned to your soul, and should be full of all the things you care about. Pictures, TVs, pets, whatever you love. If those things aren't here—“

Barry watches in fear as the man's face turns sour.

“-then neither is your soul, Barry.”