11 Minutes Past

A story with an entirely different twist on what heppens when you die.

11 Minutes Past

 

It was pitch black outside and the rain was pouring down like a waterfall. I felt myself getting extremely drowsy and fought to keep my eyes open. I glanced at my clock radio, which read 6:11. I just came out of a long day at work. I tried to keep my head up, but my long day at work and the fall from my caffeine high that I had earlier, due to many coffee breaks, was catching up with me. I was twenty seven and a workaholic, so caffeine when I had no sleep was heaven to me. I felt my forehead gently touch the steering wheel. The next thing I knew I jerked my head back up at the sound of a blaring horn and stared straight into the brightest headlights I’ve ever seen. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. I tried to swerve out of the way, but it was too late. My car stopped upon impact of colliding directly into a semi truck and my body kept going. I was dead instantaneously.

 

I departed from my body as a twenty seven year old male and into my actual one which is a nineteen year old female, and casually walked into the office, relieved to be back in the second life. I looked over and there stood the twenty seven year old male, of whose body I was just in. He looked unsure of whether to be incredibly confused or scared out of his mind. Just then, Elliot, one of the managers of the office I was in, which was also the place I worked, sauntered down the hallway, swinging his keys from his finger tips. His thick black hair bobbed up and down when he walked toward us. He had a cheerful glow about him.

 

“Hey Roe, why don’t you show the new guy how it works,” he stated and walked away as if he were going to do something important.

 

I nodded. “Hi,” I said cheerfully and walked over to him, “You look a little confused so I’ll clarify some things for you.”

 

“I…I…” he began as he tried to find words, “The last thing I remember was that I was driving in my brand new car home from work and-”

 

“Yes,” I said calmly, “because you died.”

 

He stared at me for a moment and then shook his head, “What did you just say?”

 

“You’re dead,” I repeated flatly, “you are now in what we call the second level of life. The building you’re in right now is one of the headquarters of the DEA, which stands for Death Eliminators Association. My job, I’m a deatheater. Basically what we do is stop death, or people having to experience it for that matter. We look up on that screen over there to find out the who, when, where, and how of every death that takes place in our area. The next thing that happens is that we are assigned different deaths to tend to. We take people a little early and put ourselves in their place for their death. So we never actually experience our own death…just everyone else’s.”

 

The guy looked a little skeptical about this, “So basically, you’re telling me that you get paid to die for people.”

 

I shook my head, “We don’t get paid.”

 

“Then why the f**k would you do this?”

 

“Because if we stay here long enough we die again and get promoted to the next level. People say the next level is a perfect world. A Utopia.”

 

“People in this so called first life said you’d die and go to heaven or hell. What the hell is this because it sure doesn’t feel like heaven?”

 

“Neither. I told you it’s a second life.”

 

“Then how the hell do I know to trust anyone after I was just f*****g deceived?”

 

“You don’t. That’s what faith is, you just reach out your hand with your eyes closed and hope you grasp onto something. You either get something or you don’t. The funny thing is that it is completely arbitrary, and you never know what you’re going to get.”

 

“Uh huh,” he had one eyebrow raised, “and how long do you have to do this before you get to the ‘next level’?” he formed quotation marks with his fingers, mocking it and not believing a word of it.

“Not sure, no one knows. Just like on Earth, no one knows when they are going to die, except for a few people, but in most cases, it just happens. Upon arrival here you have two options; you can become a deatheater, or try to live in this corrupt society. If you become a deatheater it becomes easier all along, as any job would be, because you work your way up and eventually get to corporate where you keep track of number and so forth. But if you choose to live in this society, you might have a rough time because it’s even more corrupt than the last one you were just on. We have no money in this world, hence the fact that we don’t get paid. There’s no government, no authority, and essentially, no rules. There’s pornography all over the place, drugs and alcohol take control of most people’s lives, and people get shot. No one dies though, its just incredibly painful.”

 

“O.K. I get it. Hey, why did that guy call you Roe?”

 

“‘Cause my name’s Aurora and Roe is what people call me for short. Not sure I caught your name.”

 

“Because I didn’t tell you. I’m Jack,” he looked at the floor and was starting to get upset as if it just hit him as he was finally getting over the initial shock of arriving here, “I can’t believe it’s all gone. My car, my money, all my stuff, my life. Everything. I worked for years to get this stuff and in a split second, it’s gone.”

 

The screen that listed the deaths started making a beeping noise to signify that deaths were occurring soon.

 

“Sixteen year old male, drug overdose,” Elliot’s distinctive voice could be heard over the low level chatter about the office as he walked back in.

 

Everyone started shouting “Not it!” one after another to try and avoid getting stuck having to work.

 

“Eighty four year old female, natural causes,” Elliot called again over all over the people arguing.

 

“I call that one,” I shouted and ran over to join everyone else.

 

“Aurora, why don’t you take the sixteen year old so Jack can watch and get a feel for the job, which I’m assuming he wants based on the fact that he hasn’t run out of here yet. Troy, you can take the old lady,” he called to another boy.

 

I sighed overdramatically to emphasize my discontentment and walked over to the dematerializer. Elliot and Jack watched as I took the form of a sixteen year old boy at his wits end. I popped the last pill and started shaking uncontrollably. I looked down at the digital watch I was wearing, which read 7:11. That’s strange, I thought, only an hour after I last died for someone. I felt the room spinning and the walls closing in on me. For a moment I felt like I was flying, but in the next moment I felt a weightless feeling in my stomach started falling. A blanket or darkness engulfed all that I saw. I blinked my eyes one last time and collapsed onto shiny white bathroom tile.

 

A woman’s scream could be heard from a distance, “Travis,” then footsteps.

 

I rematerialized into the office and peered into the screen. A woman was bent over the boy’s body sobbing hysterically and screaming “why?”

 

I turned the other way, unable to watch any more of it. I think it bothered me more than anything that the death was avoidable. What was going on in the world? Outside the office window, things weren’t much better. Everything I saw was passing by in blurs of colors. Everything was bleeding together as if it were one, but each entity its own separate existence. The world was connected, but as human race progressed, they tore it apart. I shook my head, walked over to Elliot’s big spinning chair, and plopped down in it. I put my head in my hands and stared at the clock, meanwhile Jack went to train with other employees. I sat there for what seemed like forever. At one point, I thought I saw the clock moving backwards. 8:11, an hour had passed since I died for that teenager. The people, it seemed like, were walking in slow motion as they passed by in the hallway.

 

Elliot, his hands behind his back, started pacing up and down the hallway near the office. He was facing away from me when he said “You’re quiet today Aurora.” He spun sharply on his heel to face me, “Why?”

 

“I don’t know. I’m kinda tired I guess,” I yawned sleepily and stretched my arms above me head, “I’m just thinking.”

 

 

“What’s on your mind, kid?”

 

I glanced over at the window and thought about everything happening on the other side of the glass. I thought about how greedy people stole things for themselves while they were standing right next to others starving. Little kids were firing guns at other kids just because they stole their favorite toy. Pornography was on every other billboard, for no particular reason. Parents fought like enemies making kids feel like they were in the middle of World War III. Divorces were as common as marriages. Monogamy was no longer a word people practiced, or even used. People were getting beaten by gangs in ally ways and all of their belongings stolen. People were breaking into other people’s houses and taking whatever they wanted. Little innocent children were being picked up off the streets and raped because there was no penalty for it. No one got into any trouble for their actions and no one seemed to pay any mind because this behavior was regarded as normal. There were a few people that tried to change it by voicing their opinions about society being wrong, but those people were beaten until they were a bloody mess by the majority of people who wanted to do as they pleased. As a result of that, people tried to hang themselves to get away from it all, thinking that they would die again and it would all just disappear. All that happened was that they were in agonizing pain until they released themselves and came to the realization that they were trapped as if in a glass jar. They know there is an outside; they just can’t seem to reach it. All of those ideas were running through my mind in one continuous stream of thought. “Not much. I’m just thinking about when I get to leave.”

 

My mind advanced forward a few years and I was still sitting at that very same chair in the same position starting at the clock, which read 8:11. It was the same time, only a few years later. I looked down at the name plate which displayed the name “Aurora” since I had become the manager. I sighed out of boredom and then felt myself start to dematerialize, even though I wasn’t in the dematerizlizer. I vanished into thin air and found myself in the third level of life. My first thoughts were bewilderment because I finally made it to Utopia. I was in a perfect world. All that pain and suffering finally paid off. I was so happy I could barely stand it. Just then, someone interrupted my thoughts by pushing me to the ground, where I skinned my knee on the pavement. I felt pain. There was no pain in Utopia. I finally started to realize the place that I was in. The sky was gray and drunks and homeless people littered the streets. This level was even worse than the last level I was on. Just then, I saw Elliot. I yelled his name and ran to him. He sat on the curb with a bottle of alcohol in his hands. His eyes were all red, but not from crying; it looked as if he were starving and exhausted. He never drank before.

 

“El, what are you doing?” I asked him amazed to see what I was seeing.

 

“It’s a lie Roe,” he spat on the pavement. His cheerfulness had disappeared. “Everything they told us about Utopia was a bitter lie. And even better than that,” he added sarcastically, “we’re stuck here. No way out.”

 

I noticed the biggest building in the city was a clock tower and the time displayed was 9:11. I sat down on the curb next to him and picked up a bottle of alcohol.    

 

 

 

     

 

Reviews

[Kaleidoscope Apocalypse]

I think the idea behind this story is quite an interesting one and I commend you for your efforts. I was compelled to keep reading further so that I could find out where you were heading with all of this, but I wasn't exactly pleased with what I saw.

As I said, the idea behind this was quite interesting but I feel like you just threw it down on the paper without trying to really help it evolve into much. I think that if you sat down and worked on it; fixed your grammatical errors, used the right tense for certain words, and edited your punctuation, this would be a much better piece just for that. I would also recommend taking more time with this, not forcing it all out at one time. Take a few days to work on it, reword some of it, and explain more. I felt like I was being ripped from one scene to the next rather than making a smooth transition. I had to go back a few times and make sure that I had read everything correctly because some parts of this are simply confusing. In your own mind, as the writer, they may not be because they're in your head, but you have to explain more in depth for the reader.

I would like to see this piece after there has been some more work put into it and it has been lengthened to support every detail. This has so much potential and it certainly makes people think, I would love to see it all polished and waiting. This isn't a story idea one comes across very often though, so your creativity has to be acknowledged. You've got a great beginning with this, keep it up!

[wizthom]

u took me on a enchanted haunted journey