IN-BETWEEN

A short story

I’m in a queue, there are too many blank faces before and behind me, I think they feel the way I do. Lost. Where am I? I am naked, but for some reason, I am not bothered by my nakedness, maybe because everyone is naked, nakedness in my mind is as normal as it was for Adam and Eve before the greatest sin committed in human nature. We are a grotesque display in a lifeless place that feels far from home. There is one who is panicking, I wish she could stop and realize that we are all as clueless as she is. She is nudging everyone. “Where am I?” she asks, but nobody answers. The blankness in all the faces I see should have answered her, but she surges on, on a brink of tears still trying to get someone to give her answers; I feel the same way, but I am not willing to make a scene of it. The queue is moving rather too slowly, I’ve moved an inch in what feels like an hour, and I cannot see where the queue leads. I don’t remember how I got here, I only remember that I was the last one in the queue when I arrived, but now I look back and I cannot see the tail. That, like the nakedness, does not bother me as much as not knowing where I am headed. Another panic breaks behind me, there’s always that one.

There’s a thin pale woman in front of me, hip and collar bones surging their way through her skin, the secrets covered by flesh coming to light without an x-ray. I can count her ribs and the joints along her spine, it makes me cringe. She looks behind, past me, to the new sound of panic a few paces from me. She has dark circles under her eyes and her lips are dry and cracked. Do I look anything like her? My hand goes voluntarily to my lips, I trace a finger on my lower lip, it’s dry. Her eyes fall on me, she caught me staring at her. I look away.  She slowly turns her whole body so she is standing facing me, I fear she may break. There is no social distancing whatsoever, we are almost touching on the queue. I lick my lower lip and look at her, she does not look away, she takes a deep breath running her eyes up and down on me in panic. Oh God, I do look like her. I think I scare her as much as she scares me, she looks down at her own body, realizing for the first time that she looks like a dead corps standing. The sound of panic grows louder behind me and then a nudge on my shoulder.

“Where am I, please tell me, where are we going?”

We both look at her, a deep scar runs across her face and little ones like a thousand glass cuts all over her body, I swallow hard, and I feel like I am going to puke. I turn to look at the one behind me, there is a man, and he is missing a hand and his face has dry blood that dripped from his head, and his lips are cracked and bloody. I feel panic rising in my throat, but I don’t want to be one of them.  When we don’t answer, she moves on like a zombie, weak and crooked to nudge the one in front. My focus is back on the one in front of me, she is blinking away tears, her lips quivering in a struggle to form words.

“Where. Are. We?” she finally asks, the three words broken and labored.

“I don’t know,” I say.

It’s a little hard to speak but not as hard as it seems for her. I am fine. But am I?

“Do you know how you got here?” she whispers, breathing the words like she’d been running.

“No, do you?”

“No.”

“Are you sick?”

“I don’t feel sick, are you sick?”

“Do I look sick?”

She smiles a crooked smile that shows a few of her brown teeth.

“You look dead.”

Before I can respond, she turns away, and the queue shifts. I touch my face, I feel everything. I pinch myself; I feel it. I am not dead. Wait, why am I checking? I decide to forget about her, I turn my whole body, so I am facing away from the queue. There is nothing, just an open grey land of nothing. The perfect definition of a grey area, it’s like being in a desert with grey sand, below a sky of grey clouds before a storm. The queue shifts once after thirty minutes, I know because I started counting the seconds from the last time it shifted.  There is nothing to run away to and who is to know if running away would be a good idea? Nobody has attempted it, perhaps because there is nothing to run away to. I keep counting as we move slowly to the unknown until I see a grey door. It’s a door but there is no building visible. There are at least ten people in front of me. The door opens and lets the next one in line in, and then closes. There is no sign of whoever is opening and closing it, it is as if it opens and closes itself. I look back, the queue is endless. It moves and it feels as if it is suddenly moving faster… or am I afraid of what’s behind the door? The woman in front of me turns to look at me before she steps into the door, there is horror in her eyes, a kind of fear that is contagious. She steps in and like a haunted house, the door shuts her in. I am panting, I am next, and nobody seems to come out of there. Everyone who has gone in has not come out. I jump startled when it opens for me, I cannot see anything on the inside, it is like I am about to walk into a grey fog, but I don’t think there is any way of turning back. There is nothing. Slowly I push myself forward and one step in, I feel a magnetic pull sucking me into the unknown. I am in a booth, the size of a telephone booth. There is a screen above my eyes and a phone hung on the wall below the screen. On it is written ‘choose a language’ and there is a lineup of too many languages, some I have never heard of before. I pick English tucked in somewhere in the middle. I am not even English but choosing English as a South African to find a middle ground in conversations with strangers has grown on me like all the societal norms.

‘Pick up the phone.’

The screen types on its own. I do as I am told and out of habit, automatically place the phone on my ear.

“Hello, Nia.”

It’s a male voice that sounds programmed. I realize now that it could have easily communicated in whatever language of my choosing.

“Hello.” My voice sounds clipped.

“I am sure you are wondering why you are here; I am going to explain and then you will proceed to the next stage. You are here because you did not finish your assignment and depending on the score on your next test, you will either be given a chance to go back and finish it or pass it to the one born the day you got here. Do you understand?”

“What assignment?”

I am hauled down with a speed that makes my head spin and when it stops, the booth opens, almost spitting me out into green grass. Something familiar for a change but it is empty save for a desk, a black book, and pens, lots of pens, and a chair. I walk towards it and sit down. I leaf through the pages and they are blank, I look at the pens and they seem inkless. I pick up one and test it at the corner of a page in the black book and it does not write, it just makes messy invisible lines. I am trying to figure out what this means, it is all starting to feel like a dream. Am I dreaming? I pinch myself and it hurts. How am I awake? Where am I? I lean back on the chair, waiting for…I have no idea what I am waiting for. It is quiet, I am changing positions, and walking around but I always end up back on the chair. No wonder nobody ever came out. I open the book again, pick up one of the inkless pens, and begin brainstorming this place.

Blank book

Inkless pens

Unfinished assignment

Either be given a chance to finish your assignment or pass it to the one born the day you got here.

How do all these connect?

I am thinking. I am beginning to think the only way out of here is for me to figure this out. It’s been hours and nobody has come to save me. I read the invisible words over and over, trying to figure out my assignment. “Blank book, why is it blank?”  I am talking out loud to myself like a crazy person. Shocker. “Inkless pens, who used all the ink?” Nothing. “Unfinished assignment, what’s the assignment?” Blank. “Second chance? Pass it to who? What am I missing?” My mind is like a wall, a high solid wall. I cannot think. I dump the pen and pace around the green field. I cannot see anything beyond it, and I get the feeling that walking away from this table would be a waste of time if I have any time. I sit back down and pick up another inkless pen. I write my name down, I am thinking if I remind myself of who I am, perhaps I can figure out my assignment. ‘Who are you?’ this is a subheading under my name.

‘You are a mother’ wait, where are my children? I feel like I had forgotten everything a minute ago, it’s as if allowing myself to remember is bringing it all back ‘you are an accountant’ huh! ‘You love to write.’ I pause, this pen just decided to ink the word write. Inkless pens do that sometimes, I shrug it off, but my mind is pulled towards the direction of the things I love to write.

‘I write stories.’ The pen just inked the word write again and so I write the word ‘write’ ten times and all ten of them are inked with ten different inkless pens, five different colors, black, blue, red, green, and silver. I am trying not to make this a big deal. It means nothing. My eyes fall back on my inkless brainstorm. Blank book, inkless pens, unfinished assignment, second chance, pass to one born when you got here. Wait, am I dead? What is this place? I look at the inked word and it sounds like a demand in my head, it sounds like I am being told to write.

“How do I write with inkless pens?” I sound exasperated. I am alone for God’s sake, but there must be someone watching. I look up at the cloudless, starless sky, there is nothing. No roof, nothing. Just grey. There are a lot of grey areas around here.

I lean back and exhale. My eyes fall on the inked word, and my mind falls back to when I started writing. How come I am not a professional writer? Somehow, I am pulled into the day when someone, now faceless told me the only way to succeed was to get an office job and work for someone else and I realize they are faceless because it was written in the air, it was and still may be a societal norm that has traded art and talent for the so-called security. It is one of those things you grow into like religion. I always wanted to be a writer but growing up in rural environments, you just didn’t find ART in the cards for success. No support for creatives, it’s not deemed work enough. I do it for fun and I never show anybody. Write. It’s inked.

“Is writing my assignment?” I ask no one out loud.

The pen on the book smudges the page with black ink, I rummage through all the pens and they all suddenly have ink. Write. I am back at the first booth with a screen and a phone. I did not feel myself being transported here, it’s like I blinked and appeared here. It makes me think about how I got here in the first place, I don’t remember how it happened and I don’t seem to have lost my memory, it’s like I just appeared in the queue. I take the phone and place it on my ear.

“Hello, Nia. Welcome back. It took you five days to find your assignment. Congratulations. You have been granted a second chance if you will have it. You can ask me anything before you go. Do you have any question?”

 I have questions.

“Am I dead?”

“Technically, yes”

“Technically?”

“You have been granted a second chance.”

“Where am I?”

“In between life and death.”

“How did I get here?”

“Car accident.”

Oh my God. “Anybody dead?”

“You were alone.”

 “How come the pens were inkless?”

“That is how you’ve lived your past life, Nia.”

“What am I supposed to write?”

“You will know, but only if you give yourself to purpose.”

“How long have I been dead?”

“Earth time, three minutes. You made good time by the way; they are still trying to bring you back. Go back.”

“Wait, one more thing…what is it about the assignment, does everybody have one?”

“Yes, everyone born on earth is born with a gift, enclosed in it is the assignment, the purpose to which you are born. Most of you don’t get close to starting, most don’t even know. You were lucky, Nia, to have known. Most don’t pass the test, their time expires while they try to figure out the puzzle. You have to go now. Goodbye.”

“She’s back, we got her back!” shouts a male voice.

I can’t open my eyes, but I can feel my heart beating and I hear muffled voices and the universal hospital smell hits my nostrils. There is laughter and applause. Are they applauding me?

End