I woke up lying down in a field of grass. I got up off the ground, the unique scent of dirt and grass all around my body. The field stretched out as far as the eye could see with no visible end. The sun above bestowed upon me a warm embrace, like an old friend. But it hadn't been day mere moments before. It had been night, I had been driving with the windows down, slow as a snail because my tires were fully worn out. It was a cold day and the rain had chilled me to the bone, so I hastened to get to the nearest car repair shop, just a few kilometers away from the highway. But all of a sudden, there was a blinding light, a sliding yellow truck, then– but wait, how was I still alive? I remembered the 18-wheeler, remembered the car folding in on itself, remembered the sudden stab of pain, but I was still conscious, able to recollect think and feel! Furthermore, where was I? I had never been in a field, growing up in the city, so why was this the area I was placed in?
"Because you aren't in the mortal realm anymore, Sawyer."
I spun. What stood before me was a man of impressive stature (I couldn't tell you the exact height as I was never good at that sort of thing). He had a tanned complexion and awfully callused hands which currently brushed at his raven black windswept hair which looked as if it was once a messy taper, but slowly devolved into an actual mess due to it being placed in a large tornado. His hair hung down in a bang across maroon eyes and a young, freckled face. He couldn't have been more than twenty, but the confidence he exuded outstripped him by several years. I knew, without any other signs, that he had been here for years; possibly decades. His hands having made another fruitless attempt to clean up his hair, they crept down to his hotel receptionist jacket and adjusted the badge which read Afterlife Hotel by Seqour: serving the deceased for 200 millennia.
"Name's Hadrian Woolthrop, and I'll be your afterlife partner. Afterlife Hotel rules state that you must follow me," his hands gestured to an empty cart with a pulley inside, "to your HotelCart, which will take you to the hotel, free of charge of course. We wish you a pleasant stay."
Before I could even process what he had just said – or indeed, do anything beyond gape at him – he shedded his hotel jacket and threw it into the air, where it vanished. In its place was a dark blue polo shirt with the company logo on it (a snake with a head on both ends, curled into the shape of an S), a radio tattoo on his left bicep and a compass on his right.
"Right," he said, looking throughly relieved. "That's the extent of the formalities. I don't know about you, but I don't do formal stuff. Still got the uniform on for about 5 minutes so I can earn 20 seamers from Doyle!" He looked positively chuffed to bits about that last one.
Having picked my jaw up off the floor, I managed to ask, "What? Seamers? Doyle? Afterlife Hotel?"
Hadrian chuckled. "Oh yeah, I forgot to brief you. Get in the cart; I'll tell you along the way."
Desperate for answers, I hopped in the cart and Hadrian stood in the center, planting his feet and puling on the rope to make the cart move. Having seen his calloused hands earlier, I felt the utmost remorse welling my in up chest, so I got up and helped him pull. His eyes widened at my actions like he was about to protest, but at the last second, he gave up and offered me a brief thanks before saying, "I'd appreciate if you wouldn't mention this to anyone, yeah? We're supposed to do this on our own; part of the job and all that."
As we pulled, I asked Hadrian to explain himself. He stretched and sucked in a deep breath.
"So, this is the afterlife. You only get here if you behaved well enough. Other option's hell. In the afterlife, souls (that's what you are) are entitled to a thousand years of luxury. The Council of Decision-Makers provides exclusive privileges to any who give housing to souls and a healthy paycheck, so three main hotels exist. One is the one you're going to, Seqour's and the others are Hallimark's and Doughnton's. Now in my mind, Seqour's is the best, but I'm biased because I work there.
"Now, to prevent the three major hotels from getting into wars over the souls, the Council decreed that all souls would be randomly selected to join one of three hotels. So, congratulations! You've gotten the best one of the lot."
"What are Seamers?" I asked.
"Seamers," he explained, "are public lingo for seamstones. They're extracted from the Seamstone Mines and aren't that easy to come by, so they pose value. Interestingly enough, one seamstone is around one US Dollar, although I only checked in the 1990's."
"You said souls are entitled to a thousand years. What happens at the end?"
"Well, you're reborn of course. There's no other option. Some guys come and go, but you get used to it."
"Then why are you here, working?"
His face darkened at that, mirroring the sudden cloudiness outside the cart. "It's... complicated. See, souls who barely qualify to pass into the afterlife aren't deemed worthy of living a comfortable life. Therefore, they serve a sentence of 2000 years before being allowed to enjoy life. The only problem is that the Council can sometimes... mess up, but we're supposed to look up to them as the most intelligent life in the universe."
There was a definite hint of venom in his voice as he said that. "Are you saying you've been wro–"
"I never said that. Can we move on from this topic? It's getting kinda hard to breathe and I feel like talking about something else would be better for me."
"O-okay, then," I stammered, slightly taken aback by how strongly he could react if he set his mind to it. "Who's Doyle?"
A little bit of light returned to his face. "Oh, Doyle's my best pal! He's been here 5 years longer than I have. He's a bit uptight when you first meet him, but if you get to know 'im, he's a real sweetheart."
I smiled at that. "This Doyle person seems very nice. I'm looking forward to meeting him."
Hadrian chuckled at that. "Doyle'll look forward to meeting you too. He just loves doing that kind of stuff – meeting new people, I mean."
Finally, I had one last question. "Are any of the human stories true? About Death, him being a skeleton wearing a cloak and carrying a scythe–"
Hadrian was guffawing at this point, having to pull on the rope hard to keep himself from falling onto the floor. "Death's nothing like that. You'll meet him soon, actually! He makes a point of greeting his guests personally. Although his forename is in fact Death, he hates it as it was his great-grandfather's name. He would rather that you call him Mr. Seqour."
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