Jackson Lise was hit head-on by a semi-truck on a February night in Salt Lake City. The frost on his windshield hadn't quite yet thawed completely, and in a haste not to be late to work he had shrugged off wiping it away and instead had gunned it for McDonald's. After weeks of trying to get back into the work cycle he had given up trying to get a decent job and had went to the lowest of the low. The road to the restaurant had been especially slick that morning due to the light snowstorm the previous night. Combined with that and the large rectangle of frost the molded to the left side of the rearview, he managed to drive over a particularly icy section of the road at a turn, and his sedan kissed the oncoming eighteen wheeler with full force. Jackson was killed instantly
***********************
He stood in the middle of a road, surrounded by a heavy grey mist. The road was unmarked gravel, the mist musty, smelling of rubber smoke.
He didn't have any idea how he had gotten here, or even who he was, but that didn't frighten him. The questions of why he was here, who he was, what the time was, all of these things were veiled by a heavy feeling of curiosity mixed with a humble excitement.
Breathing in deeply, he set his eyes on the road in front of him. It seemed to stretch on and on, which made him only more and more curious. Silence was the only noise, and it was loud in and of itself.
"I should probably be scared as hell right now," he said, before laughing at his own nonchalant breaking of the silence.
Looking down, he saw that he was wearing grey cargo pants and a black button up shirt. These were clothes he had died in.
This thought him like a bullet, rocking his head so hard,  he almost fell onto the pavement. He was dead, he was sure of it. The certainty itself lodged into his consciousness, as if the bullet carrying the thought had been physical. Shuddering, his breath grew more and more rapid, and his knees began to shake.
"Hello!?" He shouted into the mist, more out of fear than hope of any response. A part of him was scared for what, if any, response he would get. There was no reply.
Gravity seemed to pull at him as he lifted his left leg up. It also seemed to push him back down once he had reached the apex of the step. To him it seemed like the only thing that started his walk down the road was gravity. His legs were still shaking terribly, but he managed to start walking.
Steps echoed across the mist as he walked the road. He saw that the mist stood still until he made contact with it. When he did, it swirled around his clothing before resuming its original shape and standing still again. He couldn't help but let his jaw drop when he first saw this, and he started to played with the mist, making shapes in the air and watching them from back into their original shape. It was a nice distraction for a little while.
A few more steps down the road he saw a shape on the horizon. A feeling of anxiety welled in his chest and throat, but he kept walking. He'd be damned if he didn't know whether or not the shape would be good or bad, but at least it was something to walk to.
"Hello?" he shouted towards the shape. No answer. He expected that much.
Silence enveloped him again as he walked towards the shape. What could it be? The first thought that came to him was an asylum. Hey, if you're going to die, why wouldn't the loony bin be the first place to go?
For a few minutes he wondered why that was the first train of thought he had had when he had thought about the shape.
Jackson's mind began to connect other imaginary dots as he got one step closer and closer to the shape. What if it wasn't a building but some sort of mythical hell-monster? Maybe it was a rough patch of mist. Maybe the Pearly Gates themselves. Maybe a bird, or a plane. Maybe a ch-
Doctor's office. It was a doctor's office.
His eyes squinted in surprise as he focused on the medical sign painted clearly above the glass double doors. The building was white and red painted cement. The words "Please come in" were in small purple neon letters above the doors.
The building didn't have a parking lot. It just stood awkwardly next to the road, as if God himself had just picked it up and thrown the building next to a random road in the middle of nowhere. That would explain a lot, Jackson thought.
"Alright guys stay with me here,” God says, "how about instead of heaven and hell when someone dies, we just plop them in the middle of a misty nowhere and f*** with them for all of eternity? In fact, let's only do it with this one person, all the rest can have a fun vacation in heaven." The heavenly council laughs before slamming a random, empty hospital onto a random desert road, making the entire world grey, and sprinkling mist everywhere. Everyone laughs.
"Funny," Jackson murmured to himself as he stopped on the road and turned towards the hospital.
Walking towards the neon "please come in" sign, his heart began to beat faster and faster, and his breathing became more and more rapid. He didn't notice any of this. All he could focus on was the neon welcome above the door and wonder what exactly it welcomed. People? Places? Things? Conjugations? Him and only him?
Smiling at the tidbit of humor inside of his own head, he walked the few gravely steps up to the double glass doors that led inside and looked in. The place was grey, reflective, and quite empty. Grey chairs were set in rows, their armrests a sharp chrome. The floor was in tiles, each tile either white or grey. The walls were not grey, thank God, but rather a creamy beige. Other than that, everything was pretty grey. So much grey.
Reaching his hand out to grab the handle, a knot began to form in his stomach. Many worst case scenarios began to creep into his head. So far the situation hadn't exactly been the most clear of scenarios, but it wasn't exactly a bad one. Did he really want to find out how bad it could turn out to be? He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
The first word that came to his mind was sterile. The place smelled and looked very sterile to say the least. There was that certain smell of nothing that every modern american doctor's office has, though there was the smallest hint of dust cleaner in the air.
To the left of him there was a reception desk, though no one was behind it. Beyond the desk a row of doors began, each a plain tan wooden color. To the right of him, stretching all the way to the end of the room, were rows upon rows of small, black chairs. None occupied. The whole scene was lit by dull fluorescent light panels on the ceiling.
"Hello?" Jackson yelled.
"One second, please," a loud, robotic voice answered from the reception desk to Jackson's immediate left, causing his whole body to jolt with surprise. He jerked his hand towards the handle of the door, missed, and smacked the glass against it. The sound of his hand slapping the door resounded across the lobby.
"Please tell me that you didn't slip and fall," the robotic voice spoke from behind the door in the reception room. It was noticeably more quiet, and for that Jackson was grateful. Though he still stood frozen with his palm on the door, purely out of shock.
A large wheelchair rolled around the door into the reception area, in which a small, Hispanic man sat. His entire body was still. He looked at Jackson and made a few keystrokes on the small computer attached to his wheelchair, looked at Jackson again, and typed a few more. He didn't speak, instead his slow, robotic voice sounded for him.
"Glad to see you didn't kill yourself in the three seconds it took for me to roll my way in here."
Jackson couldn't help but smile a little. The man in the chair made a few more keystrokes.
"I assume you want to know where you are and what's going on?"
Jackson slipped his hand away from the window and put it awkwardly at his side before picking it back up and rubbing his head while he spoke to the crippled man.
"Uh, yeah, that'd be great."
"Alright," the man's robotic voice sounded out, "give me one second and I'll be right out."
A few seconds later the man rolled his chair through the nearest door to the lobby. Jackson saw that he was a bit portly, with a handlebar moustache and a bald head. He wasn't unpleasant to look at though, he had laugh lines across his face and had the subtle appearance of a man who knew his fair share.
The man drove his chair a few feet in front of Jackson and made a few keystrokes.
"Now, let's get this out of the way, you're dead."
If it was anything Jackson expected the old man to start out with, it wasn't that, and he struggled to find a way to react to it. On one hand he wanted to chuckle at the bluntness of the words this man's robotic voice spoke to him, though a much bigger portion of his mind was filled with something along the lines of sorrow and fear. He believed it, wholeheartedly in fact due to the staggering amount of evidence against any other train of thought, but he was also starting to comprehend that belief and all of the doors it opened. What would become of him, what his loved ones would think, and the most staggering of all, the fact that he had a life to live. He had a job, a girlfriend, dreams and ambitions, all cut off at a split second. There are either too many or too little words to describe the despair of a passed soul, but if Jackson could have pinned it at that exact moment, it would have been somewhat close to "Sorrow, despair, and bittersweet longing."
Opening his mouth to try and reply to the man in the chair, he found his jaws couldn't quite work. It took him a second to notice the tears streaming down his face as well. He cupped his hands along his cheeks, bent over, and let the tears fall. The man in the chair sat quietly and waited.
"Don't worry," the man’s computer said, "soon enough this whole business will be behind you one way or the other."
"What do you mean?" Jackson stammered as he lifted his face from his hands. He could still feel the tears on his face and hands, though he was far past caring.
"I mean," the man's eyes rolled warily to Jackson's, "soon enough you're going to be part of another life altogether. Now, do you want me to explain a bit more, or would you rather have a minute before the other guests arrive?"
"Well," Jackson took a deep breath, "can you give me a shorthand version to mull over?"
"Yes." The man paused to type, "people rarely opt for that." He paused again to type in a long string of characters. Jackson took a long look at the beige doctor's office that he was in. With feeling more than thought, he wondered what was going to happen. Within a few seconds the robotic voice sounded from the speaker on the computer.
"First of all, my name is Gustavo. Welcome to the afterlife. Now, let’s get this out of the way, reincarnation is indeed how much of this works, though for what or pertaining to which God or entity, I have no clue."
Gustavo rolled his chair toward the entrance and looked outside while he typed slowly on his computer. The double glass doors of the doctor's office showed only the gravel outside, and the grey mist that covered it.
"Now, we are not anywhere near Earth. I'm not even entirely sure that we are in our own dimension. The only thing I am sure of is that we are in the space of time between twelve 'o clock p.m and twelve 'o five p.m. All of the souls that have passed between that time period will automatically come to a place like this. They are then given seventy two hours to decide their fates in the next life." Gus moved his hand ever so slightly on the computer. His chair turned to face Jackson, whose face was pale. "Sound simple enough?"
Jackson had already zoned out at the last sentence. He sat and stared at the clock on the wall straight ahead of him. It was chocolate brown and simple, with stock black numbers against a white background. The long hand was on the third marking from twelve, the short hand on the twelve itself. Twelve 'o four.
That's all Jackson could focus on before he passed out and fell onto the floor.
Gustave looked at him for a few seconds before typing into his computer.
"God dammit." The robotic voice rang out across the lobby.
_______________________________________________

Thousands of years of life passed through Jackson's mind while he was unconscious. As with many dreams that occur to anyone, by the time you have woken up, you have forgotten these dreams. Only clips of them remain, precious seconds of moments that have no connection. The rest of the dreams are forgotten, shelved into sections of the brain one can never hope to access.
As his eyes fluttered open, he saw an image of a beach riddled with bodies. Large bunkers stood on hills in the distance, each sparkling with gunfire aimed at him and his comrades. Someone spoke to him as the image made it's way to his attention, and he lost his focus on it. In less than a split second the image was lost, and he would never see it again.
"Mr. Lise," A female voice, "I need you to wake up."
He turned his head and saw a woman sitting on a chair. She was stocky, with curled red hair and a tan, oval face. She wore a black sweater and sweats. He abstractly thought if this girl happened to do much sweating.
"Awake yet, Lise?" She asked.
"I guess so," he said, turning his head to the ceiling, "mind if I ask where I am and what I'm doing here?"
"Not at all. Do you know that you're dead?"
Jackson focused on a random etching in the ceiling, and stared at it for a few seconds.
"Yes."
The girl's eyebrows knitted as she absently shuffled a few papers that she had in her lap.
"How much did Gus tell you about what happens?"
Jackson struggled to remember. For some reason the random etching in the ceiling was taunting him. Just looking at this ceiling and getting lost in his own thought seemed much easier than anything he was going to have to do in this place
"Something about being dead in a certain minute time period, being sent here, which isn't even a real place, more like a God's simplified version of the afterlife process," he took a deep breath and hoped that he got it right from memory, "Within that time, we have to pick the outcome of our next lives."
"Sounds about right," the woman said, swiveling her chair closer to Jackson's bed. He managed to get a better grasp on the room he was in while she did. It happened to be just as beige, tan, and lime colored as the lobby. There was no medical equipment on the walls, no strand of paper covering the bed that he was on, or even magazines to read that no one ever read. His mind went back to the etching of the ceiling, not wanting to think about any of the millions of reasons why the equipment was gone.
"You know," the woman said while she stopped next to his cot, "I don't think I have ever seen someone pass out while I've worked here."
"Well," Jackson turned to look at her, "I hope that's not a death sentence."
"... I don't understand if that's supposed to be dark pun or not."
"Me neither."
The woman laughed, and Jackson decided to take one long look at the woman's face. She was slim, but looked like she had a decent amount of meat on her bones, as everyone and their mother had used to say. It gave her a nice set of curves, including nice hips and thighs. She wore a line of concern like a person wears clothing, but it wasn't too off putting. He liked it. He also decided with ease that he had more important things to do than get a crush on a nurse that for all he knew he had created inside of his own head.
"What's your name?" He asked her, leaning against his pillow. He didn't feel particularly tired, but the pillow was comfortable.
"Lana." She reached out her hand firmly, and they shook. Jackson liked the simple way this relationship was going.
"Well Lana, what do you have for me? Anything, uh, concerning me and my..."
In truth he hadn't have wanted to bring the whole death thing up. But what would that do?
He realized with a little start that he wholeheartedly believed that he was dead and in the afterlife. The realization made him want to go back to sleep and never wake up, although lord knew what would happen at that point. He had come to this realization in the same way that most souls do in this afterlife, in a way that is similar to any person coming to realize an outlandish truth. They die, they realize they are dead, due to the clothes that they wear, and begin to walk. Sooner or later, they reach the Doctor's Office. After being presented with so much incoherent information, they are provided a reason that makes sense. In less than two hours, all of the patients believe it. If presented with shock, trauma, and confusion in large quantities, the human mind will search unconsciously for something to believe. Once someones hears a good enough reason, they almost automatically believe it.
"Well," Lana looked up from her clipboard, "there's not really much to tell. At this point there's not much to do besides mingle for a bit and decide what kind of life you might like when it comes time to move on."
There it was.
"Actually, can you please enlighten me on what exactly happens here?" He said.
"Oh, did Gus not tell you?"
"He tried."
"Oh yeah," Lana scooted her chair to the doctor's desk and put her clipboard down. She scooted back to Jackson and began to explain. Jackson thought the whole thing was more like an actual doctor's visit than most would care to admit.
"Alright," Lana began, "So, you live and you die. Sound simple enough?"
Jackson nodded, fighting the urge to focus on the mark in the ceiling.
"Well, life and death operate on a cycle. Once someone dies, there souls come to this plain of existence to be sent right back to human life in the form of rebirth. In this plain of existence, souls are given the chance to select some attributes and ways for their lives to play out. Then they are sent to life, and after that life they die again, and the cycle begins again. Starting to get it?"
He was, but in the way that a million more questions popped up to the one being answered. Nodding, he tried to focus more on what she was saying. She must have seen the furrow in his brow and the look of bewilderment on his face, as she started to laugh.
"Alright, alright, before you assault me with questions, let me get a few things out of the way. One, we don't know what happens to other forms of life. All we know is that we are here. Two, souls are transported here as their prime form in life, as determined subconsciously by the-"
"I swear to God if you explain any more my goddamn head is going to explode." Jackson buried his face in his pillow.
"Alright," Lana giggled, "point is, there are a lot of cogs and workings here in this world that we can and cannot explain. Long story short, you can either see your life play out before your eyes, or you can stay here and work with us to transport souls. And before you say you would rather stay here, there's something you have to hear."
She sighed and scooted her chair over to the doctor's desk, absently pulling at her sweat laces. Jackson patiently waited and watched while she mulled a few papers around and looked back toward him, crossing her legs and playing with her hair. Anyone familiar with body language could tell you that she was communicating the "nervous fiddling" quite strongly.
"Sorry, I uh, it's not too big of a deal, actually, I don't know why I'm making such a big deal out of it."
"Me neither," Jackson said, resting his head on his pillow. Lana laughed and looked at the floor.
"Before long, you start to lose your memory in this place." She brought her head up to meet Jackson's line of sight. "I don't remember who I was before this. All I know about me is my name. I mean, sure, they let you keep your personality, though I don't know how much, or even how. I just know that`s how the cookie crumbles. Sound like the way for you?"
Jackson thought for a few seconds. The room around him started to feel smaller and smaller, the beige walls creeping in on him, and the silence was total except for his own breathing.
"I don't know." He said.
"Well," Lana sighed, "I don't blame you on that one. Don't worry, you still have two days to think about it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check on the other patients. You can come out to the lobby anytime you want." She got up, opened the door, and looked at him for a moment. "About your passing out, I think we'll just have to shuffle that under the large folder of 's*** that we don't know.'" She smiled, and he smiled back before she turned and walked out the door.
Jackson turned his head upwards and lay flat on his bed in the beige doctor's office of the afterlife. He focuses on the mark in the ceiling and began to think about life, the universe, and everything. Every now and then he would try to conjure up images, sounds, even tastes from his previous life, and every time he was met with a static feeling in his stomach, the feeling one gets when one has something to say, or an answer to a question, but immediately forget it. There's a frustrating feeling in both your mind and your stomach, and you struggle to remember, trying to get remember just enough to get all of it back. Jackson tried again and again, but never got any closer to his memory. After his fifth try, a few tears he hadn't known were coming went down his cheek. He wiped them away, got up, and walked out of the doctor's office.
____________________________________________________________________

Lana finished up her game of solitaire on the computer screen in the receptionist's room. A complete failure. The computer never failed to beat her, even after all these years -if you could call them years- of trying. Initially she had been creeped out at the thought of playing on a computer that had no real power against a computer that may or may not really be there. Many existential crisis', tears, and patients later, she had followed Gus's train of thought and just put it behind her.
"It's to help us stay sane through this," Gus had said one day, through the robotic voice of his arm chair, "though I honestly don't think that's possible, no matter how stressed we get."
Lana, who had recently decided to stay and work at the hospital, pondered this as she sipped her coffee, "I honestly don't know if that freaks me out or not."
"It doesn't give me any worry," Gus said, "I don't think we could handle people actually going crazy in here."
She thought about this as she looked at Gus and Jackson walking down the hallway towards the lobby. No one else had come, which was not that rare. Most patients went into this doctor's office solo.
"-so when do I have to have the paperwork in by?" Jackson was finishing.
"Tomorrow at noon." Gus's machine rang.
"Kind of a lot of paperwork, isn't it?"
"Yes and no."
"Kind of a lot of that, too."
"Yes."
Lana laughed and put her laptop to sleep. There was no real reason to, seeing as how it never ran out of power, but hey, old habits died hard. Closing it, she got up from her chair and made her away around the corner to the lobby. She assumed that Gus was giving Jackson the wrap-up on the paperwork he had to turn in. Oh God, the paperwork. Out of all the things in this afterlife, it was the paperwork that Lana found hard to believe.
She rounded the corner and walked to where Gus and Jackson were sitting down in the corner of the lobby. Well, Gus was already sitting down, but still.
Stifling a chuckle, she sat down next to Gus and opened her laptop back up. The train of thought with "Why does nothing lose power after life" plastered to it's side went through her mind.
"Hey Lana," Jackson smiled at her before his gaze shifted to the empty beige doctor's office lobby. "Didn't you say that there were going to be other patients in that office?"
"I lied," she said as she pulled out her laptop and pressed the on button, "sorry about that, but we were traversing on the sad end of things and I didn't want to talk about it." She looked up at him and gave him a small smile to hopefully convey a light tone.
He took a moment to look at her, judging what she said and his own reaction to it.
"Understandable," he said before turning his head to Gus, "what are we doing here, exactly?"
"Talking about you're next life. Lana, are you ready with the questions?"
She scrolled through a few upcoming patient files and clicked on Jackson's.
"Ready to go."
"Good." Gus turned his chair to face Jackson directly, putting his back to hers. Lana gave him a wink, trying to put up a sign of good luck and hoping it wasn't taken as something else. It was relief when Jackson nodded and gave her a small smile.
"Alright Jackson, how are you feeling?" Gus said. Lana took note of the time it took him to process the question, which was about two and a half seconds. Pretty standard for that kind of question.
"I'm feeling alright," he said, "but my mind won't stop buzzing about all this. I mean, I'm calm, but, other than that," he looked at Gus, "not much. And the memory thing, it..." Jackson put his face into his hands, "it's just getting really weird."
Gus made eye contact with Jackson and typed into his computer while Lana did the same.
"A typical reaction for newcomers, don't worry, it's a lot to wrap your head around. Now, I'm going to ask you a series of questions. None of them are very direct, and in all honesty I don't know what makes the difference in the outcome, but if you would be so kind as to answer them honestly and moderately quickly, we'll get done soon enough. Then we'll sign your papers and you'll be on your way."
Jackson chuckled. "I don't know how I feel about that, but alright."
Lana smiled and got ready to put down Jackson's answers. She remembered Gus asking her the same questions when she had first come through
"Alright, let us get started." Gus said. Immediately the atmosphere in the room changed, from a relaxed state of confusion to that of a inter-dimensional heavenly interrogation. To Lana, it wasn't so much of a shift, but she knew that for Jackson it was. What he said right now would affect him for the rest of his next life, for better or worse. Jackson looked to be a bit relaxed, but she could tell that like her, his mind must be going a thousand miles per hour.
"What do you remember of the sky?" Gus asked. Surprise flashed in Jackson's eyes, but he didn't say anything. Lana made a note of that. Most other patients usually said something to a comedic effect asking what in the hell Gus was talking about.
"It was blue, and shifted with clouds and rain occasionally, though I remember the horizon was always tinged with green."
Lana wrote in what he had said for the first question, Gus nodded. He didn't have to look at his computer for the questions, he had been here so long he had them memorized.
"What do you look like in your own eyes?" Asked Gus.
"I'm scrawny, not too short, not too tall. I have the occasional blemish. I, uh, also have some fat that I always worry about."
"Alright, next question," Gus said, "Let's say you have a wife. Let's say that one day you catch her cheating with a man. It's nothing sexual mind you, but it's definitely something. What is your reaction?"
"Sit her down, talk to her, try to figure something out, improve our relationship. If that doesn't work, then I guess that'd be the end." He looked down at the floor and blew air out of his mouth. "Are these what all of the questions are going to be like?"
Sadly no, she thought, looking at Jackson. She knew that all of this would be over soon for him. The previous questions were to establish what his life had been like before, to get an idea of who he was and where he was at. Now for the questions that would send him on his way, or keep him here, to work with her and Gus. The latter never did come to fruition, she was the last one that had stayed. She and Gus both looked at Jackson, wondering if he was going to stay, go, or, and this was the big one, if he was going to live a good life. Lot's of people, in the grand scale of things, never did.
"What do you want out of a future life?" Gus typed into his machine. The electronic voice rang across the lobby, and Jackson thought.
______________________________________________________________________

Jackson had been a writer. He had three kids to a wife he had known since high school. He rarely drank, kept in good contacts with his old friends, and generally enjoyed life. That was part of the reason why he hated it.
All through his life Jackson had had a hatred for his good luck, good grades, good looks, good money, good family, good everything. Everything had been good for him practically from the get go. Enjoying his life piece by piece, he had come to despise it more and more. People all around him had major problems, major trials and tribulations to fit any movie or book, but his had been by the numbers. Never really interesting, just interesting enough.
Creative outlets had never helped. Everything was good, really good, but no one had really understood it. Sure, they had understood the symbolism, the characters, even his actual message behind it, but that's all they really did. They understood, never experienced, never thought, just understood and went on with their lives. There was no blame for them, only more disgust to his own standard, boring upbringing.
This was his train of thought has he drove his truck high down the highway. He laughed as his hands lurched over the steering wheel. The rest was white, then black, then a highway. A very grey highway, covered in mist.
______________________________________________________________________

These memories left Jackson forever as he opened his mouth to answer Gus’s question. They had been quieted before, reduced to nothing but vague. abbreviated paragraphs from a novel on a shelf.
Now they were gone. Nothing remained of Jackson Lise. He still had his personality, his looks, but a large piece of him was gone forever.
"I want to stay here," he answered.
There was only silence as Lana and Gus gazed at Jackson. If he had answered anything else, he would have been gone as soon as he said it.
Jackson simply looked at them and said, "Well, when do we get started?"
Gus congratulated him while Lana looked at the ground, trying to fight back tears. To this "day," she still didn't know if staying was worth it.
_____________________________________________________________________

Rebecca walked through the double doors of the clinic. It had been the only building in the downtown area to have been lit and functioning. She had wandered the city for hours looking for anyone and anything, and had seen nothing until this office. She had been scared at first, but the silence and the mist surrounding her had an unnatural calming effect.
The room was beige, the chairs were black and numerous, and the place smelled like a not-so-sterile bottle of hand sanitizer. It was warmer in here, and she found that-
"Hello," a man said from directly behind her. Rebecca immediately fainted.
Jackson walked through the door next to the receptionist's office and ran to Rebecca.
"Son of a b****," he said, "Lana, Gus, we have a fainter here."