Alice escorted us into an office. A proud, silky, mahogany desk dominated the space in the cube-shaped room. A single lamp was the only light source in the space. There were no windows. Perhaps that’s why the walls were white: to create the illusion of light when natural light was absent.

The little girl pulled out the leather swivel chair from behind the desk and hopped up into it. We followed suit, and sat in the two vacant chairs opposite her. The shadows hollowed out her childish face.

“You said you were answering questions about Wonderland, not giving us a job interview.” Victor stated bluntly. He slumped back into his chair, crossing one leg over the other, resting his ankle on the opposite thigh so that a little triangular gap remained between his legs. I could hardly see him amongst the lack of light, but the edges of his silhouette were illuminated – the tensed jaw line, the peak of a delicate, upturned nose, strands of light brown hair that was millimeters short of spearing the gleam of unfazed eyes.

Alice shuffled in her chair then pulled herself back in towards the desk by clutching onto the edge of it. Her feet didn’t touch the brownish wad of carpet on the floor. She was a kid playing at her daddy’s office.

“I did. You get three questions each, go one at a time. I’m not giving you long. I have a baseball bat to the head and a motorbike fumble to induct. Peter…you first.”

She grabbed the neck of the lamp and twisted the head towards me. The light pierced my eyes and my first reaction was to cover them with my arm. After a few moments of me muttering ‘Jesus’ amidst variations of the word ‘ugh’, she angled the lamp back to its original position. I didn’t have to look at Victor to know that he was grinning.

“Well, I mean, what tasks are we required to complete to get us out of here?”

Every time I blinked I could still see the ‘U’ shape from the centre of the lamp.

“It doesn’t work that way. You don’t complete a ladder of steps and then just jump off the top rung and pin-drop into a normal life. You are pending. You get what we give you, and do what we tell you. We don’t control your body, we entertain and help your mind.”

“But wha…”

“Victor?” She cut me off.

He leaned forward, confidently placing both elbows on the desk and folding his arms.

“Can you do a handstand?”

Why would he waste this valuable time?

She twisted the lamp towards herself, blanketing Victor and I in the murkiness. “I can do anything I want.” She replied, staring him down.

She then reached into the top drawer of the desk, pulled out a copy of ‘Gravity’s Rainbow”, opened it to roughly half way and started reading. She gave a bored hand gesture that told me to continue.

“What kind of things will you give us?”

She turned the page and didn’t remove her attention from the book.

“You will re-experience, hence deal with, your significant regrets and your proudest moments to prepare you for your new life…wherever it may be.”

“But how?”

“Learn to count, Peter. Go on, Victor.”

“Why does the postal service suck so bad? Do they purposely recruit idiots?”

I hit his arm. “Why are you doing this man?” I squeezed out through gritted teeth.

He shrugged. “Nothing better to do. Is finding out info really gonna get us out of here any quicker? I think not…man. Try hitting me again.” He warned, but it sounded fake – there was no hostility in his voice, as he peeled my hand from his arm and dropped it like a dirty food wrapper.

“Boys! One more question each. Victor, don’t use the postal service if it annoys you…it’s a dying source of communication. Now Peter, last question.”

“What kind of things will you tell us to do?”

She flipped another page.

“You will have to help out members of the living.”

“Huh?”

“What is it with you? Can you not grasp the concept of asking One. Question. Each? Victor, your final one.”

He rested his head in the palm of his right hand. His hand clutched and released tufts of his straight hair. When he sat upright again, he looked like he’d been tightrope walking on power lines.

“Hurry up or you’ll miss out, surely you have something else pointless to ask?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. I never had much need for sarcasm or pessimism. Pessimism gets people nowhere, and you can’t cover it up by calling yourself a ‘realist’. My theory anyway. I am forever argued with. Who’d have thought that optimism was a more dislikable trait than pessimism?

We waited. My chair squeaked as I hastily tapped my foot.

Victor slammed his hands down on the table to collect attention. “Ok, I’ve got one! Where do we go if we don’t make it home?” He inquired with confident, exaggerated enthusiasm.

Alice folded the crisp corner of the page she was on and the loud ‘thwack!’ caused by her throwing the chunky novel on the desk bounced off the stark, white walls of the office in an amplified display of power.

She was a child, but she sure as hell wasn’t a cute one. Cute children have life, curiosity and naivety.

“We bring you to the dock, where you board the ship and then we have absolutely no clue where you go. You’re out of our hands as soon as you step off the pier. All we know is that the ship comes back at irregular intervals and usually only takes one or two passengers. The ship always comes back.”

I never thought that death was like a grim reaper with a bony finger pointing out of his draping sleeve or anything…I just sort of pictured that you’d close your eyes and everything would just switch off like a TV in a power outage. Then when you reopened them, you’d be in the ‘better place’, whatever that is. I was a little disappointed that it would take a boat ride to get there, but hey, sea-sickness is worth it to be able to have words with the big guy.

There was no way I was getting on that boat yet. Absolutely no way.

Alice excused herself and assured us that she’d be back in a few minutes to take us to our ‘temporary home’. I didn’t like her calling it home, but it was the only thing that seemed concrete in…would we call this place? Welcome to…coma-land? Fort-coma? Sleeperville?

Mid existence.

I stood up and reached over the desk to bring the lamp closer. I spun around to return to my chair but froze when I saw Victor.

“Ugh, are you touching your eye?” I choked.

“Trying to get my contact lens out.” He replied casually. “Thanks for the light.”

“Please stop. That’s disgusting.”

“Don’t watch then.”

“I…can’t stop…morbid fascination.”

“Damn it, I can’t get it,” he growled. “Can you touch it and see if its in?”

I almost dry-wretched. The very thought of touching even my own eye caused my body to shake.

“You’re joking Victor.”

“Idiot. For some reason you can…feel me. I can’t feel me.”

“I’ll vomit.”

“You are such an infant.” I saw the whites of his eyes as he rolled them.

“It’s just eyes and all eye-related things. Eye things sicken me…eye touching…Oh God I need to sit down.”

I flopped down into the chair and focused on distracting myself from what Victor was doing. Happy thoughts: My puppy Chopper, my impending best and fairest for this year, ice cream, kids TV shows, holding her hand…

Victor screwed up his face as he put all his effort into blinking heavily.

God give me strength of stomach.

“Come here Jeannie, just look up, ok?”

I leaned over his face and slowly directed my unsteady index finger towards the offending eye. His eyes rapidly flickered in anticipation. My body stiffened with fear and repulsion.

“Hold still.” I demanded, holding his chin with my non eye-touching hand. I needed to lean in closer to him, inches away from his face, to inspect in the limited light. With my thumb under his eye and my middle finger on his eyebrow, I made it almost impossible for his eye-lids to reunite.

“You know,” he murmured in a soothing voice, “I read about this guy in the U.S that went into hospital complaining about a stuck contact lens. He said could only move it a little. They eventually figured out that he was tugging on his cornea.”

I wrenched my hand away as my stomach shot up to cork my throat shut.

“I…I need to sit down.”

Victor smiled at me and I discovered something unusual about him that I had never seen in another person before: I hadn’t heard him laugh. Sure he’d snickered a lot but he generally just smiled when amused. How does somebody lose the ability to laugh at something in a non-bitter manner?

“Look, just tell me what colour my eyes are then.”

“I’d like to avoid looking into dude’s eyes.”

“Don’t look into them, look at them, moron. What colour are they?”

The only definite colour I could answer with was grey, but there were bursts of blue and hazel that seemed to explode from the black, beady pupil. Storm,I thought. Storm colour.

“Good. I don’t have contacts in then.”

“Couldn’t you have just asked that from the start?”

“And miss your reaction? Please, I’m a little craftier then that when it comes to amusing myself.”

I jolted. “Wait. I was touching your eye? I was touching your real eye? Your actual eye? I need my puffer.”

As she returned to the office Alice stated. “No, you don’t, Peter”.

The image of a man and his half removed cornea was tattooed onto the back of my head.

“I…fuck…I….”

“Just take a deep breath in.”

I felt Victor’s hand on my back. A helping hand? Perhaps an apologetic gesture?

I squeezed my eyes closed…and I saw a four year old Peter, kicking his legs up to pull himself higher and higher into the air on the swing set in the backyard of his old house. He was aiming for the sky, wanting to see what was beyond this earth. Ava pushed Pete, but would have to swat away his batman cape before doing so to avoid being smacked in the face with it.

I reopened them. My breathing had returned to regularity.

“Let’s get you boys to the bar. You won’t be seeing me again until you’re needed. Come on.”

Nothing sounded better to me than a stiff drink and the end of the waiting rooms.

Big thanks to Esquirella and Sychaeus for your lovely reviews. Thank you so so so so so so so much!

xx