You wake up, or at least the closest thing to waking up. All around you is a bright, searing light. It has no source yet it burns with a raging heat, as if sentient, that you want desperately to avoid but you cannot close your eyes. You reach to cover your face but you find you have no arms, nor even a face. You can feel your body, every nerve ending shattering like glass and limbs flailing, but it is not visible or present.

The broken remains of your consciousness tumble through the emptiness in no particular direction. You can’t see anything besides the vastness of the light. You fall and fall in a void that has no up or down for both an eternity and just moments before you stop all at once and the shattered glass of your form shrinks back together. You try to shout with the pain but cannot for long moments until, at last, you reform on a featureless plane.

Now you can look around. You struggle to your feet and it feels like you’ve never stood on legs before. With wobbling knees you scan your surroundings.

There is nothing.

An infinite plane of nothing.

No color, no source of the white, almost fluorescent light.

You turn in silent desperation and you find the most odd addition to such a space: a desk.

You walk toward it, what other choice do you have?

It’s an exquisite dark wood desk idly standing in the midst of the eternal white. Behind it, reclining lazily in a large, black chair is a figure enshrouded in a dark cloak that seems to flutter on an invisible, unseen breeze. It sees you and waits patiently, as if completely confident you’ll make your way over to it.

As you approach you notice the desk is covered in loose papers, scrolls, and organizing trays. A moment later you see a chair, angled to encourage you to sit. You do, settling into a moderately comfortable leather seat. The figure leans forward and the hood of the cloak slips and the ghostly visage of a skull appears from the inky black.

“Shit!” You startle, nearly jumping from the chair.

The figure laughs, head thrown back with the hilarity of this moment.

“Oh, my dear chap,” a surprisingly crisp British voice roars, “how this moment always delights me so.”

You rub your eyes, staring with horror and confusion at the apparently English skeleton that is pounding its bone fist on the heavy desk with mirth.

“Oh, yes, very good,” it says, recovering, “now, it is on to business.”

It glances at you with eye sockets that glow a faint blue, though the source of the illumination is hidden.

“I know you have many questions, but I cannot help myself such amusement. So, you are dead.”

This fact cuts you to the core, though the concepts of life and death seemed all but lost to you now.

“Dead...?” You question. You try and remember your life, who you were, even how you died, but it all escapes you. The only thing in your mind is the lat several minutes and a heavy haze that obscures the past.

“Yes, quite dead, in fact. At 55, no less! Quite tragic, I understand.”

The cloaked skeleton pulls a folder from beneath the desk and lets it fall heavily on the desk. It’s monstrous. The amount of paper and clippings inside stretch the folder to its limit and the entire mass has to be held together by rubber bands.

“This, my boy, is your life!” It says with glee.

You stammer something, unable to form words as its bone fingers tear the bands apart and allow the entire mass of paper to unfold like a book.

“Shall we go over the basics? We have much to discuss, I’m afraid!”

You don’t have time to respond before the skeleton starts pulling individual papers and forms out of the stack.

“You are—well, were—Jonathan Davis and you died of... let me see... oh, I’m afraid I have to keep it secret, for now.”

You find yourself leaning forward. Jonathan Davis rings a bell, you think, eyes fluttering as if it’ll help you search your memory better.

“You have a wife, Haley, and looks like... 4 kids! Well,” it let out a ghostly chuckle in sharp contrast to the sharp, nearly stereotypical accent, “at least four kids that lived at your house, I should say.”

“Come again?” You ask.

“Oh, the fourth isn’t yours. How fun!” It paused to flip through some more forms. “Just as I thought. This will clear things up.”

You wait and the skeleton glances at you, the skull smiling somehow and you can feel a perverse amusement in his glance.

“Turns out you were not a good person, my boy.”

“Okay, stop!” You shout, standing and stomping your foot. The skeleton hardly moves.

“What the actual hell is happening? What is this?” you continue, turning around and beckoning to nothing in particular. “Who am I? Why can’t I remember anything?”

The skeleton extends an arm to calm you. The cloak hangs low enough off of the bone to rest on the desk.

“My friend, my friend, allow me to explain,” it says, “but, first, you must promise to listen to my little spiel before you ask any questions.”

You sit, scowling, and wait.

“Excellent! Now, as for who you are, you are Jonathan Davis! You are currently in the afterlife. I don’t really know how else to explain it because it appears you were a faithless man while alive so... the afterlife it is.”

“Now, as for me, I am a minion in the great bureaucracy of death, as it were. Yes, I know, dreadful, isn’t it? I actually don’t sound anything like this normally but you mortals do not tend to like my real voice and it certainly is smashing pretending to use this fake British accent, wouldn’t you say?”

You stare, dumbly, as the monologue continues.

“Tally ho! Eh?” The skeleton giggles again, amused by the accent. The laughter makes your skin crawl. It sounds like no laughter you’ve ever heard. It seems to snake through the air and creep into your brain against your will.

“Anyway, sorry,” the ghastly figure croaks, “so, anyway, I’m trying to go over your life and normally we’d talk restitution for past grievances or rewards for a life well lived, what have you. But, well, this is a nice segue, if I do say so myself, you were a rather unethical fellow in life so... this conversation will be more about grievances, I’m afraid to say.”

“Grievances?” You mutter. The blood has drained from your face. “But I don’t...”

“Right, right, that will come in time. You’ll slowly remember your sins and whatnot when it has the most ironic purpose. Nothing like randomly feeling eternal guilt for your sins, wouldn’t you say? It’s all very fun to watch.”

“Now!” It cuts off your next question, “let’s find out more about you? Shall we? Please, no questions at this time, you won’t remember any of it anyway!”

It begins. “So, born to a loving mother and father, but you resented your mother for being a homemaker while your dad brought in the money. Hm, no cultural awareness, I see. Anyway, you have a lovely childhood, by all accounts, but you decide in your teens that women are... mmm, this isn’t good, you know.

“You subconsciously chose to devalue women and... my my, Jonathan. This is bad, already. Resenting women for their place in a world not designed for them and then choosing to value them less than men? Very silly. But, moving on!

“You marry Haley after dating in college, though not by being a stellar boyfriend, I’ll give you that. Long story short, you have three kids and massive business success that you certainly didn’t deserve by...”

The skeleton looks up suddenly, “I have to say I don’t understand any of this. Hostile takeovers? Slave labor in the third world, I see, but all this financial stuff is just... jumbo. But! The financial boys have flagged it as highly unethical. Tut, tut, Mr. Davis, things are not looking good!”

You squirm in your seat. Was all this true? It didn’t resonate as being part of your life, at least. Maybe the skeleton was wrong? There had to be a mistake...

“So, you drive your wife to have several affairs, all of which she hid from you because you were much too busy ignoring your family, and your youngest child isn’t even yours. Looks like you were lonely, too, poor thing,” it glanced at you with a grin, “and you death must remain a mystery to you, for now.”

Silence settled over your ghastly meeting.

“Splendid! Let’s talk restitution,” it continued.

“Restitution?”

“Yes!” It cried gleefully. “You’ll be given a series of fun, and often ironic, punishments to help you see the error of your ways.”

“You see,” the skeleton continued, “we have a community here in the afterlife. It’s much like the ones you may have seen on earth. You know, houses, commerce, endless road construction that doesn’t seem to benefit anyone, the works! And it’s the perfect place to experience all manner of exciting punishments. Thankfully you weren’t bad enough to be sent to, well, a boiling lake of skin tearing and tooth breaking, but still! How exciting this will be!”

The skeleton pushed a form toward you bearing a wall of text you couldn’t read in a fancy, though foreign, script.

“This is from my boss’s boss’s boss. It says that, based on your actions and personality, that the best punishment for you is to experience many of your own sins from the perspective of someone else.”

“So I’ll be...” you start to ask.

“Correct! A woman!”

You startle at the loud proclamation.

“Exciting, isn’t it? It will be fun and slow and quite ironic, I assure you!”

You try to protest, but the skeleton has stood and come around the desk to pull you to your feet.

“Through that door, my boy,” it says, beckoning to a lone door in the void about fifty feet away, “is your new life.”

You start to walk toward it as if possessed. Your muscles ache and resist but you have no choice but to approach it.

“Oh, and I forgot to mention! Since you spent your life believing women to be airheads and silly things it has been decided that will be...”

It opened the door and shoved you inside. You fall through the threshold and tumble into a much darker void that seems to rip and tear at your flesh.

The skeleton’s voice carries in the emptiness, no longer disguised by the silly accent. It echoes with might and terror, like a thousand screaming souls aflame and suffering. One last word he spoke and it pulsed through your ears and melted into your brain:

“Bimbofied!”