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Purgatory seems like a scary place, doesn’t it?
A place of suffering, where you have to atone for all those little white sins you skipped over when you were repenting on your deathbed. Maybe you can’t even remember committing half of them. Maybe you didn’t even know they were off limits.
All the art you’ve ever seen of it probably has some type of dark lake where all those pesky sinners are floating around and moaning, with the good grace of God’s light just out of their reach. Angels fly above them playing their harps and plucking the lucky ones out of the soup who’ve done their time and figured out how exactly to be good little boys and girls, worthy of their cushy white clouds of Heaven.
What a load of shit, right?
I mean, who comes up with this stuff? Let’s be honest. It was a bunch of old dudes who don’t know any better than to use fear to get people to fall in line. If you tried that stuff these days they’d call it a cult and try their best to lock you up. Back then they didn’t have anyone in their ear to say “Hey I read about this on twitter and it doesn't sound legit, let’s not listen to the weird guy talking about an ark and a flood,”. But then again, maybe twitter wouldn’ve only made it worse.
But anyway.
It’s more like a train station. A bad one. The seats are that weird moulded plastic that always seems to be very slightly wet, and the big red digital clock on the Arrivals board was always wrong. Not to mention the coffee dock only has skimmed milk and the baristas don’t know how to make a good macchiato.
It’s the second last stop on the line, to be precise. Sure, Heaven is next up and it gets crowded because the train only rolls through once every few thousand years but it’s not the horror and strife that some weird book wants you to believe it is. Unless you like vanilla syrup in your coffee. They don’t have that here.
The track goes two ways. Up and down, in and out. You either go to Heaven or you go back down to earth for another shot at a life. If you were really lucky, if the people assigning the seats thought you really had something worth going back for, you go back to the exact moment when you made the choice that led to your death. You got that one chance, to remake the decisions you made in that single split second. A reset.
Once the train arrives from out of the dark tunnel at the end of the platform, your ticket changes to show the direction it’ll take you and what carriage you’ll be in. You’ve got to have a pretty pure soul to go up to the next spot though; it happens even less often than people getting a reset. The journey back down to earth was a cramped and smelly seventeen minutes spent looking longingly at the empty carriage that would have brought you to Heaven instead. I don’t know why they don’t relax the rules on that a little, myself. Having so many people yo-yoing back and forth between here and there was starting to take its toll on the integrity of the barriers, thanks to how many people were squished between them to get into their earth-bound carriage. Plus, the original blueprints for the planet never really accounted for a population of this size. Especially not since the actual flood is due in like, seventy years, and that’ll really wipe out some prime real estate. If people think they’ve got a hard time finding a good seat here then just wait until they’re remembering the good times back when Africia was still around.
There’s a good mix of people here, as you can imagine. Nuns who thought they’d be on the expressway, teachers who knew they had a fifty fifty shot, and murderers who are probably more confused than anyone.
-
The clock counting down the train’s arrival glitched and restarted at 9,999,999,999 ∞ minutes.
Three people tried to start a cult about it.
-
And then there’s Steve.
Steve only arrived last week and he’s been really struggling with it. Quick deaths usually do. One slip on a patch of ice and boom, he stepped onto the platform with a blank ticket in his hand.
Was Steve a sinner? Sure, in the way your dog might be after licking gravy from an empty plate in an open dishwasher. Nothing he ever did was intentionally mean spirited and he always apologised when he knew he was wrong.
There was never anything particularly special about him. That might sound harsh, but he was the epitome of the word average. Steve hadn’t landed very high on any of the lists that might decide on the length of time he spent waiting on the train or what the direction on his ticket might be. The worst thing anyone could find about him was that he lied about spilling juice in the yard when he was six. The best thing was that he let someone cut in line at the sandwich shop once. In fact, when he first landed in the queue for his ticket stub it took five minutes to even find his name on the Expected Passenger list. Honestly, he should have just opened his eyes as a newborn before he even knew he was off his feet, purely by default.
But the thing about Steve is this.
When he slipped on that icy sidewalk that boot-scooted him off that mortal coil and landed him doomed to a near eternity of lacklustre lattes, Steve was planning on killing himself. He was on his way home with a pocket full of extra strength sleeping pills and a farewell note half written in his journal. Steve had said goodbye to his best friend after their weekly coffee date and smelled her shampoo one last time while they hugged, he’d cancelled his magazine subscription, he was ready.
Or, at least he thought he was.
Now that he was here it felt different than he thought he would. Steve thought he’d feel some sort of peace or maybe weightlessness. Instead, all he feels is the crushing realisation that he could have quite easily fixed everything that he thought was wrong. He could have stood up to the guy bullying him at work, he could have trimmed a few of the more frivolous edges on his monthly outgoings to make his paycheck stretch a little bit further so he didn’t need to accept the allowance his parents sent him.
His parents, the last ones to hear his voice. He was on the phone with them when it happened. He was too distracted by them telling him about some accountant’s daughter that he should marry to pay attention to where he was walking. He’d spent so long thinking that going through with his plan would finally make his mom care about what he actually wanted from his life, but not being there to experience it kind of ruined the effect. In fact, he was spending a lot of time worried about how they were coping with hearing their only child die over a pay as you go phone line.
“This seat taken?”
Steve shook his head, not looking up at the person that sat heavily down into the chair next to him. He didn’t care who did or didn’t sit anywhere. He was too fixated on the clock hanging from the ceiling that said “Next train in…” followed by a seemingly infinite number of minutes.
There was no pain that Steve could remember before he heard the hustle and bustle of the platform come up around him. He always imagined that death would be this big ta-dah! moment. He thought there’d be something more to it. What, exactly, he didn’t know, but the more he looked around him now the more he couldn’t help but think Oh, so this is it?
“I asked for no chocolate dust…” Steve’s new seat-neighbour muttered, peering under the lid of his coffee.
Steve could still taste the cinnamon of the chai latte he’d had on that final afternoon. He could still feel the tingle of the spices on his lips. He lifted his hand and touched the spot on his head that had made contact with the pavement to see if he could feel that too.
It didn’t hurt, but it definitely felt like he was touching a part of his body that he shouldn’t be. His hair was matted around warm ooze and there was a slight ringing in his ears, but he felt perfectly fine. All things considered.
Steve pulled his coat closer around himself even though he couldn’t feel if it was cold or not and hunched down in his chair. He didn’t feel the need to sleep. No one did, apparently. Everyone just spent their time slowly roaming around the platform, waiting for the train. It was usual to see people trying to break down the door into the ticket office to demand some sort of update on when the train would arrive or screaming when they realised that they wouldn’t be going back to the life they knew. One guy tried to jump on the tracks to run back down the earth. No one seemed to care when he was obliterated into a thousand tiny pieces the second he stepped foot in the tunnel. Steve didn’t know how any of them had the energy for any of it. He hadn’t felt anything other than numb since he got here.
“You using that?”
Steve was jostled slightly by a nudge to his elbow.
“Huh?” he said, shaking himself to pay attention. “What?”
“That,” the person beside him repeated, pointing to the tea-stained spoon clutched in Steve’s hand. “Are you using it?”
Steve stared at it. Not really, was the short answer.
The long answer was that it was from the cafe he’d been at before he died and taking a piece of it with him felt like the right thing to do at the time. He had a whole collection of things he was going to have around him when he did it. A ticket stub from the last movie he really enjoyed. A dried flower from last summer when he went on a hike in the woods. An old threadbare teddy bear he’d had since he was a kid. And the spoon. From the last place he would ever be.
Steve's heart felt heavy. Not for the first time, he thought of his poor teddy bear sitting alone on his pillow. He’d always tried to catch his toys moving after seeing the first Toy Story movie as a kid and now he was plagued with the thought that his bear was scared and lonely without him. They’d protected each other from monsters under the bed since Steve was a child. Now his bear was all alone and probably fighting for his little life against all the demons from Steve’s nightmares. That thought alone was enough to make him rethink everything he’d decided over the last few weeks.
“Fine, ignore me, jesus…”
The person, a man, Steve saw now, stood to leave.
“Wait,” Steve said, grabbing the cuff of his leather jacket. “I’m… No, you can have it, here,”
Steve held out the spoon to be taken.
“Sweet,” the man said, retaking his seat and accepting the spoon. “I always have to scrape this stuff off,”
Steve watched as he got to work diligently removing the chocolate sprinkled on top of his coffee. He seemed well practised at this particular task. Not a single spec was left by the time he was finished.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a long mouthful and promptly spitting it back out before turning around to glare back towards the coffee dock. “They gave me decaf, are you kidding me? Guy’s had it out for me for years, caught me skipping the line one time,”
Steve just stared at him. He had seen this man before. It was impossible not to. He seemed to be the only one who wasn’t letting being dead get him down. Steve had been watching him for…. Well, he didn’t exactly know how long. He was different than most of the other people Steve had seen here. He’d spent days watching as his fellow travellers shuffled around and made mostly small movements. Steve was no different, or course. It seemed pretty obvious that dying and ending up waiting for a train that might never come wasn’t really cause to be jumping for joy. This man was totally different. Steve hadn’t been exactly making a habit of people-watching, but it was impossible to ignore the flurry of curls and noise and jewelry that blew by every day. He was animated. He moved like he was, well, alive.
“You want it?” he asked Steve, offering the coffee cup, who accepted it on autopilot. “I don’t know why I even go there, it's always wrong,”
“Thanks,” Steve said, still staring dumbly at the man, who was now watching intently as a lady in a fur coat demanded the guard at the ticket barrier let her through.
Steve watched her too. She was getting progressively louder and do you know who I am- ing to try to get onto a train that simply was not there yet. She was important, why did no one understand that?
“You’re pretty new around here, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Steve answered honestly. “I think so? I mean, I still don’t really know my way around yet,”
“Not much to see,” the man said with a long exhale. “There’s a spot behind the trash cans at the coffee place that’s pretty cool, private too, if you need a break from all these guys,”
The man gestured vaguely around at people milling about. Steve did think it might be nice to have five minutes to himself at some point.
“I’ve never been to the coffee shop,” Steve said, looking at the scythe logo on the cup in his hand. “I don’t know where the trash can is,”
“Why?” asked Eddie, as if he hadn’t just been telling Steve how dreadful it was. “You don’t drink coffee?”
“I just…” Steve hesitated. “I don’t see the point. I’m still… I mean, I’m dead, right? Why bother with drinking coffee?”
The man just shrugged. “Why bother drinking it when you were alive, if you were going to die anyway?
Steve didn’t have a good answer for that one. It was a good point, hard to deny.
“Maybe I’ll show you around some time,” the man said. “Get you off this chair for once. Isn’t your ass numb by now? When was the last time you moved?”
Steve gave a shocked laugh. The first time he’d laughed for real in god knows how long, dead or alive. “My ass is fine,”
“Oh yeah? Prove it?” Eddie had a mischievous glint in his eyes. Steve knocked their shoulders together and rolled his eyes.
“Quit it,” he said quietly, tamping down a smile.
“I’m Eddie, by the way,” he said, sticking hand out for Steve to shake. “And try the coffee…”
“Oh, uh, Steve, I’m Steve,”
Eddie smiled.
“Try the coffee, Steve, you might like it,”
He stood up then, and walked back towards the coffee dock, already calling the barista's name and sparking off a fight about the importance of not decaffing a man at this time of the morning.
Steve took a tentative mouthful of the coffee in his hand. It made him scrunch his nose but overall it wasn’t too bad. As a first impression, it was fine, he guessed. He wondered if they did flat whites.
-
Steve found a rubix cube under his seat.
It was different shades of grey.
The clock hadn’t moved.
-
“You don’t have any friends! No one here even likes you!”
Steve turned around in his seat to see where the commotion was coming from.
Eddie, the man who took his spoon a few weeks ago, Steve remembered, was having a fight with the barista at the coffee dock. Not unusual, it happened what he estimated to be twice a week. Seeing Eddie not have a comeback ready was new though. There was always some sort of back and forth between them that lasted for what could have been hours before one of them eventually backed down. Watching him not able to form some sort of witty reply was uncomfortable, to say the least. The barista had clearly hit a nerve.
The smug blonde in the apron behind the counter crossed his arms and stared Eddie down. Steve could practically hear the gears turning in Eddie’s head. He was making attempts to get something to come out of his mouth but nothing seemed to work.
“See? You know I’m right,” the barista said. “So don’t act like the extra drink is for your buddy. One per customer and then you have to get back in line, that’s the rule and you know it,”
“I…I get two all the time,” Eddie stuttered, lying and trying to save face. “The other guy… He does it for me, the one who’s off today,”
Steve was on his feet before he knew what he was doing. It had been a long time since he used his legs so the first few steps were unsteady but he got his balance back quickly.
He stood at the counter, hands buried in his pockets, and pretended to look at the menu.
“Sorry I’m late, you ordered for us yet?”
Eddie’s head whipped around to look at Steve. The barista’s face dropped.
“You know how to make a cappuccino with no chocolate, right?” Steve asked, squinting his eyes while his voice dripped with condescension and hoping he was remembering Eddie’s coffee order correctly. One thing his mom did excellently was mistreat minimum wage service workers, and hey, Steve picked up some tips here or there. “Or do you maybe need someone else to come make that for me?”
“Who are you?” the barista demanded. “You don’t know him!”
Steve coloured his face with an exaggerated look of confusion. “I don’t know who? Eddie?”
“You’ve never been here before!”
“Well I haven’t had to before,” Steve said sharply. “It’s never taken this long for you to press a couple of buttons and pour a drink. I’ve never had to come looking for it before, my friend brings it to our seats. Is this a staff training day no one knew about or something? What’s going on?”
The barista’s face grew redder as Steve spoke. He barely took his eyes off him and Eddie while he clattered around behind the counter. Steve stared right back at him, a fake smile fixed firmly on his face.
Two drinks were presented to him by being slammed down so hard that the lids popped off.
“Ohmygosh thank you,” Steve said sweetly. He grabbed them both and turned away after making sure the barista saw his face fall to a dirty look, going back towards his chair and hoping Eddie was following him.
Steve sat down and drummed his fingers on the edge of the hot paper cups. Eddie sat down quietly next to him after a moment, and accepted the drink that Steve held out for him.
Each took a sip, glancing over at one another and smirking.
-
One of the red digits on the clock flashed.
Some people started praying.
It settled back on the same number it always had been.
The cults’ numbers grew.
-
Eddie sat by Steve a lot after that.
When he wasn’t running up and down the platform to burn off energy or playing a solo game of Marco Polo, Eddie was always just one chair away.
Steve would be staring at the unmoving clock and thinking about everything he’d left behind when Eddie would plop down next to him and start babbling about his latest attempts to get a high five from the ticket guy.
Steve was glad that Eddie was always the one who came to find him. Steve had a habit when he was alive of seeking people out who didn’t always appreciate the effort. His best friend was the only one who ever seemed to match Steve’s desire for some sort of platonic soulmate. She was always there for him whenever he needed to figure out his next move with his issues in work, or how to politely tell his parents that they still didn’t need to set him up on dates. Steve spent a lot of his time on the platform trying to work out why he didn’t talk to her about how he’d been feeling before he died. He was embarrassed, he supposed.
It wouldn’t be like her to make him feel bad for feeling a certain way, he was just used to people always trying to one-up anything he said. He was tired? His dad was exhausted. He was hungry? His colleagues were starved. He was struggling? He didn’t know what real struggle was! Nothing was ever just valid for the simple fact of it being how he felt. He stopped wanting to bring it up, if all that was going to happen was someone else would tell him to get over it because they were worse.
Steve wondered how his friend was doing without him. She was fine, probably. She had a girlfriend and a cat and a cool job and a family that loved her. She’d get over his death quickly, he knew that. Especially since it was an accident, in the end. He didn’t like to think about how she would have reacted if things went to plan. She’s probably the one who would have found him. She was the only one who would have come looking.
He hoped she took custody of his teddy bear. The idea of his teddy being thrown in the trash by his parents made the soles of his feet itch.
Steve thought she might get along with Eddie, if they met.
-
Another man burned up trying to run into the train tunnel.
Steve hated when that happened. The smell always lingered.
The clock stayed the same.
-
Steve lost track of time easily.
With no difference between night and day, it was hard to know what time even felt like anymore.
Had it been hours or days since the last time he walked from one end of the platform to the next? Sometimes he thought it might have been months. Other people arrived onto the platform through the same turnstile that he had emerged from all that time ago, but there was still no sign of the train.
He only stopped worrying about how much time was passing when he was with Eddie.
Being with Eddie made Steve’s mind calm down. Which was ironic, given how much of a hurricane Eddie himself was. They talked about the others around them and guessed at what their stories might be. They made up entire soap operas linking everyone they saw in an intricate cast of characters. Steve projected sometimes, giving the main character in the story a different version of his own life. One where he wasn’t too caught up in everything that was going wrong to see all the ways he could make it right again. It was hard not to fantastise about what might have happened if he hadn't slipped on the ice that day. By this point, Steve wasn’t even sure he would have gone through with his original plan. He wasn’t sure he was brave enough.
Steve liked Eddie’s theories that there was a crack in the ticket barrier that was going to break if the station didn’t fix it.
“No separation between carriages?” he’d say. “People able to run from whatever open door they could get to? It’d be anarchy!”
There was a shadow on the glass that Eddie swore was duct tape. That was where the crack was, he said. Steve liked the idea that this place was as susceptible to slight shoddy maintenance work as every train station he’d been in on earth. It made it feel a bit more familiar. It helped him to relax.
“You should tell the cults about the crack,” Steve suggested. “They’d eat that up,”
“They’d get themselves blown up trying to make it bigger,” Eddie laughed.
Steve even started ordering coffee for himself every day too. It wasn’t the most terrible he’d ever had but it was never quite right and that in and of itself was almost worse.
Things even started to feel some kind of normal now that there was someone there to talk to.
Their favourite place to spend time together was that private spot behind the coffee dock that Eddie had mentioned on their first meeting. It was just a chain link fence between them and an endless darkness. If they threw their cups over the top, they’d disappear for a few seconds before being thrown right back at them with the edges slightly singed.
Trying to catch them before they hit the ground became a favourite game. Neither kept track of who was winning. Steve just liked to see Eddie celebrate when he got two in a row.
The aroma of burned cardboard mixed with coffee in the breeze was something so familiar to Steve now that he relaxed immediately every time he smelled it. Like a dog reacting to a dinner bell, his mood always lifted when they came back here. Being in this place, on the platform, was the first time in his life, his death?, that Steve had ever felt any sort of freedom. Not having to keep up with time was a luxury that he never knew he’d never had.
Steve leaned against the fence and watched Eddie toss over another cup.
“Whatcha thinking?” Eddie asked.
Steve chewed his lip. “Nothing,” he answered honestly.
There was a silence in his mind, filled only with the murmuring sounds of Eddie’s voice as he recanted the latest argument with their least favourite barista.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” Eddie said. There was no accusation in it, no heat, no question.
“Have I?”
Eddie shrugged, and went back to his story.
-
The coffee shop got vanilla syrup.
There was a celebration.
It was sugar free.
There was a riot.
Someone climbed onto the roof and threatened to burn it down.
No one had any matches.
The clock stayed the same.
-
It was months since Steve last saw Eddie. Was it? Might have been. He couldn’t be sure. The only thing he knew was that he’d been saving his coffee cups for them to throw over the fence together and he had a stack as long as his arm now.
Steve didn’t like not seeing his friend. It made the eternity of his situation feel a lot more real.
The atmosphere around him felt thicker than usual. The dust that blew through from the train tunnel seemed to settle faster without Eddie there beside him. The feeling of missing him settled heavily in Steve’s chest. It pressed against his ribs like a fist. It was just like Steve to get too comfortable in a friendship and then do something to ruin it.
He’d been getting really good at catching the burned coffee cups. Was that it? Had he made Eddie feel inadequate? Or maybe he hadn’t offered enough to their last conversation? Steve couldn’t even remember what it was about.
He’d offended Eddie in some way, and now he was being punished for it. He just wished he knew what it was so that he could fix it.
Steve leaned over with his head in his hands and let the platform move on around him.
-
The clock ticked down by one minute.
Somehow, no one noticed.
It ticked down again.
Twice.
-
“Got your coffee,”
Steve’s shoulders were stiff when he tried to move them to sit up.
Eddie handed him a hot cup and settled into the chair next to him. Steve watched him through crusty eyes, watching the way the tip of his nose curved forward when he sipped his drink.
“Where have you been?” Steve’s voice was croaky from disuse.
Eddie’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve only been gone for like ten minutes. I went to check what teh cults were saying about the clock, remember? Some guy said it changed,”
Steve blinked rapidly while Eddie spoke. No one believed the man who claimed the clock was moving, but everyone had stood and let him talk about it anyway. Was it really only ten minutes? How did he get so many empty cups? How had he had so much coffee in ten minutes? That can’t be right. Steve’s mouth was dry and he still wasn’t sitting up completely straight yet. He felt like he was made of concrete.
“Felt like longer,” he said. The coffee in his cup burned his lips.
Steve was happy to listen to Eddie while he spoke. His own brain was still waking back up after…a nap? Or whatever that was. He still hadn’t gotten used to how time was passing in the station.
He eventually relaxed into the smooth cadence of Eddie’s voice, letting his presence wash over him like a balm over a rash.
“Did you know that they drag people back off the train sometimes?” Eddie asked. Steve was horrified. “Yeah, some lady in one of the cults said it happened to her. She said if the guards decide you haven’t waited long enough they’ll put you right back out again and make you miss it,”
“Why would they do that?”
“They get bored, I guess,”
“Did you believe her?”
Eddie contemplated it for a while. “No reason for her to lie about it, is there?”
He was right, Steve thought.
-
Tick tock.
-
Steve realised it all at once, but then again as slowly as his mind would let him, that the sound of Eddie’s voice was different now.
It was the same as it had ever been, right from the first time he asked to sit next to him, but it swam through his head differently lately.
They were talking mindlessly about things they could remember from their lives when Steve noticed that he was doing less talking than he used to, just so Eddie’s voice would fill the silence. He wanted to hear it as often as he could. The sing-song tone in the way he told stories made even the most mundane details feel significant.
Steve tried to shake the thought from his head. He was just finding comfort in someone spending time with him, that was all. He thought he had a crush on his best friend back on earth too. He snapped out of that quickly. The same would surely happen here.
But something about this felt different. He couldn’t figure out why, but there was something more whenever he thought about Eddie. Whenever they were together Steve wanted things to be perfect so Eddie would smile. He wanted to tell the funniest joke to make him laugh. He wanted to get the best seats for them to watch the latest attempts at running into the tunnel.
His whole being felt drawn to Eddie. It terrified Steve.
There was something about the way Eddie’s voice rang in Steve’s ear even after he’d stopped talking. It was like an anchor that kept him from slipping away into nothingness. Without Eddie next to him, plucking words out of the air and giving them life, Steve felt like he ceased to even exist.
Steve thought what it might look like if they had met when they were alive.
He wondered if they knew each other in a life before this. Friends, or enemies even. Would Eddie have been one of the small, shy boys that Steve bullied in school before he knew better? Would Steve have been someone Eddie refused to serve in a bar because he clocked his fake ID?
Or maybe they were lovers.
They might visit a real coffee shop on Saturdays for a drink to take with them while they wandered around a market. Maybe they’d have a small dog on a leash, maybe a big one. Maybe a cat waiting for them at home, curious what meats and cheeses they bought while they were out. They would fight and scream and shout, and kiss in the rain when they made up. They’d know everything about each other and have more inside jokes than either of them could keep up with.
Really, it was when every fantasy had them in those types of lives together that Steve knew he was falling for Eddie in every possible way. It wasn’t just his voice, or the way Steve’s heart fluttered when he smiled. He was falling for the very idea of him. He couldn’t imagine a life without Eddie. Or a death.
He thought he might be happy if the train never came, if it meant he could stay here, with Eddie.
-
A group of six hundred and fifty seven people tried to build a human pyramid big enough to see if the train was coming.
They fell before anyone got to the top.
Before anyone got a chance to see it.
-
They had thrown all their cups over the fence.
Steve and Eddie were sitting cross legged on the ground staring out into the darkness. The line of their arms was pressed together.
“What happens to people who go up to Heaven?” Steve asked.
Eddie took a long breath and leaned back on his elbows. “I’ve heard different things. Some say it’s like actually dying, that you stop knowing anything and you just kind of, exist, I guess,”
“That doesn’t sound great,”
“No,” Eddie agreed. “Most other people say it’s more like working a customer service job. You go up there and you help the people down on earth get through life,”
Steve hummed, looking down over his shoulder at Eddie. “I do like the sound of that,”
“I don’t”
“Why?”
“Why should I help someone if no one helped me?”
They had never spoken about their own deaths before. Eddie was polite enough not to ask about the obvious head wound Steve was sporting, and Steve was able to draw his own conclusions from the clues on Eddie’s wrists.
“Maybe that’s why you should,” Steve offered. “You might be able to help in ways no one else can?”
Eddie scoffed and sat back up, pulling his knees to his chest.
“Sure thing,” he said sarcastically. “I’m exactly the kind of guy that people need to dust them off and help them get back on their feet,”
“You might be,”
Eddie laughed. “Oh yeah, right. An endless eternity to worry about all the ways I failed at my own life, and then trying to guide some poor sap through theirs? Give me a break. Besides, think about how scary that is?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if I’m not good enough?” Eddie said, not meeting Steve’s gaze. “What if I were to get there and I couldn’t help anyone. Or I couldn’t get to them in time to make a difference. What would they do with me then?”
“Someone out there might need you,”
“I doubt it,”
“I don’t,” Steve protested.
“My life was always small,” Eddie told him. “It was… I don’t know, it wasn’t anything that a million people hadn’t lived before. I don’t have anything new to offer them up there. Heaven is this big, vast, place with tons of people with tons of experiences to keep the machine running. You’re just another brick in the wall up there, but my brick wouldn’t be anything worth building with. I’m nothing special,”
“Neither am I,”
Eddie clicked his tongue.
“I’m not,” Steve continued. “Even my parents told me I was boring,”
“So neither of us are going to Heaven,” Eddie asked with a smirk.
“You’re more special than you think,” Steve was getting frustrated now. Why couldn’t Eddie see himself the way Steve saw him? “You could really save someone,”
“Do I look like I could be someone’s safety net, Steve?” Eddie asked rhetorically, raising an eyebrow. “Snatching them up right before they hit rock bottom? Who would I even be good for?”
“You’d be good for me,”
Steve’s eyes went wide when he realised what he’d said. The silence fell around them like a sheet of glass, fragile and hesitant, ready to be smashed to pieces at any second if either of them breathed too loud.
“Liar,” Eddie mumbled. He looked as scared as Steve felt. He was trying to give a lifeline, a way to chalk it up to a joke or misunderstanding. He was trying to offer an out.
Steve shook his head slightly, unable to look away from Eddie’s eyes in case he missed a single moment of how they reflected the light around them.
“You are good for me,” Steve whispered.
Neither of them knew who had moved first in the end. The space between them closed slowly, both of them wide eyed and terrified at what might happen next. Steve lifted a hand to Eddie’s neck, cradling his jaw and guiding them together.
The brush of their lips was shy at first. They barely touched, breathing softly into the same space until they pressed together fully and firmly. Steve could feel the stubble on Eddie’s upper lip against his. He tasted of stale coffee and too many sugar packets.
Steve’s heart hammered in his chest. His whole body was shaking. He eased back slightly only to gently surge forward once more, with more purpose this time. Eddie opened his mouth, allowing Steve to slide his tongue slowly against his. They played push and pull with each other, curiously searching each others’ mouths softly, a slow rhythm that had Steve’s head spinning. There was nothing else but them at that moment. Steve could no longer hear the loud noises that filtered through from the platform to their spot behind the dumpsters. He couldn’t feel anything except the warmth of Eddie’s breath on his skin.
And then he felt Eddie pulling away.
He tried to follow, but a hand on his chest held him back. Steve’s eyes opened slowly, his mind still syrupy slow from the kiss.
“Wha-?”
“We can’t, Steve,” Eddie whispered, leaning their foreheads together. Steve’s hand was still on his jaw.
“We…? I don’t understand?” Steve asked. “I thought…”
“I know,” Eddie softly. “I know, and you were right, but…”
“But?”
Eddie rubbed their noses together.
“Remember what you said, about not drinking coffee because you were dead?” asked Eddie. “It’s kind of like that. It’s just… It’s just not the right time,”
“We have nothing but time,” Steve pleaded. He felt a tear slide down his cheek. “The train is never coming,”
“But one day,” Eddie explained kindly. “It will. And I won’t want to say goodbye to you,”
“We’ll have to say goodbye either way,”
Eddie smiled gently.
“And think of how much more it’ll hurt,” he said. “If we were saying goodbye to this too,”
-
Tick.
-
“What’s the first thing you’d do if you got a reset?”
Steve had been thinking for a long time about what he’d do if he got another chance and he wondered if Eddie ever thought about it too. Steve had a whole mental library of ways their paths might have crossed in their lives. He knew it would never happen. Even without considering the odds of something like that, Eddie had been on the platform for what he insisted was hundreds of years. Steve didn’t quite know if that could be true though, their clothes looked similar enough except for a difference in style to be from the same timeframe.
But then again, who’s to say everyone who died at the same time got here on the same day?
Eddie’s eyebrows quirked at the question. They hadn’t said anything to each other since the kiss. What was there to say, really? They just went back out to their usual plastic seats and watched the empty tracks, sitting by each other in silence to pass the time ever since. Steve kind of wished Eddie didn’t still want to spend time with him, the sting of rejection still felt fresh even though it must be years now since it happened.
Steve suddenly got the feeling that the reason most of the people on the platform were miserable and refusing to speak was because of situations just like this.
“I wouldn’t want one,” Eddie answered eventually. “I thought about it, but…”
“But?” Steve asked, mimicking what he’d said after their kiss.
“Everyone who ends up here has something they want to go back for,” Eddie said quietly, stirring his finger through the foam on top of his coffee. “A family or a pet or something. I just had me. That’s the whole reason I’m even here. It was always just me, no one else really cared. Even the day I…”
Eddie cut himself off and slouched down into his chair. His face tightened into a pinched expression as he cut himself off.
“Eddie…”
“No,” he said flatly. “I don’t want a reset, simple as that”
“But what about-”
“Nothing!” Eddie snapped. “I’m here for a reason. A good god damn reason, ok? I put myself here and the further I get away from the life I was in, the better. I’m not kidding, Steve. I had no-one. The day I died, you know what I was doing? I was running away. My dad was begging me to sell his drugs for him and I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t handle him always trying to come back into my life just to ruin it again. I had no one to tell me everything was going to be ok and help me stick to my guns when I cut him off again. I took one last walk around my neighbourhood, down all the streets I never usually went down, I went home, and then I landed myself here,”
Steve was staring at his knees.
“So why would I want to go back to that, Steve? Hmm?” Eddie demanded. “What decision could I possibly make that would change a fucking lifetime of putting up with him and his bullshit? What age are they gonna send me back to? Five? Six? How about ten when he got out of jail for the fourth time and I cried because he made me give my dog away? What could I possibly have done when I was thirteen and I had to watch him get hauled away again, and listen to him scream about how it was all my fault for not lying to the cops for him,”
Steve didn’t have an answer.
“I didn’t think about it like that,” he said quietly, picking at the side of his thumbnail.
And he hadn’t, truthfully. He assumed that he’d go back to some sort of big or important decision where the choice of the paths was clear. He read a poem in highschool like that once. Two roads, diverged in a yellow wood… Only he had never stood at a crossroads and seen a big neon sign saying LIFE over one side and DEATH over the other. Eddie was right, how were you supposed to know which decision was the one. The One. The one that put you on that one way track to ending up right here? The one that would make all the difference, just like the poem said.
“I never had anyone,” Eddie repeated, standing up. “And that was never going to change,”
“What about me?” Steve asked, hearing how pathetic he sounded to his own ears.
Eddie jammed his hands into his pockets. “Just someone else who I’ll never get to have a good life with,”
Steve didn’t try to follow Eddie when he walked away. He rested his forehead down on his knees and hoped he’d come back.
-
One of the original time cults was hailing the man who claimed to see the clock change as the new messiah.
Considering the actual messiah was like five minutes down the tracks, it didn’t go down well.
They got a cease and desist from one of the ticket guards.
-
The coffee shop was closed for maintenance.
Caffeine headaches, as it appeared, were a fate worse than death for many.
-
Steve’s body hadn't moved since he last saw Eddie. He didn’t dare try. He was too worried that Eddie would come back and he wouldn’t be there.
-
Tock.
-
“The next train will be arriving in five. minutes. and. seven. seconds. All passengers move to the front. Please have your tickets ready,”
The announcement sent the platform into a frenzy. It was unexpected. The numbers on the clock were now in freefall. A gust of wind was whipping around the station, shooting cracks of lightning out of the tunnel ahead of the train. The noise was building quickly. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people suddenly pressed forward towards the edge of the tracks. People were panicking over where they had left their tickets and trying to squeeze their way through to be the first ones to board. No one wanted to be left behind. Over the screaming, Steve tried to call Eddie’s name.
“Eddie!” He yelled, frantically looking around for his friend. “Where are you?”
Steve fought his way through the crowds, his aching bones struggling with moving after fusing together from sitting still for so long, looking for any sign of him.
“Steve?”
“Eddie! Where are you!”
“I’m… Oh, god, I’m…”
Steve pushed countless people out of his way as he followed the muffled sound of Eddie’s voice. The wind coming through the tunnel was getting faster, more aggressive. The sound of the incoming storm was like a mountain being torn open from the inside out.
“Eddie!” Steve finally laid eyes on him. He was standing on the edge of the main crowd, face white as a ghost as he clutched his ticket in his hand. “Eddie come on, we can’t miss the train!”
Eddie didn’t say anything. Steve tried to move forward to reach him when he felt something pushing him backwards. A shock went through Steve’s whole body, jolting him backwards away from the thick glass panel that he now saw between them. Eddie was on the other side of the barrier. He was in the line for the other carriage.
Eddie was being sent to Heaven.
“Oh,” Steve whispered to himself. The crowd jostled him where he stood, staring into Eddie’s wet eyes. The mob was growing wilder. Eddie tried to call out to him but Steve could no longer hear anything but the horde around him.
Eddie mouthed Steve’s name as tears fell down his face. He was shaking his head, looking around for the ticket guard on his side and gesturing over to Steve's side. The man at the barrier paid no attention to him.
“Will you find me, Eddie?” Steve yelled, banging his fists against the glass wall that separated them. “Will you help me get through it this time?”
Eddie moved quickly to the wall and held his hand up against Steve’s. He was talking, or trying to through the heavy sobs Steve could see heaving through him. The train was arriving. The sound of the engines was deafening. The thunder shook the whole station. Steve tried to read Eddie’s lips to work out what he was saying but his chin was wobbling too much.
Steve pressed his forehead to the glass. “Please don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid, please, don’t,” he said. There was no point in trying to shout. It was all too loud. “You'll help so many people. You’ll save them all,”
Steve focused on the way the corners of Eddie’s mouth dipped on certain words. He watched the ways his eyes flitted around while he tried to find the next part of his sentence. He remembered the sweetness in their kiss and the way his hair bounced around when he walked, and the way the smell of a burnt coffee cup became his biggest comfort. Steve tried to open his mouth to say things that he knew Eddie wouldn’t hear but it caught in his throat.
“I wish we had more time!” Steve said to the glass. It was fogging up now, the amount of people pressing against it taking a toll. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. “I should have never let you out of my sight. I should have followed you everywhere. I never stopped waiting for you to come back. This was the happiest I’ve ever been,”
Fuck, why had he waited to say how much he’d enjoyed their time together? They had all the time they could wish for but Steve still couldn’t say what he really felt. It was no different in death than he had been in life. Not standing up for himself, not asking his best friend for help, and now not telling Eddie what he had meant to him.
Eddie was talking too, his mouth moving a mile a minute as he tried to communicate. Steve wished he could make out even a single word of it. He just wanted to hear his voice one last time. Just one more story.
“I love you,” Steve finally said. “I love you, Eddie. I love you, I love you, I’m so sorry, I love you,”
Eddie’s eyes went wide on the other side of the glass. The crowd surged and Steve felt his feet lift off the floor. He couldn’t hold his ground any longer, he had to let himself be swept away. Eddie was pounding on the glass again, trying to shout loud enough for Steve to hear him. He tried to follow along the barrier, keeping up with the ebb and flow of the swarm of people that was washing Steve away from him.
“I love you, Eddie!” Steve said one more time as he lost sight of him,finally consumed by the bodies around him.
The noise in the crowd made Steve feel like his ears were about to burst. It felt like being trapped under a wave, but he didn’t know how to swim to the surface. It was all he could do not to end up on the ground. He was reasonably sure he couldn’t die if he was already dead, but he still fought to stay upright.
A commotion erupted behind him.
The ticket guards were wading through the masses, repeating a mantra that people needed to have the tickets ready and that they needed to be the right ticket for their journey. Steve didn’t dare look back to see what was going on. He was afraid that if he tried to go against the forward momentum that was pulsating around him that he might lose the little footing he still had.
The crowd behind him felt like it was becoming more fevered. Cracks of thunder shot from all around him, with bolts of lightning streaking across the station roof.
Steve tumbled onto the train, his knees hitting the ground with a solid thud.
The crowd was still screaming. Not everyone made it on board. The guards were pushing them back from the doors. Steve kept his back to them. He couldn’t bear to see what it looked like to be left behind after waiting all the time. He couldn’t stomach watching the guards play their twisted game of deciding who they were forcing to stay.
Steve steadied himself and stood upright, doing his best to ignore the cries of those on the other side of the doors. He was about to walk through the carriage to find a seat when a firm hand grabbed his elbow.
“No,” he gasped. “No! I made it on! I’m not going back out there, I’m not staying here! You can’t make me!”
Steve summoned every bit of strength he possibly could and moved forward with all his might. The grip on his arm stayed firm, no matter how much he tried to shake it off.
“Please,” Steve begged, trying to pull himself free. “Please, just let me leave,”
There was a sudden release in pressure as the doors began to close and Steve toppled forward. He gave a cry of relief until someone landed on top of him. He tried to scramble out from under them, ready to fight whatever guard had decided that he needed to wait longer before going back.
“They really should get a better queuing system, fuck…”
Steve couldn’t believe his eyes.
Eddie was sprawled out on the floor of the carriage next to him.
“What are you doing here?” Steve asked quickly, lifting up onto his knees to cradle Eddie’s head and make sure he was ok. “How did you get over the wall? How did you get through the people?”
“Told you there was a crack in that glass,” Eddie said with a smile, although wincing slightly. A piece of his hair was still very lightly aflame. “And you ever crowdsurfed at a death metal gig? That out there, thats amatuer hour compared to that shit,”
“You were supposed to go to Heaven,” Steve said, helping him to sit up.
“Yeah, I didn’t want to do that,” Eddie laughed. The train started to move. “I had something I needed to tell you,”
The lights around them flashed violently as they entered the tunnel. The whole carriage lurched forward, throwing them back to the ground and sending them flying down the aisle. They reached for each other wildly, pulling their bodies close as the movement of the train threw them around.
They held each other as tightly as they could. They buried their faces into each other’s necks, tangling their legs together to stop from being flung apart as the train barreled back towards earth.
“I love you too, Steve,” Eddie shouted into his ear. “I’ll still find you. I promise. Do you hear me? I’ll still fin-”
-
-
-
-
“I’m busy this weekend, Mom, I really don’t think I have time for a date,”
“Well how about tomorrow night? She’s a very pretty girl, Stephen, you should feel lucky she’s even agreeing to meet you,”
“Tomorrow doesn’t work for me either,”
“What? Why not?”
Because I’ll be dead within an hour.
“I’m working late,” Steve lied down the phone. His parents were determined to set him up with the daughter of one of his dad’s co-workers. Excellent marriage material, apparently.
“You really should be working towards promotions,” Steve dad said, his voice slightly distanced thanks to the speakerphone they were clearly using. “You’re too old to still be working late. When I was your age…”
Steve sighed. He just knew if he wasn’t working late, his parents would ask him why he wasn’t putting in extra hours to impress his bosses. He closed his eyes as he walked. It was an icy cold day in the city. The grit on the sidewalk crunched under his feet. He had bundled himself up in his biggest scarf and coat to go to the clinic to get a prescription of sleeping pills that he’d lied to get.
Before he left the house, he’d also grabbed his teddy bear from his pillow and tucked him under his arm. Steve didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stand the idea of leaving the bear at home today. He got a couple of strange looks but he didn’t care. It felt right to have his teddy with him.
Everything around Steve suddenly went quiet.
He opened his eyes mid-step and saw a white dove flying past him. Steve stood and watched it, awed at the way the sunlight seemed to bounce off its feathers. It looked like it was made of pearls. The world around him was moving in slow motion. Every sound was dampened. His parents’ voices sounded a million miles away.
“What the fuck?” Steve whispered to himself.
The dove circled above him, and the world went back to full speed.
“Stephen? Are you there? Are you listening to your mother? We should never have allowed you to move all the way to the city, you really don’t know what’s best. You can hardly take care of yourself,”
“What?” Steve breathed down the phone. “What makes you think that?”
He was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, getting slightly jostled by the people walking around him.
“Well you haven’t got any real prospects, have you? Still single, you rent instead of own, you’re not going anywhere in your job-”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not taking care of myself,” Steve said, tightening his grip on his teddy bear. Having it with him made him feel bolder somehow.
It was true. Despite everything, he got up every day to brush his teeth and do his laundry. No one from the outside looking in would know what he was planning. The pills in his pocket started to feel heavy.
“I’m doing just fine,” he continued. “I’ve got some problems but I’m not as much of a failure as you think I am. I don’t need you to keep doing this. I’m doing fine,”
The dove flew over the roof of a nearby building and disappeared.
“Doing what?” Both his parents made a scoffing noise down the phone. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew that Steve would keep putting up with it. “Trying to point you in the right direction?”
Steve opened his mouth to respond, to tell them they were wrong, when his foot hit a patch of ice.
Before he could stop it, his balance shifted and he was falling. His whole body twisted as he tried to get his arms under his to break his fall. Both his hands were full with his phone and his bear and despite dropping them both, he couldn’t get them down in time. The pavement was coming up fast.
A pair of strong hands grabbed the front of Steve’s coat just before he hit the ground. He gasped at the sudden stop and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Hey! Are you ok?”
The person holding Steve up lowered him gently onto the concrete before kneeling down next to him. Steve opened his eyes slowly and saw a man with dark curly hair leaning over him.
“That could’ve been a bad one,” he said with a smile, picking up Steve’s bear and dusting some dirt off him. “You good?”
Steve let himself be helped back to his feet. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Thank you, must be my lucky day,”
“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, handing the bear back to Steve and gesturing to the ground. “Your cellphone wasn’t so lucky,”
Steve didn’t look down. He was too busy looking at the man in front of him. Was he familiar? There was something about him that felt like he was something Steve knew.
“You sure you’re alright?” The man asked again, gently touching Steve’s elbow.
“I feel…” Steve began. “Sorry, that’s dumb, but yeah, yeah, I’m okay, thanks again,”
“Nah, come on,” The man laughed. “What do you feel?”
Steve hesitated before he took a deep breath and spoke. “I feel like I should know you,”
The man looked into Steve’s eyes and his smile changed into something softer.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you… You look like someone I think I know,”
“Who?” asked Steve.
“I have no idea,” he said gently, still with his hand on Steve’s elbow.
They considered each other in silence for a long moment.
“Let me buy you a coffee?” Steve asked suddenly. He’d already had three chai lattes today but he had a sudden craving for a cappuccino. “As a thank you for catching me?”
“Sure, I could do with a pick me up today,” the man said, his smile growing again. “I’m Eddie, by the way,”
“Steve,”
“And who’s this guy?” Eddie asked, flicking his finger over the bear’s nose.
“This is my teddy,”
“He doesn’t have a name?”
“He likes just being teddy,”
“He does, huh?”
Steve felt his cheeks burn. Six year old him and teddy had a long conversation one day trying to find the perfect name, but eventually agreed that names weren’t always necessary for a bear.
“Nice to meet you, teddy,” Eddie said to the bear, taking his paw between his thumb and finger and shaking it gently. “Will you be joining us for coffee?”
Steve felt himself smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he smiled without forcing it.
“He prefers tea, actually,” Steve joked.
Eddie tapped on his chin in faux contemplation. “Hmm, well luckily I know a great coffee shop nearby that has a great tea selection. I don’t usually walk around this part of the neighbourhood but I figure I can get us there safely. Shall we?”
Eddie held his hand out for Steve to take, looking almost surprised at his own boldness. Steve slotted his palm against Eddie’s and held it tight.
Their skin touching felt like a bolt of lightning.