"AFTER LIFE BOOKSTORE"

This is a piece of fatnasy that I wrote. While designing the bookstore (see attached diagrams) I had a sort-of out-of-body experience. It was very very strange.

I would really like to make this piece into a short film someday.

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Last night, as I sat in line at The Bookstore, I broke into tears.

An employee patted my back and offered sympathy. “Oh, what’s wrong, dear?”

“I died last night,” I muttered between sobs.

She pulled me aside and said cheerfully, “Don’t worry, son. It happens to the best of us.” She dried my tears with tender caresses. “Now that you’ve died, you have all the time you wish to wander around our lovely bookstore. I’ll show you a good place to start.” We went to the section marked ‘The Afterlife.’

“It must seem odd that your afterlife will take place within our scholarly confines. But think nothing of it. Dead students come through here every day. In this section, they search for meaning behind their existence. We have every work, known and unknown, on every subject conceived and yet to be conceived,” she said. “Our store managers have kindly extrapolated the English language for an infinite combination of words over an infinite number of books. So have a look. You might be able to find out which afterlife you’ve entered.”

As I walked around ‘The Afterlife,’ I took my first good look around. The store assumed a pentagonal shape, which extended skyward through a dense network of ladders and balconies far beyond my field of vision. I suppose the most peculiar aspect of the store wasn’t its infinite number of books (for I couldn’t even grasp such a concept). Peculiar to me was the shelves and the books themselves. The shelves weren’t actually shelves; long branches of pine encircled each level of the store. The books themselves weren’t bound in leather, nor were they even printed on paper; the words were printed on pinecones, which made reading particularly difficult. The cones hung from the branches circling each level of the store.
I picked through the branches, discarding cone after cone. Nothing mentioned about a great bookstore forest in the sky. In any case, the search felt futile. Life after death? The mere phrase seemed a contradiction. What could possibly be said about it? But there I was – dead, walking around a bookstore, reading words off pinecones. I felt strange. Frustrated, I found the attendant again.

“What’s the matter, young man? Unable to find any relevant literature? People of your sort come in every so often. They usually tell me, ‘The answers I seek can’t be put into words,’ or some other nonsense. But I tell you: our books have every possible combination of words. If you can state your problem, then we have a book dealing with it.”
I gave a blank stare. “My problem? I just want to know why I’m here. I want to know the reason.”

The bookkeepers’ face froze. “Ah, you’ve asked the question. Most people just dance around the question for years, hoping that some great book will tell them all they wish to know. But I see you’ve figured out our little trick. Time for you to move on, I do believe. Let me call the Creator.”

She paused and pulled out a two-way radio. “Yes, JL? I have a young man here who wants to know why.” Pause. “Ok. I’ll tell him.”

“Apparently there's been a mistake. You're still alive."

They tossed me onto the street and slammed the door.
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