Printer Ink

“Thank you for calling Afterline, the second best call center for connecting the living and the not. My name is Timothy, how can I help you today?” The overly cheery voice coming from the small man was a far cry from the deadpan facial expression he wore. Surrounding him were dozens of other voices droning on in similar fashions. Many of the voices were ones he did recognize. Timothy had been working here since his passing almost three hundred years ago and hadn’t moved up from his entry position like a bunch of the others he’d come with, much to his chagrin. 

It's not that he hasn't tried to move up. In fact, it was the only thing he wanted to achieve here. See, when you die, you get moved onto being a cosmic piece in the Force of Greater Good's machine. A cog, essential to the balance of the universe. His purpose was to be a liaison between the living and the dead. Right now, he was just connecting them to each other, but soon he would be working with deities helping determine the fate of the universe. 

“Yeah, man. I got this guy here. A humie. He keeps trying to get me to come home with him. It’s making me really uncomfortable.” But his purpose took work to reach and that’s exactly what he was doing now. No matter how much he wanted to roll his eyes or how his teeth were already grinding against each other. For some reason, there was a single human that had popped up in the last thirty, forty years that’s been able to directly contact ghosts without having to go through them which wasn’t unheard of but this guy was a problem.

He was constantly bothering spirits everywhere he went, attempting to lure them back to wherever he lived. Then, they started getting calls about an illegal ghost-fighting ring. It was strange and annoying and not what Timothy wanted to be doing with his afterlife. In the background, he could hear the man calling out to the spirit again. It was a thickly southern accent. 

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. He ain’t that scary. Just got some blood running down his face.” He offers the ghost a beer and Timothy sighs deeply after muting himself. 

Simultaneously, he looks up the number for the retrieval team. They’d pick up the ghost on the line and put him in a new position somewhere similar. 

In all his years here, he’d never heard of a person annoying a spirit to exorcism. He makes the line live again before explaining what was going to happen. After a cheerful, if not slightly sarcastic parting, he hangs up. 

Timothy rubs the spot between his eyes, pushing his glasses up his face. After a few calming breaths, he pushes himself away from his desk only to bump into someone. He’d been starting to yawn and his apology came out half-hearted. 

Paisley the sheet ghost stood behind him somehow managing to look disgruntled under the sheet. They were covered with a different sheet every day. Today they had on a light purple sheet with darker purple flowers embroidered on it. The only things anybody ever saw were their feet, always covered in tall socks and Converse, as well as their hands, also covered in gloves. They barely ever spoke and mostly kept to themselves in the mail room, but they were nice enough. They’d even gone out for drinks a few times and played trivia together.

“Oh, sorry Pais. I wasn’t paying attention,” he tries again, this time without the yawn. This seems to appease the being who simply nods and walks around him. He notices the socks today have little ducks on them and smiles to himself. 

***

Timothy all but makes it into the break room and opens his lunchbox when his boss comes rushing in. She’s six foot tall with iridescent skin, white hair, white eyelashes, and white eyes. He had never been creative and so when he had been asked to create what he would look like in the afterlife, he had gone with pretty much how he had looked in life. Nothing impressive but to be fair to himself, humans were a lot more popular back when he first started. 

“Just who I was looking for! Timothy, I need you to come to my office. There’s someone I want you to meet!” She finishes her sentence in a sing-song way while disappearing as quickly as she had come, leaving no room for debate. He looks down at his seared scallops and glazed pears that had been left over from dinner and sighs. I guess I’ll take lunch later, then. 

He doesn’t have to go very far in order to peek his head into Ms. Ezekiel’s office to find probably the most breathtaking being this side of the universe sitting in one of the two chairs across from her. Said being was currently leaned back in his chair like he owned the place with a perfect smile creating dimples in his cheeks. His hazy blue eyes almost make him stop breathing. And his fingers twitch as the thought of running them through that thick dark red hair. 

“Oh! Timothy! Please come in! I’d like you to meet Rodrick, our newest employee.” She gestures to the seat next to the other and he gulps. He realizes that he’s balking and moves to come in. Awkwardly he takes the hand Rodrick offers in greeting. It’s warm and big and confident. He tries not to blush as he scrambles into a seat. This close, he almost can’t handle how gorgeous he is. Instead of continuing to look at Rodrick, he focuses completely on his boss’ face as she continues in her overly cheerful tone. 

“I brought you here to discuss a training opportunity. This would give you more credits to go towards your reincarnation. See, he was a medium for the past four different reincarnations and the Universe has decided that he qualifies for my position!”

Timothy’s eyes nearly pop out of his face at that. The way the afterlife worked was you worked a job for a little while after you die in order to properly digest all your lessons while moving up in rank. Once you’ve gone through all the positions, then you get to be reincarnated. Ms. Ezekiel isn’t his first boss. And she would apparently not be his last, either. 

The fact that this new guy was skipping all the rungs on the ladder felt like a slap in the face.

“With all due respect,” he starts, doing his best not to catch a glance of the man next to him but feeling his eyes on him anyway. “I don’t think I’m the right person for this job. I-” She cuts him off with an abrupt laugh. “Well, of course you are! You’ve been here the longest, save for Sam, and he doesn’t have the experience you have. He’s still the janitor.” He can feel his jaw clench in irritation and tries to soften it by looking down. He takes a quick breath to recover and looks back up. 

“Right. However, again, taking on a trainee will slow my own progress down. Like you said, I’ve been almost longer than anyone. Including you.” He lets the words fall out of his mouth like stones, his heart hammering in his chest at the willpower it just took to say that. It wasn’t like he could get fired but talking to authority had never been easy for him. Her smile slips from her lips.

Finally, Rodrick speaks. “It’s no issue. I don’t have any problem teaching myself. I don’t want to get in the way of Tim’s accrual.” Timothy has to physically restrain his eyes from rolling. No one called him Tim. Just Timothy. At least no one in this realm. There had been one medium that he had worked with but they had been kind and funny. A tottering old man with a gaggle of grandchildren who constantly interrupted the calls. Rodrick wasn’t him and therefore he wasn’t allowed to call him Tim. He’d allow it for now, though, if he could get him out of this.

‘This’ being the staring contest he had found himself in with his boss. The anxiety was starting to crawl up his throat, threatening to turn into an apology when she slumps her shoulders and sighs, breaking eye contact. He lets out his own breath of relief. When she looks back again, she looks more real. 

“How about this: I’ll triple your accrual rate while you’re helping with this?”

His mouth drops open before he can catch himself and close it. That’s only ever allowed if given special reason like the soul needs to hurry up and get to the mortal realm to be a part of a major event. This was just to get him to a higher position. If she did it and they were found out, it could mean trouble. “Is she allowed to do that?” Timothy nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels Rodrick lean over to whisper to him. Twisting his hands in his lap, his back is uncomfortably straight when he answers her. 

“Done.”