Late for the Last Time

Liv hadn’t been on time for anything, ever, and this was no different. She knew it would still be there later, after all, and she’d had things she had to do.

The doors were massive, imposing. She took a deep breath and started toward them before stopping. Liv looked at the summons again. She was more than just a little late.

Liv shrugged. What are they going to do, sue me? she thought. As she began to climb the stairs toward the doors, they began to swing close.

The stairs were interminable. She wondered how they accommodated the handicapped. There were no ramps in sight, and no signage for accessible entry.

Liv continued to trudge up the stairs while the doors continued their slow, stately arches, moving inexorably closed. She was surprised that she hadn’t gotten short of breath on such a massive staircase, but she wasn’t going to run and risk tumbling back down them.

Even if the doors closed before she got there, she could truthfully claim she’d been here, but slowed down by the stairs. She noticed, now that she was closer to the massive doors, that there seemed to be person-sized doors set within the main doors.

She wondered why a place like this insisted on such grandiose, over-the-top displays of power and authority. We get it, already, she thought, we’re peons and you’re all the overlords of everything. Sheesh.

Liv climbed the last dozen steps as the massive doors closed with an almost imperceptible click. Not the massive thump she’d expected. That quiet click held the uncomfortable feeling of finality.

She stepped to one of the person-sized doors set in the bottom of the main doors that stood at least four stories tall. With a deep breath and final resignation, she knocked on the door.

No sooner had she knocked than the small door slid open. The man who stood before her in a grey suit made her uneasy. He was nondescript, bland-faced and forgettable.

“Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, you are late,” he said.

“I had things to do,” she said, “and it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

“From the moment of your birth, two weeks late, you have never been on time for anything.” He looked at a tablet in his hand that she hadn’t seen before.

“Yeah, everyone knows that about me,” she said with a shrug. “My friends don’t mind, and my family’s used to it. My boss understands, and I get paid piece work rather than hourly. At least my work is always impeccable.”

“Your friends tolerated you, your family reached the end of their tolerance long ago, and your boss only assigned you work that had no deadline.” He swiped the tablet to a new page. “The closest you have been to appearing at an appointment on time was during your second year of school, when you were seven minutes late for your school photo.”

“Oh, come on,” Liv said. “You can’t blame me for being late in grade school! My mother never got me to anything on time.”

“It was always you that slowed her down,” he said. “Any time you were not a factor, your mother arrived on time or early. You acted as an anchor, slowing her down, and causing her no end of stress.”

Liv bit her lip. She felt the truth in his words. As much as she didn’t like to admit it herself, she was a burden to everyone around her. “I…I’m sorry.” Her voice was as small as she felt at that moment.

The man turned off the tablet and it disappeared from his hand. “It seems only fitting,” he said, “that you are subjected to this.” He pointed to the stairs behind her.

She turned to look, and the stairs seemed to descend forever into darkness. “What? What’s going on?”

“As unlikely as it sounds, you arrived at hell as we closed the gates for eternity.” He raised a hand. “Before you ask, heaven closed thousands of years ago.”

“Thousands of years? What are you talking about?”

“You are the last human soul. We’ve waited for you as long as we could, but we must move to a new universe now, so that all the other human souls can be reborn into new forms.” A small smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, you will remain in this universe until its eventual heat death, after which you will be forever in an eternal void…alone.”

“Come on,” she said, “you’re here, I’m here, the door’s open, let’s just move on.”

The smile dropped from the man’s face. “That’s where you are wrong. You are here, I am not. The door is not open, just a facsimile in order to pass your judgement. We have already gone.”

“Bu—but…I had things to take care of! It’s not like I was just wandering around doing nothing!” she cried.

“Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing. For three thousand years you wandered the Earth as a ghost, never moving on, never accomplishing anything. Then you spent a billion more making your way here. You have always been and will always be nothing but a faceless wanderer.”

“Th—three…thousand…years? Then a billion more?” she asked. “How?”

“Time moves differently for the dead, but then, time has always moved differently for you, hasn’t it?” A frown darkened his face. “Had you made this one appointment on time, you’d find yourself being birthed on a new world, in a new universe, right now.”

“But I’m stuck here forever?”

“Indeed.” He smirked with a perverse joy. “Perhaps now,” he said, “you’ll have enough time to do all your very important things. No one will ever bother you or ask you to hurry up, ever again.”

The man took a step backwards and the small door slid closed. The massive doors in front of her shimmered and disappeared. Liv looked around. With the building gone, she found herself floating in the void of space, watching the stars wink out, one by one.