At 11:59

Michael Thomas woke to the sound of a single knock at the front door.

The wind outside howled along the siding, rattling the gutters as snow hammered the windows in frantic bursts. For a moment he thought the storm had made the noise, but then it came again—soft and deliberate.

He reached for his phone on the nightstand.

11:59 p.m.

His wife slept beside him. His infant son breathed steadily in the bassinet at the foot of the bed.

Michael blinked into the dark, letting the sound settle into him. A knock at this hour made no sense.

He eased himself out of bed, careful not to disturb his wife. The house felt colder than it should, as if the storm had seeped through the walls. Another knock drifted up the staircase, gentle but patient.

He slipped into his robe, knotting it with hands that felt clumsy from sleep, and stepped into the hallway. Michael crossed to the hall closet, opened it slowly, and reached for the aluminum bat he kept tucked in the back.

The bat was cold in his hand.

He took a slow breath and started down the stairs.

At the bottom, the front door stood framed by the dim glow of the porch light, its frosted glass trembling slightly. One more knock sounded, quiet and measured.

He moved to the door, heart thudding.

“Who is it?” he called softly.

No answer.

Michael inhaled, unlocked the deadbolt, and pulled the door open a few inches.

An older man stood on the porch. His coat hung neatly despite the blowing snow. His expression was gentle, almost familiar. The storm swirled around him, yet he seemed untouched by it.

The man inclined his head, as if greeting someone he’d expected.

“Come on,” he said.

The words had no urgency, only certainty.

Michael barely had time to frown before the world shifted under his feet. The cold porch dissolved, the bat slipped from his fingers, and the blizzard vanished in a wash of warm light.

He stumbled forward into a room he hadn’t set foot in for decades.

Michael was seated at a small wooden table, his robe still tied around his waist, the fabric now warm against his skin. His bare feet rested on a rug he knew instantly the faded jungle print Nana had bought “just for him,” the one he used to lie on with a box of toy cars for hours.

The room was impossibly faithful to memory.

The low bookshelves.

The toy chest with the crooked lid.

The old television in the corner with the rabbit-ear antenna, turned off but present, like a prop in an old photograph.

Only a few details were wrong. The colors were sharper than they should’ve been. The dust was gone. And the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clock on the wall held its hands fixed at 11:59.

Still, he could hear it ticking.

Michael’s heart was slowing from panic into something stranger: disorientation, nostalgia, the unease of being comforted when he hadn’t asked to be.

Across from him, in Nana’s floral armchair, sat the man from the porch.

He no longer wore a coat. Just a simple dark sweater and slacks. His face was lined, but in a soft way.

“Welcome, Michael,” the man said, folding his hands loosely in his lap. “I know this is disorienting. Take a breath.”

Michael glanced around again, more sharply this time. The little lamp with the tea-stained shade. The plastic bin of blocks. The tiny rocking chair Nana used to sit in while she read to him.

“This… this has to be a dream,” he whispered.

“How—?” He cleared his throat. “How am I here? Where is my house? My wife? My son?”

The man nodded once, as if these were the right questions to start with.

“You’re safe,” he said. “For this moment, you’re exactly where you need to be. This room was chosen to help you feel less afraid.”

Michael stared at him. “Chosen by who?”

“By the department I work for,” the man said mildly. “You may think of it as… administration.”

Michael looked down at his own hands resting on the table. They were steady now. Warmer. He realized he could smell something faint in the air—Nana’s sugar cookies, maybe?

“What is this?” he asked quietly.

The man leaned back slightly in the armchair, studying him with open, almost clinical kindness.

“This,” he said, “is your pre-departure interview.”

Michael let out a short breath of disbelief that almost became a laugh. “My what?”

“Your end-of-life assessment,” the man clarified. “Standard operating procedure. We do it for everyone.”

Michael blinked. “You mean I’m—dead?”

“Not yet.” The man tilted his head. “You will die tomorrow. This always takes place the night before.”

Michael’s throat went dry. “No. I’m thirty-five. I’m healthy. I have a wife, I have a baby, I—there’s no way you know—”

“I don’t know how,” the man replied gently. “That’s not my department. I only know the fact of it. The method, the timing, they’re not my concern.”

Michael swallowed hard. “Then who are you? Are you… God?”

The man gave a low, thoughtful chuckle, the kind that held no mockery—only truth.

“No, Michael,” he said. “I’m not God. I’m nowhere near that. I’m just the one who asks the questions.”

He said it with such simple honesty that Michael felt a wave of anger rise, then falter, with nowhere to land.

He gestured slightly to the side, and for the first time Michael noticed a slim notebook on the table between them. No name on the cover. No logo. Just a narrow, well-used spine and a pen resting across it.

“I’m an interviewer,” the man continued. “Not a judge. Not a jury. Not a priest. Not God, or Saint Peter, or any figure you might be searching for in that direction. I’m just here to ask you seven questions.”

He paused, almost as if deciding whether to elaborate, then added with a mild shrug:

“Though I appear human now, I’m not. This form is only meant to soothe you—familiar shapes, familiar gestures. If you saw what I actually am, this conversation would be considerably shorter, and far less productive.”

Michael felt a cold pulse of fear move through him.

The man offered a small, reassuring smile. “Think of this as my… day job, as you would say. As for what I am beyond that, it’s unnecessary information. And frankly, it would be unfathomable to you, so there’s no point or reason to describe it.”

He tapped the notebook gently with one finger.

“What matters is simple: I ask the questions. You answer them. And what comes next unfolds as it must.”

“And then what?” Michael asked.

“And then your next steps are determined.”

“By you?”

The man shook his head. “No. Your destination is determined largely by the life you’ve led. My questions merely complete the file. If you find yourself somewhere unpleasant, don’t look to me—I’m the clipboard, not the verdict.”

“Can I say no?” he asked.

“There is no refusal. There is no lying. There is no eloping from what is already set in motion. The faster you answer, the sooner my shift ends and your last day begins. Resist if you like, but all it does is prolong the inevitable. You’ll wake tomorrow with no memory of this conversation.”

Michael’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table. He looked over his shoulder.

He took a breath. “Seven questions,” he said slowly.

“Seven,” the man confirmed.

Michael looked at the clock again. The hands were still at 11:59. They hadn’t budged.

“All right,” he said finally. “Ask your questions.”

The man nodded, satisfied, and opened the notebook.

“Good,” he said. “We’ll begin with something simple.”

He glanced down at the page.

“First question,” he said. “What time did you set your alarm for this morning?”

Michael stared at him, thrown by the banality of it. “That’s, really the first question?”

“They all count,” the man replied. “No trick questions. Just answer honestly.”

Michael let out a tense breath. “Six-thirty,” he said. “So I could get up before the baby. I hit snooze twice.”

The man wrote something down. Michael couldn’t see what.

“Thank you,” the man said. “Now we’ll move on.”

He turned a page.

“Second question: If your last twenty-four hours were replayed on a screen, what would we see you doing the most?”

Michael’s mind went back through the day like a fast, uncomfortable montage: scrolling, replying, skimming, rushing.

“Working,” he said. “On my phone. On my laptop. Commuting. Checking things. I played with my son after dinner. For a while.”

“How long is ‘a while’?” the man asked.

Michael frowned. “I don’t know. Ten minutes. Maybe twenty.”

The man wrote. The room felt a fraction warmer.

“Third question: Who in your life believes they know you best?”

The answer rose automatically: My wife. Then something snagged beneath it.

A dim hotel room. A conference three states away. A woman whose name he no longer remembered. The way he’d told himself it didn’t count because it only happened once, because he’d come home and decided to be better.

His stomach twisted.

“My wife,” he said again slowly.

“And does she?” the man asked.

A beat of silence.

“No,” Michael said quietly.

The man made another note, his face unchanged.

Michael’s hands tingled. He suddenly needed to move.

“Can I get some water?” he asked.

“Of course.” The man gestured toward a small side table. Two glasses sat there; only one was full. “That one is yours.”

He drank, buying himself a moment.

When he sat back down, the man was waiting.

“Fourth question,” he said. “When was the last time you chose truth over comfort?”

Michael frowned. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“You do,” the man said gently. “Think.”

He thought of the argument he didn’t have when his boss made a decision he hated. Of the conversation he didn’t start when his wife had asked, You’re okay, right? You’ve seemed… far away lately.

He searched for a clear moment of choosing truth anyway, despite the cost.

“I don’t remember,” he said finally, shame creeping hot up his neck.

The man only nodded, writing.

Michael let out a shaky laugh. “You know, for an interview that’s supposed to be standard procedure, you’re doing a good job of making me feel like garbage.”

“I’m not making you feel anything,” the man replied. “I’m only asking questions.”

Michael shifted again. He suddenly wanted out of the chair, out of the room, out of this entire surreal moment.

“I need some air,” he muttered, pushing himself up. “I’m done with this.”

He strode toward the back, wooden door and grasped Nana’s doorknob, the round brass one with tiny dents where his small hands used to slip, warm now with the memory of a thousand Sunday visits.

The door led into a dim corridor that had never been part of Nana’s house. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The floor was scuffed tile. For a moment, Michael thought of his old high school.

He stepped into the hallway.

Doors lined both sides, each identical: beige, numbered, worn at the edges. He grabbed the nearest handle and threw it open.

Nana’s playroom.

The man in the armchair. The notebook. The TMNT clock at 11:59.

Michael’s chest tightened. He slammed the door, took three quick steps down the hall, and grabbed another handle.

Same room. Same man. Same green amphibious clock.

He tried again. And again.

Every door opened onto the same scene.

After the fourth or fifth attempt, he leaned his head against the cool hallway wall and closed his eyes.

He thought of his son’s tiny hand wrapped around his finger. His wife’s tired smile.

“Fine,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Fine.”

He walked back into the room that would not stop being the room, and sat down.

The man waited until Michael’s breathing steadied.

“Shall we continue?” he asked.

Michael nodded, jaw tight.

“Fifth question,” the man said. “What did you take from someone that you can never return?”

Michael didn’t name a possession. He named what he’d broken. "Trust" - not shattered, but cracked in a way unseen.

He wrote, then turned another page.

“Sixth question,” he said. “What part of yourself do you hope your son never discovers?”

That answer came faster than Michael liked.

His temper. His tendency to retreat when something felt hard. The dull, private resentment that sometimes flickered when he thought about all he’d given up, followed immediately by the guilt of having thought it at all.

He spoke in fragments. The man let them stand.

Finally, the notebook closed with a soft, final sound.

The man turned one last page in the notebook, though he didn’t look down at it. His eyes stayed on Michael, steady and unblinking, as if this moment mattered more than all the others combined.

“Seventh and final question,” he said quietly. “Now that you know your life ends tomorrow… where do you believe you should go next—and why do you think you deserve it?”

Michael opened his mouth, but no words came.

Instead, something inside him split—not painfully, but honestly.

A litany rose up unbidden:

I should have loved more gently.

I should have listened better.

I should have lived slower.

I should have been present.

I should have forgiven.

I should have been a better man.

His breath trembled. His chest tightened. His hands curled against the table as if trying to anchor himself to something real.

The interviewer waited—not impatient, not pushing.

Almost kind.

“Michael,” he said softly. “The question.”

Michael swallowed hard and finally found his voice.

“I think…” He paused, collecting the words like fragile pieces.

“I think I should go somewhere I can have a second chance. Because....I’m flawed. Deeply flawed. I always have been.

But I tried.

I tried in all the ways I knew how.

And if there’s any place left where I could begin again… I believe I deserve that.

I’m just human.

And because....I would do better if I could.”

The man didn’t smile, but something in his expression ease.

For a moment, the room held its breath with him.

Then the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clock on the wall gave a soft, decisive click.

12:00.

The interviewer’s body flickered—once, twice, like a reflection losing its source.

His edges softened, blurred, and then dissolved entirely, fading into the warm air as though he had never been there at all.

The walls trembled.

Nana’s lamp bled into a smear of gold.

The toy chest folded inward like collapsing paper.

The rocking chair dissolved grain by grain.

The entire room unraveled into light.

Cold wind slammed into him.

Michael was suddenly standing outside his own home, barefoot on the porch, snow swirling violently around him.

The blizzard roared as though uninterrupted, the sky a white blur.

The porch light flickered above him, haloing the storm in a trembling circle of pale gold.

And then,

The world snapped into darkness.