After You

CW: language, death, physical injury, mental health

I always hold the door open for people because that’s how my mother taught me. "Life is too short to be impolite," she’d say before she crossed over, and so now whenever I see someone coming up behind me, instead of letting the door slam in their face like an asswad, I kindly hold it open for them, give them a quick nod to acknowledge their presence, and smile as they unknowingly walk through the liminal space between life and death.

None of them know what they’re walking into. They think they’re walking into the DMV perhaps or maybe the grocery store — anywhere but the afterlife. By the time they turn around, realizing they’ve gone the wrong way, I, the polite stranger, am gone, and no matter how hard they try to turn around — and believe me, they try — they can never go back.

I see a new entrant walking toward me now. A man about my age, late fifties maybe. It’s a cruel age to go, but there’s only one way out of this liminal space.

We make eye contact and I nod. He must think he’s come to the post office because he’s holding an envelope with a Forever stamp on it as he ambles toward me.

“Thanks, pal,” he says in a way that breaks my unbeating heart. When I see the back of his head, I shut the door tight. There’s always a microscopic moment of hesitation, like when you swat a fly, but I have to remember to move fast. Not because they can turn around and come back out, but because it hurts too much to see the face of someone who’s changed their mind about your character.

To be fair, I never chose this job. I only got it because it was given to me against my will. I often think about the first time I got here. I thought I’d arrived at my doorstep after a long day of work, expecting to find my wife Mindy outside watering the rose garden. She’d squeeze my shoulders extra tight, the way she always did, and I’d tell her what a day I had. How I’d somehow survived the crushing weight of a crane swinging toward my head.

But Mindy was nowhere in sight. Neither was the rose garden. Instead, a woman who was not Mindy waited outside the door. “This is your job now,” she said. She explained that she’d passed away two summers ago. Still in my construction clothes, I’d apparently passed away two hours ago. The woman told me that she’d been putting off going to the other side, but it was calling to her now.

Only one person can occupy the liminal space at at time. And they can occupy it indefinitely. Part of me wants to stay here forever, mostly because I’m afraid of what, if anything, waits on the other side of this door. No one knows for sure, and maybe that’s what scares me the most. Perhaps there’s a god. Or maybe there’s nothing. Just total darkness and then a complete loss of consciousness — senseless, instant destruction of every thought, feeling, and memory you’ve worked so hard to collect over the course of your life.

By now, the man with the envelope has realized this isn’t the post office. He knocks on the door, gently at first.

“Pal?” he calls desperately from the other side, still knocking, his knocks growing more and more frantic, like a fast-forwarded grandfather clock.

Eventually the chaos and panic goes silent. Where he goes from here, I can’t say for sure.

More and more people pass through for the rest of the day. I shouldn’t even call it a day. Time doesn’t really exist in liminal spaces. You’re just there, and if no one told you where you were, you’d think it’s real life.

“Coming in, too?” asks a woman with a yoga mat rolled under her arm.

As always, the answer is a resounding no. “After you,” I insist.

She crosses over and I do my usual routine — smile, nod, and then shut the door fast so I don’t have to see the horrified look of betrayal on her face.

Every now and then, I’ll get an overly polite person. Those are the ones who annoy me the most and make me the most anxious. “Are you sure you’re not coming in?” they ask holding the door for me behind them.

“No, I’m waiting for someone,” I always say, not ready to give up my time in this liminal space. “Go ahead.”

I’ll also get the occasional rude person where I open the door for them and they walk right past me, sneering without thanking me as I foolishly nod and smile. When that happens, I like to look after them as they walk into the void, waving bye-bye as they look back at me in horror. I imagine them walking into purgatory, and maybe that’s where I’ll go too, after all, if that’s what ends up being on the other side.

Although I don’t know how long I’ve been here or how much longer I’ll be here, there are times when I get bored, when no one seems to pass through. Eventually a small girl comes through. Life is cruel, and, like my mother said, too short, so you might as well be kind. It must be Halloween in the living world because she’s dressed like a skeleton. She holds out her candy bucket and I look around, empty-handed. I find a dead leaf in the liminal space and place it in her bucket because it’s all I can offer. She frowns, confused, and I open the heavy door for her when she realizes it’s the only path out. It’s the only path out for me as well, but I can’t bring myself to face the unknown.

My soul becomes depressed from that moment on and I often think back to her. I let more people pass, wishing there were a backway I could send them through, back to the physical world, back to their loved ones, or that I could let them linger here with me in this liminal space.

When yet another person approaches me, I begin my routine again — smile, nod, and as I open the door in my same tired way, the woman stops before the doorframe and squeezes my shoulders, extra tight.

“Michael?” asks Mindy, her eyes big like when I asked her to marry me.

“What are you doing at the bank?” she asks. “You’re dead.”

She speaks and moves with the confidence of someone who is still alive, oblivious to the fact that she’s now met my same demise.

Back when we were in the physical world, we always talked about who would go first. She always said she hoped it’d be her so that she didn’t have to live without me, and I always said I hoped it’d be me, because I didn’t know how to be without her.

And so I hold her, tell her everything I need to and have ever wanted to, and once we’ve lingered for too long, I pull the door open and walk through.