They say the first time you die is the worst; by the second time you might even be looking forward to it. I’m not quite there yet, but I am starting to understand the sentiment.


    I could begin by explaining how I died. But the truth is, I didn’t remember, not in the beginning. Apparently, that is common, much like how no one remembers being born. So, instead I’ll start with the first thing I do remember from after my death: Henry. He was a tall, gaunt, middle-aged looking man with salt and pepper hair and a bushy moustache to match. He wore a bowler hat and a tweed jacket that made it look like he had stepped out of some old detective movie. He seemed to simply materialize out of the thick, grey fog that surrounded me, and strolled over in a way that was jarringly casual. He looked me up and down, almost dismissively, then reached out a hand.


    “Well, let’s get this over with,” he sighed.


    “Get what over with? Who are you? Where are we?” I asked, the disorientation making it hard for me to even properly articulate my questions. I knew there was more I should be saying, but it wouldn’t come to me.


    “It doesn’t matter. Then again, what does?” he gave a little, humorless chuckle. “Just give me your hand and you can get moving on to the next place. Don’t worry about here, you won’t be staying long.”


    “What does that even mean?”


    This time, he ignored my question and simply grabbed my hand. For an instant, I was struck by the lack of sensation. I could tell he was touching me, but even now I wouldn’t be able to explain how I knew. It wasn’t like the touch you are probably familiar with, where you feel the heat of the hand and pressure of it against your skin. This was… flavorless, if that makes any sense. Like how plain gelatin is somewhat recognizable as food, but all the important parts are missing.


    I tried to pull my hand away, to get some distance from this stranger who had appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me, but he held firm and met my gaze.


    “Think about the worst thing you have ever done,” he instructed.


    Nothing about that sentence was comforting. I certainly didn’t want to obey. But it turned out I didn’t really get a say in the matter.


    The flood of memories was instant and overwhelming. Everything I had ever done that I felt guilty about or regretted in any way rushed into my mind, unbidden. Hundreds, thousands of petty, insubstantial slights and failures flowing out of me like a dark river and into the stranger’s hand. When I knocked over Lucy Cole’s sandcastle in first grade because I was jealous of her new bicycle, when I broke up with my high school boyfriend, the first time I snuck out to attend a college party. I could feel the darker memories, the heavier ones, looming underneath, trying to rise to the surface of my mind. I recoiled from them, dreading having to relive them too, but before that could happen, something suddenly seemed to change. The man’s hands dropped from mine and he collapsed to his knees, coughing violently. Oily black liquid spilled from his throat, splattering on my legs and shoes, until he was kneeling in an ever-expanding pool of dark ichor. Instinctively, I backed away, further from the fluid that now seemed to seep from every orifice of the stranger. He slowly grew smaller and smaller, his form dissolving into the small lake of darkness beneath him. Just before his mouth dipped below the surface, I heard him gasp,


    “Finally.”


    Then he was gone. I stood, dumbfounded, looking down at the perfectly still, dark water. It reflected no light. Then again, there wasn’t any obvious light for it to reflect, was there? Not that it was dark where I was, it’s just that there was no obvious source of light. Tentatively, I reached my hand down towards the surface, extending a finger out to touch the liquid, but at the last moment, I thought better of it and pulled back, edging away from the pool.


    “Probably for the best.”


    I jumped at the sound of the voice behind me, and spun, half expecting to find the man with the moustache standing there, having performed some sort of elaborate, revolting magic trick. But this was someone new, shorter and stockier with sandy hair and a crooked, sarcastic smile. He raised one hand and beckoned me closer,


    “I would move a bit faster, if I were you. We probably don’t have too long.”


    “Too long before what?” I was getting frustrated, could no one in this place explain anything?


    “Before…”


    Sandy-hair was interrupted when the black pool seemed to explode outward as an enormous, formless mass burst from the liquid. Its shape was impossible to describe, and it undulated like the wax globs in a lava lamp. The color shifted through shades of black, grey and silver, rippling like a greasy cloud. I don’t know how, but I could sense it studying me, a fathomless hunger emanating from it. The more I watched it, the more I felt those dark thoughts stir in the depths of my mind. A need for something I didn’t understand and perhaps had never experienced filled me. I stared, transfixed, for a moment before I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a voice in my ear,


    “Don’t look at it too closely,” he whispered. “Just turn and walk slowly away. We don’t have what it wants. And it has nothing to offer us, either.”


    That really only raised more questions, but this time I decided it was best to keep them to myself. Forcing my gaze away, I followed the stranger further into the fog, until the pond and the beast were lost from sight. It did not follow, or even make a sound as we retreated. But the hunger remained. Palpable in the air.


    After we walked a short distance on the curiously flat and featureless terrain, Sandy-hair stopped and sat cross-legged on the ground, gesturing for me to do the same.


    “So, I imagine you have questions?” he asked.


    “What in the hell was that?” I blurted.


    “Close enough, I suppose, depending on your theological leanings,” he shrugged. “Do you believe in hell?”


    “Is that where we are?”


    It certainly didn’t look like any place on earth I’d ever seen.


    “Probably not. This is a… liminal space. It’s where the dead go, before they travel to the next place. Whatever that may be.”Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    “So, I am dead.”


    “Yup. And before you ask, I don’t know how it happened either. It might come back to you, with time, but it might not. I’d recommend not dwelling on it.”


    “How am I supposed to do that?!”


    “Try focusing on other things, for the moment.”


    I almost demanded to know what could be more pressing than my death, before I remembered that I truly did have many urgent questions, so I decided to circle back to the issue of how I had ended up dead, later.


    “Ok, who are you?”


    “Huh,” he snorted.


    “What?”


    “Oh, just most people need more convincing than that, is all,” he shrugged again. “Either way, name’s Finn and I am a… let’s go with psychopomp. I’ve always liked that term the best.”


    “You guide the dead? So, you are here to guide me to the afterlife?”


    “Well… I would have been, but you missed that particular boat, unfortunately.”


    “How so?” I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going.


    “It is your bad luck that Henry got to you first. He was a nice guy, but you were apparently his final client,” seeing my visible confusion, Finn continued. “See, I like the term psychopomp, but it doesn''t capture all that we do. We are also… sin eaters, I suppose you could say. I’ll give you the simple version for now. Basically, no one makes it to the other side if they have sin weighing on their soul, and it turns out that everyone has sin weighing on their soul. So, a solution needed to be found. At some point, long before I arrived here, the people trapped in this place made an agreement. One person would take on the sin for everyone else, so that the rest could pass on to the next place. They drew lots and the man that drew the short straw became the first sin eater. We are his descendants, so to speak, in the sense that we serve the same function, taking the sins from the dead and allowing them to pass on. You understand?”


    I remembered the feeling of all my darkest thoughts and memories being drawn from me, drawn into him. Somehow, I did understand.


    “So, the man… Henry, he came to me to consume my sin and let me pass on to… heaven?”


    Finn shrugged, a gesture I was beginning to realize he used frequently,


    “Maybe, who knows? I can’t say what’s next, and I will never see it myself. Either way, yes, Henry was supposed to consume your sins. But every sin eater has a limit. When we reach it, well, you saw.”


    “I did, but…” I hesitated. “I’m not sure I understand. Did that… thing consume him? Why didn’t it take us, too?”


    “Well, to answer your questions in order: it did, in a manner of speaking; and it will, eventually,” Finn considered his next words carefully. “We call them demons, because it seems like as good a name as any, and each of us will become one, someday. A being of pure appetite and desire, it seeks only to consume more sin.”


    “Isn’t that a good thing? Why can’t I just let it, so I can move on?”


    “Yeah, it doesn’t quite work that way. That’s like asking why you can’t dry your hair with a towel you just fished out of a lake. A demon is a bubbling mass of sin. It wants to consume, but in practice it only taints the things it touches further.”


    “So… should we maybe be moving farther away from it?”


    “Nah. As I said, it doesn’t want anything from us. It wants to consume sin, and it can’t get any from a sin eater, so it doesn’t really pay us much mind. You don’t want to stay too close to it, as that can have some unpleasant side effects, but otherwise we don’t need to worry too much.”


    “Wait, us? But I’m not…”


    “Yeah, about that. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but welcome to the team,” he offered a sympathetic half-smile.


    “What? Why me? I never agreed to this!” I jumped to my feet.


    “No one does. It is and has always been a luck of the draw sort of thing. The first pulled the short straw, now we get chosen by whoever happens to come in contact with a demon. Usually that means either being the last client of a ‘dying’ psychopomp, like you, or being found by a demon before a psychopomp can even reach you. As I said, the touch of a demon taints things, and it is permanent. So, sadly, you can no longer be cleansed. Not by me, not by anyone. You can take sin in, but you cannot rid yourself of it. Which means that you can’t leave. Ever. And since you are now stuck here, you get to be one of us. Hurray.”


    “Fuck that! I am not staying here forever.”


    “Well no, not forever. Just until you eventually become a demon.”


    “No. No. That isn’t fair. Can’t you just do what you do and let me leave?”


    “Sorry, wish I could. But once you have touched a demon, there is nothing anyone can do. Trust me, I have personal experience in the matter. You get used to it.”


    “I don’t want to get used to it!”


    “None of us did, really. But that’s life. Death? Whatever.”


    “Well, I refuse,” I spat. “How about that? I won’t do this job and you can’t force me. I won’t guide the dead; I won’t eat their sins. I refuse!”


    Finn shrugged again, slowly rising from the ground,


    “Well, I see that we have reached the end of the productive portion of this conversation, for now. Perhaps I will see you again later, when you feel up to continuing.”


    He turned and began to saunter away.


    “What? No, don’t go!” I chased after him.


    “Look, you really are complaining to the wrong person. I am not in charge here, I don’t make any of these decisions. More importantly, I don’t have the energy or the inclination to argue with you. Better to let you wear yourself out, first.”


    “So, it doesn’t bother you, that I won’t do this stupid job?”


    “No, why would it? I don’t really care what you do and no one else is going to force you, either. It’s probably better for us if you don’t do it, honestly. Less competition. But, trust me, you will do it. Eventually.”


    “Why would I? Why do any of you? This is ridiculous!”


    “As I said, I am not having this argument. You will figure it out for yourself. Maybe then we’ll talk again, when you are ready to hear more. I’ll see you around, kid.”


    “You can’t just leave me here!”


    “Why not? What’s the worst that can happen? You’re already dead.”


    Then he melted into the fog. I tried to follow, but it was as if he had simply vanished. I was completely alone. I stared out into the featureless fog for a long time, trying to decide what I was supposed to do next. For lack of any better ideas, I just started walking in the opposite direction from where I had last seen the demon.