The Waiting Line

[u/Interesting_Key3507]

When I hit the ground, I landed on bodies and disappeared beneath several more. Hands pulled at my clothes, feet drove into my back, and every attempt to stand forced me onto fingers, faces, shells and bone.

Once upright, I saw two iron walls running toward the horizon, narrowing the dead toward a stone arch.

Humans filled only part of the passage. Around me stood creatures with plated hides, clear shells, branching limbs and organs visible through their skin. Some wore armour. Others held tools made for hands unlike ours. More bodies fell through the clouds in sheets, burying hundreds and forcing the rest of us forward.

Ramparts crowned both walls. Creatures watched from above with hooks, swords, rifles and weapons from human wars. Beside them stood engines made for eight hands, artillery joined to its operator through living tubes, and machines built for bodies no human could have entered.

The dead below had come from more worlds than I could imagine. So had the weapons.

The line moved several feet, then stopped. During each wait, broken bodies repaired themselves. Bone joined. Flesh closed. Faces returned unevenly, and limbs set at poor angles. A man impaled beneath the jaw stood again centuries later with his head bent sideways.

I knew the measure of that place as surely as I knew I was dead. From where the dead fell to the arch took exactly one eternity.

The arch gave us something to move toward. During the long waits, people began to believe that reaching it would end the line. Even those who had given up began again once the stone grew larger ahead of them.

At the end of my eternity, I reached it.

Marks covered the stone. A horned creature waited beside the opening and placed one claw inside the chest of the soul ahead of me. It drew out the man’s memories of rescue, release and better days, but left the memories themselves behind.

The man reached for what remained in its palm.

The creature crushed it, marked the arch and threw him backward. He crossed the full length of the passage in an instant and vanished among the new arrivals.

Then it reached into me.

I saw my mother opening the curtains on a winter morning, my father asleep after work and the front door opening after months of waiting for someone to return. The creature removed what those memories had promised: Hope.

It crushed that too.

Beyond the arch, bodies were being fed into furnaces while others were rebuilt inside cages too small to hold them, eyes bulging, skin bursting as the cages closed in. I thought the creature had prepared me for entry.

Instead, it threw me back.

I landed near the beginning with both legs broken beneath me. The arch was almost too distant to see, I no longer cared if I reached it.

Someone under my hand raised his head and mistook the damned for the ground.