“Welcome to Purgatory. Please take a seat in the waiting area and your name will be called shortly.”

The Tanoy crackled into silence, and the herd of confused and disorientated people began to shuffle into the waiting area—a bland black room with two long columns of benches running the seemingly never-ending length of the place. A faint rectangle of light shone from the far end of the room. Amongst the herd stood the tall and slender form of a woman named Karma – who was well aware that she was dead, and she was going to Hell.

Karma focused on the door as she took her designated seat. Looking around, she realized that none of the other people were fully in focus. Their features were blurry and their bodies just shapes. She sat between two faceless shapes. The more she focused on the scene around her, the more her panic began to rise. 

Beside her a woman came into focus. Karma was forty years old, raven haired and extremely pretty. She had deep brown eyes, straight teeth, and was perky in all the right places. This woman was as far opposite from Karma as one could imagine. She was possibly the same age, but it was difficult to tell by looking at this woman. She was on the heavier side, with straggly graying hair, watery eyes, and blotches of red that did nothing to compliment her sallow skin. She glanced up at Karma, as if she too was just noticing the others surrounding her, and offered a watery smile. 

“What do you think of The Door, Misses?” she asked, jerking her bobble of a head toward the shaft of light. 

Incidentally, Karma hated the word misses. “So, this is Hell,” she thought to herself, returning the smile, though with less sincerity.

“Well,” she began, resisting the urge to punch this woman. “If I had to guess, I would say that’s where we go when our name gets called,” the woman held out her pudgy hand.

“My name’s Josephine. But everyone calls me Jojo, ” this woman was insufferable. 

“Karma.” Big Jojo, Karma renamed her, continued—slightly flushed that Karma hadn’t taken her hand. 

“Do you remember what happened to you?” She asked tentatively, glancing at Karma through those watery eyes. “I mean, how you-y’know,” her words trailed off as she dragged her finger across her throat, crudely miming the action of dying. 

Karma didn’t answer, so Big Jojo pushed on. “I remember being in the hospital. It was all beeping machines, lights and wires coming out of me,” Karma’s eyes rolled. “I was surrounded by nurses and doctors, and they kept shouting numbers at each other in a panic, and then all of a sudden – nothing.”

This brought home a realization to Karma, who also remembered her own death. She was lying face down, drunk, and completely sparkled out of her mind on cocaine and pills—barely clinging to consciousness. She remembered seeing blue lights, hearing panicked sounding voices and then, just like Big Jojo, nothingness. She was sure, however, that more people would be missing this woman than would miss her. Big Jojo didn’t seem like a judgemental drunken mess whose greatest pleasure was insulting stranger’s physique. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the Tanoy, who’s crackling snapped everyone to full attention. 

“Miss Orla Morrison, please go through The Door.”

Another crackle punched the air, and then silence. Where were the speakers? Karma and Big Jojo looked around to see who Orla Morrison was. A young, pretty woman with dark hair suddenly came into focus. She rose from her seat, looking around nervously as if for guidance, and shuffled sheepishly towards the door; suddenly disappearing without a backwards glance. Alarmed Karma turned to Big Jojo.

“I remember the nothing too,” she whispered. “I was there, alive, but not well. Then all of a sudden, I was nothing. Just nothing. And, then I heard it—the Tanoy. Telling us we were in purgatory,” she paused, taking a second to gather her thoughts. “I need a drink.”

And, she did. Karma, though beautiful and according to this ridiculous woman who wouldn’t stop talking to her, seemingly very fucking approachable. Karma was, and always had been, completely reliant on alcohol to function. She despised people of all ages, races, creeds, and backgrounds. Her best and only friend was cheap supermarket Pinot Grigio. She imagined the random people who would clear out her one-bedroom flat back in the realm of the living. How many empty Pino bottles would they have to clear? She could almost hear them clinking together— a sound that made a little cold ball drop heavily to the pit of her stomach. Is this why I’m here? She thought, rather than frolicking up in the clouds with Angels and cherubs. It dawned on her.

“Jojo, what do you think they mean by purgatory?” Karma’s voice quivered as she tried to gauge what Big Jojo was thinking. Did she also have the panic of someone who could potentially be burning in Hell for eternity? Karma’s thoughts were going too fast to keep up. Was there a set of pearly gates beyond that door, guarded by a saint in a tunic who would determine her fate? 

She fucking hoped not. How would an omniscient being react to her life. The paths she chose and the decisions she made were not exactly moral. 

Before Big Jojo could answer her though, the crackling Tanoy came to life once more.

“Miss Josephine Gable, please go through The Door.” 

Almost instantly, the tears welled up on the rotund woman’s blotched face. She slowly stood, shaking with freight in the face of her predator. Without a word to Karma, or even a glance, she sidled down the aisle between the rows of benches, determined to not glance at the thousands of eyes now fixed on her.  Her curvy frame began to shrink as she wobbled towards The Door, then was swallowed into the light—gone to who-knows-where. 

Karma continued staring at The Door after Big Jojo’s departure. She wondered what was happening. She knew, although she wasn’t sure how she knew, that every life choice she’s made would be dissected once her name was called. Staring blankly at the other individuals in the waiting area, she wondered if they were all doomed for eternal damnation just as she was.

“If Heaven has a blacklight, I hope it doesn’t shine on me too long,” she mused.

It wasn’t true what they said. Your life did not flash before your eyes in the moments before your death. It was not while in Hell’s waiting room, where your every decision, every dickhead move, and every mistake came back to haunt you.

Karma thought about booze. The first memory to flash before her eyes was when she was seventeen. There were four of them; young, pretty, and exceptionally bitchy. The four of them had chipped in for a bottle of Vodka, with some cola as a mixer. The rules of underage drinking were clear. You had to spin around while drinking; that was the only way to heighten your drunken state to one of unheard beauty. This state could only be achieved by spinning. But, Karma would inevitably drink far too much far too fast, causing chaos to ensue. She visualized herself as a drunken mess, vomiting in the park for everyone to see, while screaming abusive comments to any bystanders who dared comment on how ridiculous she looked. She then recoiled as she remembered how she, without any shame, squatted in the street beside her puddle of vomit and created another puddle to keep it company. It’s no wonder the boys found her irresistible. 

Another memory clambered to the forefront of her mind as she waited for her name to be called. The time she was drinking in a cemetery with a gang of friends and some other kids from her high school. A girl, who had a habit of talking way too much, had stolen a bottle of gin from Karma’s parent’s cupboard. As the loud-mouth girl passed the bottle around to a friend, Karma jerked the bottle into the girl’s mouth—hitting her front tooth in the process. The girl sealed her mouth in shock, and once releasing her grip, noticed her front tooth sitting in the palm of her hand, decorated in a pool of her own blood. Karma felt no remorse at the time, and would probably do it again. But now, sitting in this itchy, increasingly warm room, the guilt began to gnaw away at her. She bit the inside of her cheek until it bled too.

“Mister Kenneth Small, please go through The Door,” that voice was too pleasant for what was going on in Karma’s mind. It rated worse than the fuzzy white noise that bookended the announcements. 

Garbled memories flitted through Karma’s mind in quick snippets as she watched Kenneth take his final walk of shame. The time she poured cider on her friend’s jacket so it would stink, and wouldn’t be allowed out the following weekend. The time the police were chasing her, and Karma lifted up her shirt to flash them her spider bites. The time she dialed a girl’s mother, and kept it on loudspeaker just to secretly encourage the girl to ramble on about how drunk she was and which guy she was going to fuck. That girl must’ve been in deep shit, but Karma wouldn’t know. Most of these girls stopped talking to her after an evening of harmless drinking.

Her mind now focused on her mid-twenties. Drinking herself into near oblivion with random work colleagues from whatever temporary agency job. Visions of spilled drinks on colleagues' phones, leaving the party early to take some random guy home with her, or just starting arguments all whirred around her mind. The terror was beginning to get real now. What the fuck is going to happen when I go through that door?

One night was crisp in her brain. Starting the evening with some home-made cocktails in another pal's house. They mixed whatever kind of spirits were cheap with whatever fruit juice made them palatable. After that they moved on to the bottle of Sam-fucking-buca and started on shots. Karma could almost taste the spicy syrup as she thought about it.  

As she sat deep in thought, imagining her absolute worst behavior, a figure took the empty seat where Big Jojo once sat. This one was a man, and what a man! Slender, though muscular, olive skin, deep brown soulful eyes, and from the bulge in his trousers, exactly Karma’s type. No fuzz around him—he was completely clear. Side-glancing his frame, she noticed his scent. The first scent she noticed in this bare room. It overwhelmed her. The warm sandalwood mixed with musk. It was woody. It was strong. It smelled of life, of fire, of sex. Life that Karma was no longer part of. Her existence was over – done. She was nothing. Just a husk, doomed to a fate that was still unknown to her. Unknown until her name was called, probably for the last time, and she stepped through that fucking door of light at the end of the room. She turned, tears in her eyes, towards the handsome man to find he was looking at her, smiling.

“Hi there,” he had a gentle voice. She swallowed, smiling. What she wouldn't give to have this man in life. To touch him and look at his beautiful features. She wondered how he would taste, if his chest was thick with black hair, rough and rugged. She imagined how he would fuck her. 

“I need a bastarding drink!”

His expression didn’t show any surprise, even if he felt it. He gently placed his hand over hers. Softness and warmth. Such glorious warmth spread through her entire body, tingling, exciting, and calming all at once. This was the  unspoken reassurance that was missing every day in her waking life. Just looking at him was enough. No words could improve on this unexpected feeling of wholeness in such a dismal place. She almost forgot where she was. And then, in true Karma style, she destroyed the fantasy by opening her mouth.

“You should probably sit somewhere else,” she began. “I’m a monster.”

He didn’t respond with words, only a look that seemed to encourage her to go on.

“I have an enormous problem with boozing, and I ruin the lives of everyone and everything that I come into contact with when I’m drunk. Especially men, and especially men who look like you. You actually remind me of this one unfortunate man who I tried to wrangle into bed one night when I was out drunk with my friend. I liked the look of this guy and I made an immediate beeline for him. On his arm, in his face, good grief I was all over the poor guy. You could see his face fall into a fake smile as he squirmed away from me and tried to put as many people in between us as possible. I took that very personally. But not against him—against everyone else,” Karma took a calming breath. The tears were falling thickly as she spoke to the silent listener.  

“So, there I am,  in the nastiest mood possible, desperate for this guy's attention, and all the while I’m tanning drink after drink. I couldn’t keep up with myself, so I stormed outside for both fresh air, and as a fucking ploy to get him to follow me out. I expected we would sit side by side on the wall where all the smokers sat, we would fall madly in love. He would come home with me, fuck me, and we would never be parted. I must have been absolutely wrecked to believe that. I think I was out there about ten minutes, or maybe two hours. It really was all just a blur. I know I was cold. I know nobody spoke to me, and I was slowly realizing that I had wasted my time. I didn’t even think for a split second about my friend. That, I think, is probably the most monstrous thing about me.”

She looked up at the guy, noticing his stare was still on her—smiling. She continued. “I paid for it the next morning. That hangover was the worst. Oh yeah, and he’s another belter for you. One day my friend and I went Christmas shopping together in Glasgow. We met in the early afternoon, went for lunch, went a doss round the shops, spent our money, then went for drinks in the bar upstairs of Central Station. After a few glasses of wine, I start my shit again. I convinced her that I could get guys to buy us drinks, so loudly, I stumbled up to the bar and started chatting to these random guys. I couldn’t even tell you what they looked like. Now my memory isn’t great because, well, I was drunk, but I do remember so clearly  a guy shouting loud enough for the whole bar to hear, “Nobody wants to buy you a drink!” I went into a mood again— raging and embarrassed. I walked out on my friend after starting an argument with her. I walked up from Central to Sauchiehall street, and ended up steaming and alone on the benches by a taxi rank. I was approached by a random drunk guy who, after giving me thirty seconds of attention, ended up coming home with me. I mean, who even does that?” 

Karma and the handsome man stared into each other’s eyes for maybe a moment, possibly an eternity. He wasn’t disgusted by her. He didn’t seem to react at all. She debated telling him about the time she woke up from one of her worst drunken comas. The one where she was covered in her own waste, and was nursing an empty bottle of wine between her arms like a newborn baby. Even though the contents of the bottle were long gone – either down her throat or part of the mess of her bed – she still held on to it as though it sustained her. It did sustain her. Just as this man's gaze waltzed her through this moment. It wasn’t nearly long enough though when the beautiful silence was broken, and reality smacked her in the face.

“Karma Mahoney, please go through The Door”

The silence was ringing.

For the first time since she arrived in this waiting room, Karma began to notice all the little details surrounding her. She noticed the benches were a dark oak color, and varnished to a mirror-like shine. She slowly stood up, now unable to focus on the handsome man who had becomet a passing thought now. She headed somewhere much more pressing.  The floor felt cold underfoot, like ceramic tiles, but all black. Her footsteps echoed with each step and seemed to ring endlessly into the abyss. She observed the bumpy texture on the walls enclosing her, like the artex walls of the eighties. She felt the uneven surface beneath her frightened fingers. Slowly, she traipsed towards that damned door, terrified of what was on the other side. She trembled, wracking her brain over every indiscretion and every good deed, all the while pleading in her mind to every being she could think of that this walk would not end in perpetual torture. There was such finality in this walk, and she was almost excited as she reached the growing shaft of light that was The Door. She turned, searching earnestly for the handsome man, but he, and the waiting room, were now indistinguishable. Nothing was in focus but The Door, and Karma had no option but to take a final deep breath and walk through it.