I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of a dimly lit room. The air was hot, practically scorching, and carried the faint, sickly sweet smell of burning sugar. I spun slowly, trying to orient myself, and immediately realized I was in some sort of line.

As soon as I attempted to turn back around, a miserable-looking old man hobbled forward and planted himself in front of me. The line stretched around us in both directions, growing by the second—a procession of straight-faced people standing in complete silence.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, tapping his shoulder. He didn’t move.

“Excuse me. Do you know what this line is for? I just got here and I think I must’ve missed something.” No response.

“Excuse me. Excuse me, sir?” My voice rose. “Hey man, what is your actual problem?” I was confused, sweaty, and—worst of all—starting to get hungry.

“Shhhh,” he hissed, spinning around to glare at me. Then, as if he’d realized he’d been caught talking, he did an abrupt about-face, eyes bright with panic.

I sighed, shifted my weight, and accepted that I would be here for the foreseeable future. Leaving would be a tactical mistake. Without knowing where I was or how I got there, I’d just wander endlessly, and this place clearly ran on strict rules and poor orientation.

For what felt like five days but was probably closer to an hour, the line inched forward toward a booth. A woman sat behind it, stamping documents with the slow disregard of someone close to retirement. Each person who reached the front was either led—or dragged—into one of three adjoining rooms. The occasional burst of screaming and thrashing didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

As I approached, my mind began to race. What day was it? What had I been doing before this? Would anyone notice I was missing? My dad would probably notice once he came home yelling for dinner and found the house empty.

“Next!” the woman snapped, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Name?” she asked, looking me up and down in blatant disregard.

I rolled my eyes. “Good afternoon. Yes, thank you for asking. My day is going well, and yours?”

She sighed. “Name.”

I gave it, looking around as I waited. The line snaked back so far I couldn’t see the end. How many people were they processing here? Was this some sort of government program?

“I said, first door to the right! Next!” she barked, thrusting a paper tab at me. A security guard appeared beside her as if summoned.

I looked at the tab. The number printed on it read 6,032,857,001.

Before I could ask what it meant, I was ushered into one of the rooms. It looked like a waiting room. Four other people were seated, and none of them looked as confused as I was. If anything, they looked relieved—faces placid and unmoving as they stared into blank space, save for the occasional blink.

Time slogged on, and every thirty or so minutes, one of the waiting people would be called into a room, and another person would quickly take their place.

Around an hour after I had entered, a perky blonde woman dressed like a flight attendant read my number aloud with the enthusiasm of someone announcing lottery numbers.

“Six billion, thirty-two million, eight hundred fifty-seven thousand and one?”

I slowly raised my arm.

“Over here, please,” she chirped.

The room she led me to was small and lit in fluorescent light. Behind a squat metal table in the middle of the room sat a tired-looking man with frameless glasses perched at the end of his nose. He looked like he hated his job, hated me, and hated himself for still being there.

“What a shame,” he said, glancing up. “I was hoping for a crier.”

“What?” I said, scanning his face for any hint of humor.

“Ignore me. Bad joke. It’s been a long day,” he muttered, flipping through a file.

“I’m sorry, but I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” I started. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I don’t remember signing up or consenting to anything, so I think you might have the wrong person.”

Silence.

“So,” I said, slowly creeping toward the door, “if we’re done here, I’ll just be going—”

I turned toward the door.

There was no door.

Why was there no door?

“Are you serious?” the man asked, eyes narrowing.

“Do I look like I’m trying to be funny?” I snapped.

He blinked slowly. “Jesus—sorry.” His eyes flashed up briefly. “Slip of the tongue.”

He sighed, pushing his glasses up to his forehead and rubbing his eyes. “Every day it’s something. We thought with the medicine and everything that you’d die slower. Ease up our caseloads. But no. Humans just won’t stop breeding, and more humans just means more deaths. More backlog. And it’s the little things. You get sick, you die. You cross the road, you die. And sometimes you just die.”

I stared at him.

He paused, glancing up at my face. I can’t imagine what he saw there.

“Right. You must be confused. As I mentioned, we’re short-staffed, so you might have missed the briefing and got skipped straight into the lineup. To make a long story shorter: you’re dead.”

“What?”

“Mmhm. And I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but you’re in hell.”

“What the hell?”

“Exactly.”

“No, hold on—what do you mean I’m dead? How can I die and not know? Is this a joke?”

“Do I look like I’m trying to be funny?” he said, deadpan.

The room seemed to tilt.

“You had an aneurysm. It went off at the gym. Sudden. You collapsed. It was… kind of funny, actually.”

“Funny?”

He scratched his head. “Well, not for you. Obviously.”

“Why am I in hell?” I demanded. “Like, I know I wasn’t perfect, but really? Doesn’t that seem a little dramatic? If I’m here, then where do the really bad people go?”

The man leaned forward, eager to answer.

“Well,” he said, “we actually get that a lot. You’re currently in Lower Hell. You see, Hell, like Heaven, is divided into three divisions: Upper, Middle, Lower. Placement depends on the volume of evil, like a quota of sorts. If the good–evil ratio tilts more good than evil, you end up on the other side. Same evaluation system. It was a bitch to roll out, but it’s working so far.”

My head was spinning.

“I’m sorry, sir, but—”

“You can call me Clark.” He slid a file across the table.

“You can look through your file if you think there’s an error.”

I opened it.

“Oh my God.”

He laughed. “Probably too late for that, I’m afraid.”

My whole life was listed in that file—pages overflowing with small, closely packed script. Every single thing I’d ever done since I was old enough to tie my own shoes was listed in a neat, numbered spreadsheet.

I flipped through, incredulous, pausing somewhere in the middle. “Oh come on, that was one time!”

“Well, I think you’ll find it was more than once. Page forty-eight, third paragraph from the top.”

I skimmed more.

“And this was in eighth grade. You can’t judge me based on that!”

“Well, yes,” he said, “but there’s about a hundred more pages after that section that are pretty damning, pardon the pun.”

I sank into the chair, my arguments slipping through my fingers.

“So that’s it,” I muttered. “Lower Hell. Eternity in a corporate waiting room. Wonderful.”

My eye began to twitch.

“Oh, there is one more thing,” he said, sliding his glasses back down.

“What is it?” I asked. Surely it couldn’t get worse.

“You get a wish.”

“A wish?”

“Yes. It usually doesn’t happen, but someone in your family tree—up to two generations back—made it to Upper Heaven. Per the benefits package, that means any descendant who ends up in Lower Hell gets a wish.”

“And before you ask: you can’t wish for more wishes, you can’t wish to get into Heaven, and you can’t wish for the end of humanity. Your wish can only affect things on Earth. Those are the rules.”

“So I can wish up a cure for cancer?”

“Sure.”

“Wish a person out of existence?”

“Easily done.”

“Wish away Antarctica?”

“…Hmm. I’d have to check the policy on that last one.”

I stared at the paper. A wish. Anything.

I could do absolutely anything, shape the flow of time and existence, and the only limits were that of my imagination.

A million ideas flashed through my mind, like the pages of a picture book, each thought grander and more elaborate than the last. I lived about a hundred lives in dreamed-up wishes.

But then, as quickly as the excitement had built in my chest, it was snuffed out by a heavy realization. Ultimately, nothing I wished would matter. I could shape the world into a perfect utopia, and I’d still be stuck here, trapped forever in this suffocating limbo. I could end world hunger, and childhood illness. Stop wars and reverse climate change, but… no one would know it was me. There would be no audience. No accolades. No applause.

So what was the point? I’d had to live nineteen years on a shitty planet that nobody had wished to fix, and suddenly I had to do it just so I could rot here, knowing my shitty dad was living it up on the back of my labor?

I leaned back, rolling my shoulders, and felt something loosen inside me. In place of the dread, there was now a cool, steady indifference.

If the universe wanted to be cruel, fine.

I could play along.

I looked up.

“Who’s leading the presidential race right now?” I asked.

Clark blinked at me. He snapped his fingers and a newspaper appeared in his hand like magic.

“Here,” he said, passing it to me.

I stared at the headline. June 14, 2015. Scanning the page, I quickly flipped the paper, scanning the entertainment section. Tabloids. An idea popped into my mind.

“I want him to win,” I said, pointing to page six.

Clark’s face changed.

“I’m sorry?” he said, eyebrows scrunching in confusion.

“You heard me,” I said. “You said anything, and this doesn’t violate the rules. I want him to win.”

Clark rubbed his neck, like he was trying to loosen a deeply embedded knot.

“Are you sure? This is a pretty big choice, with pretty big consequences. You won’t be able to take it back. You might regret it.”

I smiled.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

Clark stared at me for a long time, like he was trying to decide if it was worth it to push.

Then he sighed, leaned forward, and stamped the cover of my file with bright red letters:

FAIL.

“Wait, what is that?” I asked, staring down at the letters.

“You failed the test,” Clark said, standing up and brushing off invisible specks. “I lied a tiny bit before. You do have a relative that made it to Upper Heaven, but the wish stuff was bullshit. Everyone in Lower Hell gets a chance at redemption, per the collective agreement. A chance to do something good for the world, at no personal benefit. Those who do get a promotion to Lower Heaven.”

He paused.

“Unfortunately, very few people pass the interview.”

He packed up his remaining files and stood.

“Sorry, kid. Looks like you’ve made your choice.” He called over his shoulder as he heaved open the door that had suddenly appeared.

I stood too, panic rising.

“Wait! No way! You tricked me! That wasn’t a real answer, I was just—”

With a heavy swing, the door slammed shut.

Behind me, the clock continued to tick.

And the air still smelled like burnt sugar.