The moment Elliot Thorne realised he had made a catastrophic error was precisely three minutes and forty two seconds after collecting the soul of Marjorie Wilkinson.
Most souls were placid upon collection. Some were confused, others relieved, but nearly all were, at minimum, cooperative. Not Marjorie. She stood before him, arms crossed over her cardigan clad chest, one sensible shoe tapping against the misty ground of the In Between, glaring at him with the special intensity that only a senior librarian could muster after four decades of quelling rowdy teenagers with a single look.
"I demand to speak to your supervisor," she said.
Elliot sighed and consulted his ledger. The leather bound tome was ancient, its pages thin as gossamer and inscribed with names in a shimmering ink that changed colour depending on the viewer's perspective. He ran his finger down the page, searching for her name.
"Mrs Wilkinson, I understand this is disorienting, but I assure you, the transition will be much smoother if you simply—"
"Miss," she corrected sharply. "And I am not disoriented. I am inappropriately deceased."
Elliot blinked. In his three hundred and seventy two years as a soul collector, he had never heard that particular phrase. "I beg your pardon?"
"I should not be dead," Marjorie enunciated each word with painful clarity, as though speaking to a particularly dim child. "I was shelving books in the reference section. The Northwich Public Library does not close for another four hours. I have a Friends of the Library meeting tomorrow morning, and my cat Ernest needs his medication at precisely eight o'clock this evening. I cannot possibly be dead."
Elliot frowned and peered more closely at his ledger. The name "Marjorie Elizabeth Wilkinson" was indeed listed for today's collection. However, as he examined the entry more carefully, he noticed something concerning. The date of collection was correct, but the time...
His stomach dropped.
"Miss Wilkinson," he said carefully, "were you born on June 12, 1958?"
"I was."
"At Northwich General Hospital?"
"Yes." Her expression grew suspicious.
"And your parents were Harold and Beatrice Wilkinson?"
"They were. What is this about?"
Elliot swallowed hard. "Did you by any chance have a cousin also named Marjorie Elizabeth Wilkinson, born in the same hospital, to your father's brother Gerald and his wife Florence, on the same day?"
Marjorie's eyes widened. "Yes. Cousin Marjie. She passed away this morning. Heart attack, poor thing. I was planning to attend her funeral on Saturday." She paused, comprehension dawning. "Are you telling me you collected the wrong Marjorie Wilkinson?"
Elliot's silence was answer enough.
"Unbelievable," Marjorie muttered. "Completely unbelievable. Even in death, bureaucracy fails. Well, send me back then."
"It's not quite that simple," Elliot admitted, closing his ledger with a soft thump.
"What do you mean, 'not that simple'? You made a mistake. You fix it."
"I'm afraid once a soul has been collected, there's a process to return it. Forms to file. Approvals to obtain."
"How long does this process take?"
Elliot winced. "Approximately three to five business days."
"Business days?" Marjorie's voice rose an octave. "You operate on business days in the afterlife?"
"Death is the ultimate corporation, Miss Wilkinson."
For a brief moment, Elliot thought she might strike him with her handbag. Instead, she took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders in a manner that suggested she was accustomed to dealing with inefficient systems.
"Who is your supervisor?"
"That would be Azrael, the Angel of Death."
"I want to speak with them immediately."
Elliot laughed nervously. "I'm afraid Azrael doesn't take meetings without an appointment. And their schedule is booked for the next..." he mentally calculated, "six centuries or so."
"Then what am I supposed to do? Wait here while my body lies cooling on the floor of the nonfiction section? What about Ernest? He needs specialised medication for his thyroid condition!"
Elliot ran a hand through his hair, dislodging a small cloud of luminescent particles that drifted around his head before dissipating into the ether. This was bad. Very bad. Mistaken collections were rare, but they did happen occasionally. There was a procedure for such events, but it involved a mountain of paperwork, several interdepartmental reviews, and worst of all, a personal explanation to the Department of Metaphysical Mishaps.
The Department was notorious for its rigorous standards and merciless punishment of errors. The last soul collector who had made a mistaken collection had been reassigned to scrape ectoplasmic residue from the walls of the Purgatory waiting room for a century.
"Perhaps," Elliot ventured, "we could expedite the process."
Marjorie raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
"There is a... shall we say, alternative method for returning a soul to its body. It's not exactly by the book."
"Consider my interest piqued."
"If we were to bypass the official channels and return you directly, no one would need to know about this small... administrative error."
"And how exactly would we do that?"
Elliot hesitated. What he was contemplating was, technically speaking, highly illegal. Soul collectors were absolutely forbidden from interfering with the natural order of life and death. But then again, he had already interfered by collecting the wrong soul.
"There's a back door," he said finally. "A way to return to the living world without going through the official checkpoints."
"A back door to life," Marjorie repeated flatly.
"More of a service entrance, really."
"And where is this service entrance?"
Elliot gestured vaguely to the horizon, where the misty landscape of the In Between faded into a peculiar sort of nothingness. "We'd have to travel through some... challenging terrain."
"What sort of challenging terrain?"
"The bureaucratic kind. Filing rooms. Waiting areas. The Perpetual Queue. The Call Centre of Minor Torments, where one is eternally on hold."
"Sounds like the council offices on a Monday morning," Marjorie observed dryly. "I believe I can manage."
"There's more," Elliot cautioned. "If we're caught, the consequences would be... severe. For both of us."
"More severe than me being permanently dead when I shouldn't be?"
"Well, when you put it that way..."
"Mr Thorne," Marjorie said, her voice softening slightly for the first time, "I have no intention of dying today. I have a library to run, a cat to feed, and twenty three years before my actual scheduled departure from this mortal coil, if my maternal family history is any indication. Now, will you help me remedy your mistake, or shall I begin making an extraordinary nuisance of myself to anyone who will listen?"
Elliot had no doubt she would do exactly that. There was something about the set of her jaw and the steely glint in her eye that suggested Marjorie Wilkinson was not a woman accustomed to being denied.
"Very well," he said, making his decision. "But we'll need to move quickly. The longer your soul remains separated from your body, the more difficult reintegration becomes."
"How long do we have?"
"Traditionally, a soul can be successfully reunited with its body within twenty four hours of separation. After that, things get... complicated."
"Then we'd best get started," Marjorie said, adjusting her handbag on her arm with grim determination. "Lead the way, Mr Thorne."
Elliot nodded and extended his hand. After a moment's hesitation, Marjorie took it. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
"Hold tight," he warned. "The first transition can be a bit jolting."
With a flick of his wrist, Elliot activated the transportation sigil inscribed on his collector's badge. The misty ground beneath their feet dissolved, and they plunged downward into a swirling vortex of bureaucratic limbo.
They landed with a soft thump in what appeared to be an endless corridor lined with filing cabinets. The ceiling was so high it disappeared into shadows, and the fluorescent lights embedded in the walls flickered at irregular intervals, casting an unpleasant greenish glow over everything.
"Where are we?" Marjorie whispered, still clutching Elliot's hand.
"The Records Department," he replied, equally quietly. "Every soul that has ever existed or will exist has a file here. We need to find yours and make a small adjustment to it."
"You mean falsify official records."
"I prefer to think of it as corrective documentation."
Marjorie snorted but said nothing further as Elliot led her down the corridor. Their footsteps made no sound on the polished floor, which was both a blessing and somewhat disconcerting.
"How do we find my file? There must be billions."
"Trillions, actually," Elliot corrected. "And we don't find it. We summon it."
He stopped before a section of filing cabinets that looked exactly like all the others and withdrew a small silver whistle from his pocket. It was an unusual instrument, resembling a flute more than a whistle, with numerous tiny holes along its length.
"What's that?"
"A bureaucratic summoning device," Elliot explained. "Each soul has a unique harmonic frequency. When played correctly, it draws the corresponding file to us."
"And you know my frequency?"
"I collected your soul, didn't I? The frequency is imprinted on me until your transition is complete."
Elliot raised the whistle to his lips and played a short, complex melody. The notes were strange, seeming to hover in the air rather than dissipate. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a soft rushing sound, a drawer in one of the cabinets slid open, and a single file folder flew out, hovering before them.
"Impressive," Marjorie admitted.
Elliot plucked the file from the air and opened it. Inside were hundreds of gossamer thin pages covered in the same shimmering ink as his ledger. He flipped through them rapidly, scanning the contents.
"Here we are," he said, stopping at a page near the end. "Your collection date and time. We need to modify this to show that it hasn't happened yet."
"And how do we do that?"
Elliot reached into his coat and produced an elegant fountain pen with a nib that seemed to shift and change shape as Marjorie watched.
"The Pen of Retroactive Correction," he explained. "One of the perks of being a soul collector for over three centuries. You accumulate useful tools."
With a flourish, he crossed out the collection entry and wrote something in its place, using a script that Marjorie found impossible to focus on. The ink seemed to sink into the page and spread, altering the surrounding text as it went.
"There," Elliot said, closing the file with satisfaction. "According to your official record, your soul is still firmly attached to your body, and Cousin Marjorie is the one who was collected today, as intended."
"That's it?"
"Not quite. We still need to get you back to your body. And to do that, we need to travel through the Bureaucratic Underworld to reach the Service Entrance to Life."
"Which is where, exactly?"
"On the other side of the Call Centre of Minor Torments."
Marjorie sighed. "Of course it is."
Elliot returned the file, watching as it flew back to its drawer, which closed with a soft click. "We should hurry. Files in the Records Department are regularly audited. It won't be long before someone notices the discrepancy."
As if on cue, an alarm began to sound, a gentle but persistent chime that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"What's that?" Marjorie asked, alarmed.
"The Audit Alert," Elliot replied, grabbing her hand again. "Run!"
They sprinted down the corridor, the chiming growing louder behind them. Elliot pulled Marjorie around a corner, then another, navigating the labyrinthine department with the ease of long familiarity. Finally, they reached a door marked "EXIT TO REQUISITIONS" in faded gold lettering.
"In here," Elliot urged, pushing the door open and pulling Marjorie through.
They found themselves in a vast, warehouse like space filled with endless rows of shelves stacked with objects of every description. Boxes, bottles, books, and thousands of items Marjorie couldn't even identify stretched as far as the eye could see.
"The Department of Requisitions," Elliot explained as they hurried down an aisle. "Everything needed for the smooth operation of the afterlife is stored here."
"Including escape equipment, I hope?"
"Including," Elliot said, stopping before a shelf laden with what looked like ordinary office supplies, "interdepartmental transportation devices."
He selected what appeared to be a simple stapler and held it up triumphantly.
"A stapler?" Marjorie asked incredulously.
"A Metaphysical Transit Facilitator," Elliot corrected. "It creates temporary connections between different departments."
"It's a stapler."
"With supernatural properties," Elliot insisted, sounding slightly offended. "Now, hold still."
He pointed the stapler at the empty air before them and pressed down firmly. There was a metallic click, and a tear appeared in the fabric of reality, edges curling like a piece of paper that had been stapled to nothing.
"Quickly," Elliot urged, gesturing toward the opening. "Before someone comes."
Marjorie eyed the tear dubiously. "Where does it lead?"
"The Department of Temporal Affairs. We need to pass through there to reach the Call Centre."
"Why can't we go directly to this Service Entrance?"
"Because the afterlife is a massive bureaucracy," Elliot explained patiently. "Everything must be done in the proper order, through the proper channels, even when we're circumventing the proper channels."
Behind them, the chiming alarm grew louder, and voices could be heard approaching.
"Fine," Marjorie muttered, and stepped through the tear.
Elliot followed quickly, using the stapler once more to seal the opening behind them.
The Department of Temporal Affairs was, as the name suggested, concerned with time. Unlike the Records Department with its endless corridors, or Requisitions with its warehouse aesthetic, Temporal Affairs resembled the interior of an enormous clock. Gears of varying sizes rotated slowly overhead, and the walls were lined with timepieces of every description. The air was filled with a symphony of ticking, from the gentle pulse of wristwatches to the sonorous bonging of grandfather clocks.
"This way," Elliot said, leading Marjorie along a narrow walkway that wound between massive pendulums swinging in perfect synchronisation.
"What exactly does this department do?" Marjorie asked, eyeing a clock face that appeared to be running backward.
"It maintains the temporal relations between the living world and the afterlife," Elliot explained. "Time moves differently here. Without the Department of Temporal Affairs, a soul might spend what feels like a few minutes in the afterlife only to discover that centuries have passed in the living world."
"That sounds... problematic."
"Extremely. Especially for those approved for reincarnation."
They reached a door marked "TEMPORAL CALIBRATION CHAMBER" and Elliot peered through its small window.
"Perfect," he murmured. "It's empty."
They slipped inside, finding themselves in a small room dominated by a large control panel covered in dials, switches, and blinking lights. On the wall opposite the door was a full length mirror in an ornate frame.
"What are we doing here?" Marjorie asked, watching as Elliot began adjusting various controls on the panel.
"Making sure that when we return you to your body, you'll reintegrate at the correct time."
"Is that likely to be a problem?"
"It could be. Without proper calibration, we might send you back too early or too late."
"How early or late are we talking about?"
"Anywhere from a few seconds to several millennia."
Marjorie blanched. "I'd rather not arrive after Ernest has been dead for thousands of years, thank you."
"Hence the calibration," Elliot replied, turning a large dial that produced a high pitched whine. The mirror on the wall began to glow softly. "There. That should do it."
He stepped back from the control panel and gestured toward the mirror. "After you."
Marjorie approached the mirror cautiously. Instead of her reflection, it showed the interior of what appeared to be a vast call centre. Hundreds of identical desks stretched into the distance, each occupied by a figure wearing a headset.
"The Call Centre of Minor Torments," Elliot confirmed. "Where souls are eternally put on hold."
"Charming."
"It's the fastest way to the Service Entrance. We just need to pass through without being detected."
"And how do we do that?"
Elliot reached into his pocket and withdrew two badges. He handed one to Marjorie. It read "TEMPORAL AUDIT INSPECTOR" in bold letters.
"We inspect," he said with a slight smile. "No one questions an audit inspector. Not even in the afterlife."
Marjorie pinned the badge to her cardigan and straightened her shoulders. "Very well. Let's proceed."
Elliot nodded and gestured for her to step through the mirror. Marjorie took a deep breath and did so, experiencing a brief sensation of cold as she passed through the reflective surface and into the Call Centre beyond.
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