The Line

Written By: Samuel J. Hoppe

My eyes burst open. What happened? Where am I? Were the first thoughts to cross my mind. Suddenly a skeleton with two bulging blue eyes popped into my field of vision.

“You just died! Woohoo!” The skeleton shouted while moving its arms frantically. It stopped moving and focused on me, squinting intensely. One of its eyes popping out of its head falling towards the rocky floor below. We watched it roll, collecting dust and finally coming to a stop when it hit a sharp rock jutting out of the ground, piercing the eye. The skeleton burst into laughter.

“Isn’t death great!” The skeleton roared and laughed as it grabbed the eye and put it back into its socket. He didn’t even dust it off, gross.

My attention left the skeleton as surveyed around the room. I saw endless rows of chairs with all kinds of grotesque injured people occupying them.

“Hey, skeleton!”

“The names Petey!”

“Yeah, yeah, Petey. Where are we?”

“Where are we? Well We’re in Hell!! More precisely we’re waiting in line for THE GATES OF HELL!” He boomed.

“Why are we waiting to get into hell? As if it’s some long awaited amusement park we’ve all been dying to get into? Why don’t we just leave?”

“The gates of hell, it’s the entrance to Hell. The amusement park, you didn’t get a flier?” And with that Petey pulled a flier out of his pants pocket and handed it to me. Everything he said was true, it’s all here. Enter the gates of hell for thrills and chills that no living mortal could ever experience. The greatest amusement park in the underworld. Experience gut wrenching roller coasters and our devilish carnies! Experience Hell!

“What? Hell’s an amusement park? I didn’t expect that.”

“Why? What are you one of those religious freaks? A demon flew by earlier with popcorn and it said as long as the big guy upstairs hears screams he’s happy. Pretty sick huh? It said they used to torture and all that but they grew tired of it. Ha! So they built an amusement park. And now they don’t have to torture people and the big guy upstairs still gets his screams.” Petey said with what I thought was a smile.

“Sounds like we died at a pretty good time.”

“Oh yeah, if only this line would hurry up. You see those big demented gates at the end of the line? Wayyyy ahead of us?”

“No?”

“Me neither!” The skeleton burst into laughter again.

“Wait, how long will we be in this line for?”

“There’s no telling! But we’ve got a lot of waiting to do! Better get comfy! Ya know it’s a good thing you got me sitting next to you to keep you company!” The skeleton burst into laughter.

“Oh god, kill me... again.”

The End.