Welcome back, my friends. I do hope you have enjoyed the stories that you have read with this prompt. This will be the last story for this prompt. Monday I will let you all know what the next prompt will be. I have enjoyed this prompt a lot and I hope to revisit a few of these stories again one day and expand on what I have already written. The problem with writing a new short story every week is that it opens my mind to new ideas that I want to work on when I already have 3 novels I am trying to work on. There are tons of positives as well. I have learned not to try and make every little description and word perfect. We can spend so much time tweaking our stories that they never get out to the public.

On with what you all came here for, the story!

I didn’t read the fine print before I signed the dotted line. In retrospect, I should have at least read the non-fine print. I was blinded by the benefits that came with the job; I wasn’t thinking straight. It was a desperate acceptance because anything was better than spending all eternity in hell. Now that I have done the job for a while, I think maybe hell would have been a little bit more fun. I mean, at least in hell I wouldn’t have spent my entire afterlife working.

Maybe this is hell, and they tricked me into thinking I had some kind of choice! That would be my luck.

I died. It wasn’t even an interesting way to die, I didn’t do anything fun to get to death. I was just dumb, and I drown in a dog bowl. The house that I was breaking into had recently had its floors waxed. I was trying to be sneaky going through a window the homeowners had left unlocked. When my foot touched the slick floor I fell into the house, hit my head on the counter, knocking me unconscious, then landed face first into the dog bowl full of fresh clean water.

I didn’t want to go to hell and have them make fun of me for that. So, I decided I would take the job they offered me. Sure, I will be working for all of eternity, but that’s okay, I guess.

I work in a warehouse of souls. Some souls go to heaven, some go to hell, some go in a jar and are put on a shelf. It all comes down to what that person believed in when they were alive. If they believed in an afterlife of any sort, that is where they would go. If they thought they were bad people and they believe in hell, they go to hell. If they believe in the underworld and the river of souls, they swim for all of eternity. The warehouse that I work in is where the souls go that didn’t believe anything happened after death. I think it would be peaceful to sit alone in a jar. I don’t even know if the souls know they are dead. I don’t ask questions; I just do my job.

There are aisles and aisles of jars with souls sitting in them. Souls are weird looking things. They all give off a faint glow of light, so it’s never terribly dark in the warehouse. There are so many ways to die. The warehouse is set up like a library almost. There are main deaths, like old age, sickness, accident, murder, and suicide. Each of those main deaths is broken down further, except in old age. Whoever set up the warehouse didn’t expand on old age…that soul just left an old body and landed itself in a jar.

Each main death has a floor dedicated to it and each of those floors is sectioned out. I have been to every floor and seen every section, but I have not touched every shelf. There are so many souls that I can stand at the end of one aisle and not see the other end. They go on forever, and just when I think I have filled up a shelf, more shelves are just there. There is always work and I am the only one here. I keep asking for more help by shouting at the cameras that are watching me. I pick my nose sometimes to see if they will say anything. Sometimes I just walk around with no clothes on. No one says anything.

Once I went a week without doing any work to see if they would fire me. I got a letter telling me that if I didn’t get back to wouldn’t go to hell, they would send me back to earth. I didn’t have a great life the first time around and I did not want to go back.

“Can I at least have a copy of my contract?” I asked into the camera. I wanted to read it now, see how long I was stuck here. Surely, they did not mean for me to be here for eternity. Though, who else would take as good care of the jars as I have? I dust as many as I can, I handle them with care, I even talk to the souls when they start looking a little dim. I am assuming they are feeling the loneliness of the afterlife they choose. Of course, I am also assuming they have feelings sitting in their little jars. When I talk to the dim ones they brighten again.

“Mr. Scott.” A voice rings out behind me. I jump almost knocking one of the jar souls to the floor. I catch it just in time. I don’t know how long I have been in this warehouse, it feels like a really long time, but not once have I dropped a soul.

“Hello?” I ask into the building when I see no one to go along with the voice. I jump again when the man steps out of a shadow that I didn’t even know was there. “You can’t just sneak up on people like that.” I say, sitting the jar back on the cart. I tap the lid and the light brightens for a moment before settling back into its normal soul glow. “What do you want?”

“You wanted to see your contract?” The man asks. I laugh. That was all it took, to ask the camera to see my contract and they finally send someone here.

“I just want to know how long I am going to be in this warehouse and if anyone else will be joining me.” I say. I push the cart down one aisle and the man follows. It wasn’t break time yet and I had to get these precious souls to the right place. The fun thing about souls is I could peek into their lives, and see how they lived. I have learned a few life lessons being here.

“Your time is up.” The man stated.

“What?” I look at him, my arm stretched out to place a jar on the shelf. I place it gently before my hand gives out. “Just like that? How long has it been?”

“Your contract ended 500 years ago, but you did not seem to want to leave.” The man said. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a contract. “You have been here for a millennium. You did not seem to want to leave until now, Mr. Scott.”

“I don’t really want to leave now.” I laughed.

“That is your choice. If you decide not to leave you will be promoted and able to pick a team of people to run the warehouse with you.”

“Okay…” I put my hands in my pocket. “So I still have to stay here?”

“Do you wish to move on?” The man asked. He had a briefcase in his hand that he didn’t before. He placed it on the table, a table that was not there a second before. He sat in the chair that appeared behind him. 

“What are my options?” I ask. I wanted to know everything this time. I would probably skip over the fine details, but I was going to know all the other stuff.

“You can stay here as you are right now. Just you, with no help. No one will come back. You will sort the souls alone for however long eternity last.” The man shuffled through papers. “You can stay here as a team leader, pick a team of as many people as you want, and continue to sort. You will be able to change your team as often as you want, firing and hiring people as you go. We will send people to you on occasion to work their debts, but you still hold the choice of keeping them or passing them on to something else.” The man looked up at me. “You could also leave this place and go to hell. Or you can go back to earth and live another lifetime.” He clasped his hands and sat them on the table, staring at me.

“Those are the only options?” I ask him. The man nods. I look around the warehouse, my warehouse. I had been responsible for this place for so long. I wanted to stay. I wanted to continue to take care of the quiet souls. I didn’t like the idea of being alone forever. It had become very lonely here and I would love to have others to talk to. The souls here do not talk back. “I will manage a team.” I nod at the man. Any other option made me panic. I was safe here, comfortable.

“We will send in souls for hire, for you to pick from.” The man said. He held a pen out to me. “Just sign on the dotted line.” Guess what I did? I signed. I didn’t read the fine print or the non-fine print. I just signed it. But I did get a copy this time. I keep it in my office. I didn’t have one before. A new floor was added to the warehouse. Apartments for all the people I could hire. I would keep the team small, we would be a weird family in our afterlife. I was also about to find out what happens when a jar is dropped and broken and the soul is released. That is a story for another day, but I will tell you that one soul is not easy to catch and when that one soul frees more souls, there is an infestation that is almost impossible to contain.