The glare drilled its way through Colin’s eyes as he landed with newborn-calf grace on his knees.
“Ow—Jesus!” He choked, clutching his left leg with one hand and shielding his eyes with the other.
“Sorry, Chickpea,” a ragged voice rattled. “Right location, wrong character.”
Colin felt his stomach muscles tighten as the owner of the voice let out a pained cackle.
“Hang on, Col,” it rasped. “I always forget about the light.”
The flush of white, Colin could see from behind his eyelids and hands, subsided like a sunset on fast-forward into a delightful urine-yellow before it finally settled to a calm blood-red.
“Gonna open your eyes or what, Chickadoodle?” The stranger’s voice sounded all at once distant and yet within the walls of Colin’s skull. “Think we got forever, or what?”
Colin sacrificed a sigh and willed his eyelids to stutter open to a blur of misty color. He winced as the aroma of the room diffused into his nostrils. The air was thick with a familiar smell; somewhere between flatulence and old egg sandwiches.
“Don’t worry, Chicklet, your bowls ain’t shifted. That’s just me.” The cackle roared in Colin’s ears once again and a shock of pain leapt through his leg as he dragged himself up from the floor.
His eyes, slowly adjusting to the dim red light, moved around the room attempting to register where he was. It was no use; this was no place Colin recognized, and there was something unreal about the space. The floor seemed somehow insubstantial, as though a length of red satin had been pulled lazily across an abyss. He shuffled his feet on the soft surface as he noticed the lack of corners in the room. It was perfectly circular. The wall, bleached into the uniform red of everything else he could see, was made out of doors. How many doors there were altogether Colin could not tell, as there was no way to keep track of where he had started counting from.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Colin jumped in shock as he realized the stranger was standing directly behind him. Colin span around, top-like, to face the owner of the voice. The sight made him take a pace backwards. The creature, whatever it was, was about five feet tall, horribly hunched, with skin like wrinkled brie and a face which housed more lines than an architect’s sketchbook. It looked vaguely male, but it was hard to tell through the ill-fitting sackcloth tunic and folds of age.
“Be repulsed all you want, my lad,” it rasped. “At least I ain’t naked.” It reached out a calloused, crooked finger and flicked Colin’s flaccid penis.
“Jesus!” Colin gasped, thrusting his hands southward to form a cup for his genitals.
“Bloody foolish lookin’ things.” The creature chuckled.
“Can I have some clothes, please?” Colin stammered—not that he was cold. In fact, there seemed to be no temperature in the room at all, which, for some reason, made him desire to be clothed all the more.
“I dunno why they can’t just let you remember this shit.” The creature muttered and looked up at Colin with worn, bloodshot eyes. “I’ve just come from another frickin’ job and…” It trailed off.
Colin spared another look around the room. So many doors, but what were they for?
Where was he?
“Oh, for Chrissakes!” The creature hissed suddenly. “Your life’s done with.” Colin’s stomach disappeared from within him.
“What do you mean?” He asked, not hopeful about any possible answer. The creature allowed its wrinkled and torn, sluggish lips to slowly crack into something close to a grin.
“Welcome to, you know…the place.” It wheezed with its arms held akimbo. “I’m your assigned angel. We’ve met before—not that you give enough of a toss about my hard work to remember me, eh?”
Colin narrowed his bewildered eyes.
“You’re an angel?”
“Yes, yes. We all know you were expecting some tight-bodied, firm-titted, naked hermaphrodite strumming a bleedin’ harp. But guess what.” It yanked Colin closer with a deceptively strong hand on the shoulder. “I asked for a hot female tennis player. Existence sucks!” It cackled again and then pulled Colin toward the edge of the room.
Upon reaching the edge of the room the pain in Colin’s knee vanished, or at least it no longer concerned him anymore; but something was most certainly wrong with his body. He was quaking, and as he stared at what the creature was showing him, he realized that he was trying to cry.
“Aw, what’s up, Chickeroo?” the creature asked, placing a coarse hand on Colin’s naked lower back. Colin could not reply. His stomach twisted as he peered down and then, at the angel’s request, upwards. The room was not circular at all. It was a spiral. The edges sloped and rolled back like a helter-skelter, up and down, doors stretching on and on for as far as he could discern.
“Thought it was a circle, eh?” The angel croaked. “Like all them shit-for-brains philosophers of yours with their circles and ouroboroses, eh? I mean, seriously, how the bleedin’ hell do two snakes eating each other go on forever? It don’t work. They’d just keep on going until all you’ve got’s two snake heads, back to back dying into dust. Or one snake eating itself? Bloody ridiculous.”
Colin wasn’t listening; his mind was swirling from the sheer depth beneath and above him.
“Some of you got close, of course,” it continued, oblivious to Colin’s lack of attention. “That whole Lacuna Coil thing, or that Golden Spiral stuff that mathematician came up with, now that’s the thing.”
Colin yelped as the creature grasped him by the neck, pressing its hard fingers into his flesh, and yanked him downwards so that they were face to face. The angel’s eyes were tired and old and in their gaze Colin felt less than insignificant.
“You wanna choose a door or what?” it growled.
“Which door should I choose?”
“Don’t make much bleedin’ difference, squire. Every choice you ever had, every choice anyone else in your life ever could of made, any possible variation in that wee spell of yours is accounted for. Everything you done, everything you didn’t do, every lie, every angry pie, blah, blah, blah and so forth. It’s up to you which one you choose. Infinite variations in an infinite existence, chief.”
Colin glanced up and then down at the swirling mass of endless doors embedded in the cavernous red wall.
“I don’t know which one to pick.”
“Bollocks to this,” the angel wheezed. “Tell you what, you either pick a door sharpish or I’ll just kick you through one. How’s that?” The angel scowled through its hideous, prune-skinned face. It was enough. Colin reached out a hand and turned the first handle he found.
“Good boy, now. In you go.” The angel leered.
Colin had one foot through the doorway when he paused, struck by a sudden thought.
“Hang on,” he objected, “how can this be infinite if you’ve come from another job?”
“Hah!” The angel grinned back, “Now that’s the real question, ain’t it, my little Chickpea?”
It then lifted a loose-skinned foot and prodded Colin through the doorway, and as the door closed quietly behind the human, the angel muttered:
“For Chrissakes, this one’s gonna take for-bleedin’-ever.”