This waiting room is starting to suck out my memories. By the time I get out of here I will have forgotten my entire life. All I will know is the waiting room. I no longer notice the putrid stink of it or remember what fresh air feels like. I was born here. I expect nothing more than to die here.

                The expired magazines on the table are windows looking into the outside world. Windows that cannot be climbed through and slowly disappear with repetitive reading. I’ve read every one twice.

                My family is the rest of the waiters. The other patient patients. We do not speak to each other. We do not touch or look one another in the eye. We are very different people. But we all share the same miserable burden of spending eternity in this terrible place.

                One of my brothers is much too fat and refuses to shave his scraggly white beard. He has a hardback novel to distract his mind from reality. Another appears to be father death himself. He has no eyes, or perhaps they are buried within those fleshy purple bags. He shakes with every movement. A sister sits cross-legged reading ‘Ladies Home Journal’, her glasses at the very edge of her turned up nose.

                We all sit silently. Pretending in private that we are somewhere else, somewhere pleasant. We tell ourselves that our names will soon be called. Only another few moments. But the truth looms over us, unwavering, too terrible to face:

 

                We will never escape.