As I stayed there in The Afterlife, I learned about how everyone else had died. Rex apparently had been taken very quickly by cancer because of his terrible condition before he had died. Dallas on the other hand had mixed some chemicals to blow half of his face off, killing him instantly and taking an eye with him. A bit after I arrived, Lucas actually fashioned a skull-shaped mask to cover it up, and a scythe. The scythe was a bit odd, but the boy seemed to treasure the thing.

Of course, we weren’t the last ones to appear by far. One day I came into the Council building to see everyone gathered around Skip and Sophie! Those two teenage girls had an odd way of interacting with each other though. They would finish each other's sentences and act like they were just one person. I wish I had a sister who I was that close to. They were both the bosses for something called “schizophrenia” apparently. 

The weirdest thing was afterwards, this girl, maybe 18 or 19, showed up that none of us had ever seen before. We checked the thing in Lucas’ office, and her name wasn’t on there either. It left us all stumped on what to do for her.

“How did you die?” Lucas asked, kneeling down.

“I-I… I poisoned myself…” she whispered. “I-I couldn’t take it anymore… H-He was too bad, and I couldn’t… I wouldn’t…”

“Sounds like she would’ve been a fit for Dallas’ job if he didn’t die first,” Rex commented.

“Rex…” Lucas growled.

“Too soon?”

“I guess he does have a point,” Dallas mumbled. “She would belong right with me in suicide, honestly.”

All of a sudden, the girl gasped and fell to her knees. She held her head as her features started to transform, changing hair color and facial features a bit before settling on an image that was a fair bit different than before.

“What… I…” She looked up at us all, scared out of her mind. “Who’s Abigail Smith? Why… Why do I have to…?”

“Let’s haul her to the testing room,” suggested Lucas. 

Slowly, they guided the girl (whose name I learned was Mary) to a room where she was sat down. Lucas gestured to Dallas, who grabbed a paper and pencil, giving a thumbs up. Rex, me, and the twins just watched them work their process.

“First, what’s your name?” Lucas asked.

“It’s… It’s Mary. Mary Elizabeth Tailor.”

“Alright Mary, you said you poisoned yourself?”

“Y-Yes, that’s right,” she nodded, glancing around. “I-Is this Hell?”

“Save questions for the end,” Lucas said, deflecting the question. “Tell me, after my partner here said that you would belong with him, what did you feel?”

“I… I felt my body change a bit… then I just had this… feeling that I needed to get to someone named Abigail Smith.”

“Do you know any Abigail Smith?”

“No, sir.”

“What was this voice wanting you to do to Abigail Smith?”

“There wasn’t any voice, sir,” Mary insisted. “Just this… feeling. Like those instincts people talk about with animals, with birds flying south for winter. I think I’m the bird here, and Abigail is the south.”

“Why do you need to find Abigail Smith?”

“I need to make her kill herself,” she said, shocking us all before covering her mouth. “I-I’m sorry-” she stammered. “I-I don’t know what I was saying! I don’t want anyone to die! I-”

“You got that, Dallas?” Lucas asked the boy.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good,” he nodded before turning back to Mary. “So why do you want her to die?”

“I don’t!”

“You do.”

“Not really!”

“Then why did you say that?”

“I don’t know what came over me, sir,” she said frantically. “It just slipped out, but… I’m not a violent person! I would never want to hurt someone-”

“But your goal isn’t to hurt someone,” Lucas said with a smile, leaping out of his chair as though he figured something out. “Your goal is to get her to hurt herself!”

“I…” Mary fell silent. “Yes… I… I do feel as though this woman needs… I need to make her hurt herself until she’s dead. I don’t want it, but… I feel that's why I’m here.”

“Dallas, my office, now!” Lucas said with a victorious smile on his face. “You too, Rex! Max and the twins can help Mary settle down and rest.”

“Ok-” Skip chirped.

“You got it-” Sophie continued.

“Boss,” they finished together.

“Don’t touch me!” Mary screamed, getting defensive.

“Calm down, sweetie,” I soothed, putting my hands up. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

“I… I didn’t want this,” she cried, waving her arms around. All of a sudden, she made this thing appear in front of her, and when she tumbled into it she disappeared.

“What is that?” Dallas asked, looking into the pitch black hole hovering in the middle of the room.

“Who wants to find out?” Lucas asked, jumping in. 

We all followed to find ourselves in a standard middle class person’s house in what looked to be the rural south of America. We could walk through walls and anything that wasn’t the floor just went straight through us. It’s like we were in specters, or in A Christmas Carol.

“What is this?” I asked, frightened but also curious.

“I don’t know…” Lucas said in awe. “But I think we’re back in The Living, but ghosts.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Rex rolled his eyes. We all just stared at him.

“You’re proof of living skeletons,” Dallas mumbled. “Ghosts can’t be that far off.”

“Dallas,” Lucas said sternly. “You know-”

“Shh,” I hushed, keeping my ear out. “Do you hear that?”

I heard someone crying, which we all followed through the house. We invaded a room to spy a girl curled into a ball on her bed, robbing her eyes out. And sitting beside her with her arms wrapped around the girl’s shoulders was Mary, who was whispering in her ear.

“What’re you really sticking around for? Your dad who disapproves at every turn? Your fiance who doesn’t really love you? What about your brothers who got your father’s approval while you were thrown to the dogs for being a woman. Why not just end it all?”

“I… I can’t… I shouldn’t…” the girl sniffled. “Mother, she… she loves me… My little sister, she loves me…”

“Your little sister who’s too young to know better? Your mother who probably agrees with your father behind your back? Come on, you’re so close to being free…”

“I… I should…” We all gasped to see a knife in the girl’s hand. She held it over her wrists before moving to her chest, and then poising it over her throat, hesitating each time and being unable to do anything. “I can’t!” she sobbed, throwing the knife across the room and crying into her arms.

“Weak!” Mary shouted in her ear. “You won’t do what has to be done! THIS is why your father actually loves his SONS and not YOU!”

“Mary,” Lucas coughed, startling her. “Let’s go back. We’ve got some work to do.”

“O-Ok,” she nodded timidly.

A far cry from the performance we had just witnessed. It almost scared even me the way she acted. She just seemed so nice before… Mary opened up another portal, which took us back to the Council building.

“Dallas, let’s start a new file,” Lucas said, walking around as we took the poor girl somewhere to just calm down. 

I asked the twins to take Mary somewhere to keep her nice and comfortable and to keep her company too. Meanwhile I stuck by the door to listen to Lucas, Dallas, and Rex.

“New file’s ready, sir. What should I write?”

“Mary Elizabeth Tailor: Self Harm Representative. Host: Abigail Tailor. Leave the rest of the room for notes too.”

“Anything else, sir?” Dallas asked.

“Make lots of copies of that outline,” he ordered. “If that woman’s here, then there’ll be more. We should be prepared for them.”

“You… I can do that, sir,” the boy sighed, clearly dreading the work ahead of him.

“If more show up, we should be prepared to figure out all of this Council and Representative business. So let’s start now. We’ve got work to do.”

*   *   *   *   *

Dallas started documenting all the reps that came in by hand onto paper documents for ledger storage. It was long and tedious, so Lucas, the twins, and I helped him a lot. Not Rex though. Lucas let him do his own thing, in all his engineering and mechanical glory. Rex claimed he was trying to make something that’d make storing and retrieving all that information a lot easier. Around that time he’d made something that could do math for him, I think? I wasn’t sure, but I know that they would invent the same thing down in The Living around 40 or 50 years later and call it the Turing Machine. I only remember because Rex ranted to no end about how he had the idea first.

“Max, in here!” Lucas called. 

I rushed into the room where new reps usually appeared. There, on the floor, was Lucas’ old Irish assistant, Bailey O’Conney. She was such a sweetheart, but now Bailey was just asleep on the floor. I rushed to her side and put her head on my lap, shaking her.

“Bailey!” I shouted, shaking her a bit more violently. “Bailey, wake up!”

“Gah!” the girl gasped, waking up and looking around, confused. “Cá bhfuil sé seo...? Cá bhfuil Debbie? An bhfuil mé fós ag brionglóid?”

“Hey, hey, calm down,” I laughed, petting her hair. “I’ve got a rep from Ireland who can translate, ok?”

“Tired…” Bailey moaned before falling asleep again in my arms.

“Let’s get her to a room,” Lucas suggested as Dallas walked in. “Well?”

“She’s there,” the boy nodded. “Insomnia boss.”

“Another boss…” I sighed, petting the young girl’s hair again. “It’s a shame she couldn’t go to Heaven though.”

“Don’t think about it so much, Max,” Lucas said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s just get her help.”

“Yeah, help…”

*   *   *   *   *

“No, you fill your name here,” groaned, explaining the paperwork to a new rep. “Seriously, it says ‘name’ at the top.”

“I don’t get it,” the rep said, scratching his head.

“You just-”

“AAAAAGGGHHH!” screamed a voice from down the hall. 

I immediately ditched the rep in my office, running to that room where the new reps and bosses show up. And there in the middle of the floor was Aven, clutching her stomach and screaming while reps surrounded her.

“Get out of my way!” I ordered, shoving reps aside. I held Aven’s head on my lap. “Aven, honey, what’s wrong?!”

“Stomach…” she sobbed. “It’s… I…”

“I can heal her,” Lucas said, reaching his hand out to her. I swatted his hand away.

“Give her to the nurses,” I told him. “You don’t have full control over your powers yet. Who knows how her stomach is going to heal if you do that?”

“Nurses!” Lucas boomed, his voice seeming to reverberate throughout the entire Afterlife. In a rush, the nurses took Aven away on a stretcher while she still sobbed and cried for it all to be over. It just moved me to tears.

“Sir, she’s there,” Dallas nodded. “Aven Murphy, Binge Eating Disorder and Dysphoria bosses.”

“What even is ‘Dysphoria’ anyway…?” I mumbled.

“Well,” the boy sighed. “Looks like we’ve got another member of-”

“No,” I said firmly. “Not Aven. She can’t be in this business.”

“She is a part of The Council,” Lucas side-eyed. “Can’t just say no to a job to be done.”

“Please,” I begged. “Aven deserves Heaven, not this afterlife. There’s got to be something you can do.”

“I… I’ve discovered a new power of mine,” Lucas sighed, looking at his hand. “I can drain the magic out of anyone with just a touch.” He looked over at me. “If I drain her magic before she knows about it all, maybe I can basically strip her of her boss title. If that’s what you think is best.”

“I…” I thought about it, and how it would affect Aven. If he took her magic and title, then I could let her live with me, and she could just relax for her afterlife without having to work. Not being a boss or rep. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I think it is what’s best.”

“…ok,” he nodded. “But if she asks, it was your idea.”

“I know,” I sighed.

“I can always return it later though,” Lucas offered. “If we go back on that decision in the future, we’ll give it to her.”

“Ok…” I whispered.

Later when Aven was out of surgery, Lucas and I walked in on her in a hospital bed. She looked so peaceful, snoring in her sleep. Lucas looked over at me one last time.

“Now or never. Are you sure about this?”

“Yes…” I mumbled. “Just… Just do it…”

Lucas walked over to Aven’s motionless body and put his hand on her chest. His hand started glowing and Aven’s body looked to hover a little for just a second before the light faded and Lucas removed his hand.

“It’s done,” he reported. “Her magic’s gone.”

*   *   *   *   *

Later, when Aven woke up, I was right beside her as her eyes opened. Aven groaned and rolled her eyes over to me.

“Max…?”

“Hey, Aven,” I smiled, grasping her hand.

“Am I dreaming…?” she asked hazily.

“You’re in The Afterlife,” I said with tears in my eyes. “You… You died.”

“Oh…”

“How did you die?”

“I… I binged… I was binging and my stomach… I felt this tear and then it burned. It burned so bad, then I went to sleep and woke up here.”

“Oh Aven…” I pulled her into a hug and whispered on her shoulders. “Promise me it’ll be different over here, ok? No more binging. You come to me.”

“Max… I…”

“Promise me, Aven,” I teared up. “Please.”

“I promise.”

“Thank you,” I said, pulling out of the hug. “No more hurting yourself. This will be different, ok?”

“Ok,” she sighed. “Where even is this anyway? Heaven? Hell? Somewhere in between?”

“It’s a long story,” I laughed.

“I got a lot of time, I think,” Aven rolled her eyes, gesturing around the hospital room. “So start from what this place is.”

“Well, this place is called The Afterlife, and I’m what we call a Boss in The Council of Mental Illnesses…”