Writer In Motion: The Hellishly messy first draft

The causes of death on the state-issued certificates gently floated along the tinted hologlass walls, staring down at Asra with permanent conviction:

Xu Heng, 32, Inconsolable sorrow after absorbing displaced emotions.

Torin Thallos, 17, An uncontrollable desire to be full.

Lucho Gálvez, 23, The belief that nothing–including oneself–exists.

Ella Walsh, 47, A longing for things that cannot be named.

Lorne Thale, 50, Fell Hopelessly In Love With Annihilation.

Ian Ito, 38, Hysterical fear of drowning in air.

Every forty seconds, the certificates flicker out of existence, new ones appear, and this cycle repeats. A discreet tally of the day’s successful journeys to Oblivion tick, tick, ticks like a clock: 66, 000.

“It’s a painless and peaceful process.” The office hissed open and the Caseworker shuffled in. He gave Asra a reassuring smile, gray eyes shining with manufactured empathy through crooked frames. As if rehearsed to a habit, he reached out to console her with a light squeeze of a gloved hand. Asra slipped hers off the table and into her lap. The Caseworker fell silent as he pulled up her chart and settled into his seat.

Asra shifted uncomfortably in her chair, crossing her arms as she gave the room a sweeping glance–for the thousandth time–before settling back on the man across the desk. Like all Oblivion Caseworkers, or OCs as everyone generally called them, he wore the standard lapis lazuli colored tunic that covered him from neck to ankles. An inverted triangular insignia sat snug against his adam’s apple, shifting everytime he swallowed, which wasn’t often. The name tag on his chest said Julian, and she wondered, doubted, whether that was even his real name. The OCs all looked freakishly similar, almost like priests.

Except priests don’t usually help people die. 

She cleared her throat. It was a harsh sound in the manufactured silence of the counseling room.  “How long will it take?” 

“Less than the time you’ve been suffering.” Julian’s smile grew softer, more pitiful. “The Janus Project prides itself on providing only the most compassionate state-issued Oblivion in the country. It will only take as long as you need it to. You’ll be transported to the doorway at –” he checked the location on his tablet “–the Howlan House. Everything you need is already there, including the funeral materials, and alternative pathways, should you want them.” 

“I don’t.” 

The words left Asra as an exhausted exhale. She waited for the anxiety the pamphlets warned her of, for the stirrings of potential regret or second thoughts, but as always, she felt nothing. Even as she touched the tablet the Caseworker slid across the table to her, she felt neither the warmth of where his hands had been nor the coldness of the glass, which reflected back an unfocused glimpse of her cheerless, pale face and muted green eyes. She couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t see her own face anymore; it was diluted with their images, and with only vague imaginings of what she might have looked like over the years. Didn’t she have freckles, like her father? Dimples like her sister? A round mouth like her mother?

She had parents….didn’t she?

“Given your….situation….we want you to be as comfortable as possible. When you’re ready for Oblivion, it will embrace you. And, as requested, they will be there. Waiting for you, I’m told. Shall we…put it up?” The Caseworker nodded to the sea of faces on the wall, the legions who’d found Oblivion, and indicated to the tablet. Asra stared down at the screen, the emptiness sinking to the depths of her stomach.

Asra Aeilstrom, 26, Fractured, Irreparable feeling of being out of place & time.