Loveday Writing

The brief of the AWC Furious Fiction – September 2024 short story competition was as follows:

• Writers had to use the image above in ANY way as inspiration to tell their story.
• What writers wrote was up to them – but participants were told to imagine that if their story were ever to be printed somewhere, THIS image would make sense appearing alongside it.

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Purgatory (The Waiting Room)

My favourite form of torture is the waiting room.

Most people associate the torture that goes on in Hell as the constant presence of demons, the fire and brimstone, darkness and stench, as well as torment and punishments. That goes on here too, but the waiting room is really the chef’s kiss.

The waiting room provides people with a false sense of security with its grey wall and beige floor, accompanied by seven chairs for people to sit on, seven chairs for the seven deadly sins, which are all currently full with seven different occupants. I’ve even given them a false sense of security by hiding my horns and pitchfork, trading them in for thick brown hair and a clipboard.

The occupants don’t know how long they’ve been here but they do know that they are waiting, that’s part of the fun too. The seven occupants at the moment are:

• A woman in her early-to-mid thirties, with her hair in pigtails resting on her maroon turtleneck covered shoulders (whose pride caused her to not follow safety protocols and fall to her death whilst abseiling, something she thought she was perfect at).
• A man in his mid-thirties in a darker maroon shirt and jeans (whose envy caused him to get into a fistfight with another man, which led to both of their deaths, but as his opponent actually did nothing wrong and was defending himself, he went to Heaven).
• A woman in her early-to-mid twenties with beautiful long hair draping down her back, whose pale skin was highlighted by a canary yellow shirt and jeans (whose lust led to her engaging in an affair with a married man, whose wife murdered her when she found out about it).
• A man in his thirties with short hair and a goatee, wearing a comfy green sweater on top of light blue jeans (whose gluttony led to him choking to death, as he was eating too much too fast).
• A woman in her late twenties with long brown hair, dark skin, dressed in a dark green turtleneck and black jeans (whose wrath led to her killing the woman in the yellow shirt after discovering she was her husband’s mistress. Her husband went straight to Hell for cheating on her).
• An old man with white hair and thin black glasses, in a light green shirt and jeans (whose greed led to his massive wealth and assassination)
• A man in his early-to-mid twenties with brown hair, black glasses, wearing mostly black, with white long sleeves poking out of his black sweater (whose sloth was caused by his grandfather’s wealth, which led to him dying of heart failure). His grandfather is the old man sitting next to him.

They know they’re waiting, they know they’re dead, but they don’t know where they are. They don’t know whether they’re going to Heaven or Hell, that’s why they are in the waiting room, waiting to be told their afterlife fate, which has already been sealed by themselves.

When they see me walk towards them with my clipboard in my hand, they show their hope and curiosity in their faces, which is why I love it when their faces fall when I look at my watch, pretend to forget something, tell them that “I’ll be right back” and walk away. I sit in my office for a while before I go back out to them again.

More souls will come by and will need to fill those chairs, so I won’t keep them waiting forever, but the game of it makes it all the more fun for me. That’s why the waiting room is my favourite form of torture.