Jim's Paranormal Adventure

Jim lay across an antique couch the color of dark mahogany.

He was a man in his late thirties, though lately he felt much older. There was worry in his eyes, the kind of worry that did not belong to one bad day, but to years of carrying invisible weight.

Beside him sat his therapist.

She was young, with golden blonde hair pinned neatly into a bun. Her professional attire gave her an almost severe elegance, though there was something soft and innocent about her face. She sat upright in a plain office chair, legs crossed, scribbling notes into a pad with singular focus.

The room was quiet enough that the scratching of her pen began to sound accusatory.

Jim finally broke the silence.

“I dreamed I was walking through a furniture store,” he said. “One of those big flat-pack places. I’m not really sure why I was there.”

The therapist looked up, pen hovering.

Jim continued.

“I walked for hours and didn’t see a single person. At first I thought I was just lost, but then I started getting impatient. I couldn’t find an exit. Every aisle kept looping back on itself.”

He swallowed.

“I started running. Bedrooms, kitchens, offices, bathrooms. It just kept going. Then I ended up in the bathroom section, and there was this figure standing in the corner. A man in a dark robe.”

Jim’s voice lowered.

“He kept waving me forward, like he wanted me to follow him. But my legs wouldn’t move. Then I woke up.”

The therapist paused from her notes.

“How did that make you feel?”

Jim blinked at her.

“I don’t know, Doctor. I was kind of hoping you knew. I mean, that’s why I’m paying you two hundred dollars an hour, right?”

She raised one eyebrow, acknowledging the jab without letting it land.

“Now, now, Jim. There’s no need to lash out. Dreams can be difficult to interpret from the outside. They’re full of personal symbols and private meanings. What I see in the dream may be very different from what your subconscious is trying to tell you.”

Jim sighed.

She clicked her pen once.

“Have you ever had a disturbing experience inside a furniture store?”

Jim stared at her for a moment.

Then he searched his mind for any trauma involving couches, lamps, dining sets, or discounted end tables.

Nothing came.

“No,” he said. “I can’t even remember the last time I went shopping for furniture.”

The therapist glanced at her watch.

“I’m sorry, Jim, but we’ll have to leave it there for today. I want you to think about the dream. Especially the store. Consider what it may represent, and we’ll return to it during our next session.”

Jim gave a long, exhausted breath and stood.

The session was over.

The elevator was out of service, which felt less like an inconvenience and more like an insult from the universe. Jim walked down the stairs, one step after another, while a deep weariness settled into his bones.

The parking garage was ghostly quiet.

No footsteps.

No voices.

Only the low hum of fluorescent lights and the distant sound of rain hitting concrete somewhere beyond the entrance.

Jim stopped beside his car and looked around.

The cars sat motionless in their spaces like abandoned animals. The air had a strange whistle to it, though there was no one nearby. He could not shake the feeling that something had followed him out of the office.

Or worse.

That something had been waiting.

He got into the car and locked the doors.

The road home was cold, dark, and slick with rain. Jim drove in silence, wondering why he had ever scheduled therapy so late in the evening.

“I should reschedule for earlier,” he muttered.

Still, he kept glancing at the rearview mirror every few minutes, looking for familiar headlights or a car that stayed behind him too long.

But the road was empty.

Oddly empty.

Even for that time of night.

The drive was short, and he made it home quickly enough. He sat in the car for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to convince himself there was nothing wrong.

Nothing had followed him.

Nothing was waiting.

Nothing was standing in the dark.

When he walked into the house, dread came in with him.

It hung in the air, thick enough to cut with a knife.

The day had drained him. The deathly weariness from the stairwell had settled even deeper now, past muscle and bone, into something closer to spirit.

He was too tired to cook dinner.

He went straight to the bedroom, threw himself onto the bed, and turned on the television.

A nature documentary filled the screen.

An octopus moved through dark water, its body folding and unfolding like a living shadow. It seized a fish with sudden violence and pulled it toward its hungry beak, headfirst.

Jim watched for a few seconds longer than he should have.

Then sleep began to take him.

He drifted into that strange middle ground between waking and dreaming, the place where the body grows heavy and the mind starts whispering to itself.

Jim had always thought falling asleep felt a little like dying.

Memento mori.

Remember that you must die.

That thought had probably fed his insomnia more than anything else. But this time was different.

This time, sleep came easily.

Too easily.

It felt less like rest and more like slipping into a warm coma.

Jim opened his eyes.

Harsh fluorescent lights beat down on his head.

The heat from them was unrelenting, like a desert sun trapped inside a ceiling panel. He was standing in the furniture store again.

Only now the dream felt different.

More lucid.

More real than life.

The aisles twisted and turned around him. Each section was staged to imitate a different part of a home. Bedrooms. Offices. Bedding. Kitchens. Bathrooms. Living rooms filled with sofas no one would ever sit on. Dining tables set for families that would never arrive.

Everything looped back into itself.

Every time Jim completed a circuit through the store, the air grew hotter.

At first he walked.

Then he hurried.

Then he ran.

He passed the same lamps. The same bookshelves. The same artificial plants. The same perfect little rooms built to look like lives someone else might have had.

Eventually the heat became unbearable.

Jim began to panic.

He slammed his fists against one of the showroom walls.

“Please,” he shouted. “Please wake the fuck up!”

He pounded the wall harder and harder until pain shot through his hands. His knuckles split. Blood smeared against the painted surface.

He struck the wall one final time.

And then it changed.

The wall gave way as if it had turned to water.

Suddenly, Jim was awake.

If that was the word for it.

Sleep paralysis is a strange state of consciousness. You are not awake. You are not asleep. You cannot move, and every word you try to speak dies somewhere in your throat.

That was the state Jim found himself in.

But something was wrong.

He was not in bed.

He was sitting on the toilet in his bathroom.

He tried to move.

Nothing.

He willed his eyelids to open wider.

Nothing.

He tried to scream.

Nothing.

His body refused every command.

His eyelids grew heavy again.

The bathroom faded.

And Jim slipped back into the store.

He was standing before the same wall he had beaten with his fists.

Only now, he knew he was not alone.

There was a presence behind him.

Jim stood perfectly still. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears that it seemed to belong to someone else.

Whatever stood behind him, Jim knew it did not have his best interests in mind.

Then it spoke.

The voice was slow, deep, and unearthly, a pitch so strange it rattled through Jim’s bones and raised every hair on the back of his neck.

“You’re dead, Jim.”

Jim spun around, fight-or-flight flooding his body.

He started swinging wildly at the air.

There was no one there.

And then the store was gone.

Jim now stood in a bizarre room. The ceiling and floor glowed with fluorescent light. In the center of the room sat a single mahogany desk. Behind it was a tall office chair, rocking slowly back and forth.

Jim took a moment to breathe.

On the right side of the desk sat a name badge.

It read:

MANAGER

The rest of the desk was almost bare. On the left side sat a small brass cup with a single feather-tipped pen sticking out of it.

The same unearthly voice rumbled from behind the chair.

“It is time to take account of your life, Jim. But before we can proceed, you must render payment.”

Jim’s anger returned because anger was easier than fear.

“What the hell are you talking about? What kind of clown show is this? Who are you?”

The voice answered slowly, completely unmoved.

“Check your pockets and place my payment on the desk.”

Silence followed.

Then Jim, feeling ridiculous, shoved his hands into his pockets.

His fingers found the familiar shape of a quarter.

Then another in his back pocket.

He took them out and stared at them.

Plain.

Unassuming.

Boring.

Two quarters.

Jim walked slowly to the desk and placed them down.

The tall office chair creaked.

Then it began to turn.

The figure from the dream faced him at last.

It wore a long black robe covered in fine dust, as if it had been forgotten in an attic for generations. Cobwebs clung to the fabric. Leather-gloved hands rested against the arms of the chair.

Jim tried to make out a face beneath the hood.

There was none.

Only darkness.

Not shadow exactly.

A void.

A face made of absence.

The figure stood in one smooth motion, pushing the chair back. It was impossibly tall, so tall its hood nearly touched the glowing ceiling.

“You are dead, Jim,” it said. “You no longer belong to the physical world. It is time to account for your deeds in life.”

Jim stared at the thing behind the desk.

“The fuck I am,” he snapped. “What is this place? Who are you? And why do you keep saying I’m dead?”

The Manager leaned forward.

Jim leaned forward too, because some foolish part of him still believed intimidation belonged to the living.

They were almost face to face now.

Still, Jim could see no features under the hood.

Only that black hole of darkness.

“I am the Ferryman,” the Manager said. “I guide lost souls to their final judgment.”

Jim let out one sharp, disbelieving laugh.

“So you’re telling me the afterlife is a furniture store?”

“This place is an illusion,” said the Ferryman. “We stand in a void of darkness. The store was chosen for you because of the way you lived.”

Jim looked around at the fluorescent room, the desk, the name badge.

“The way I lived?”

“You lived in a world of endless consumerism,” said the Ferryman. “So you will cross over in its image.”

Jim felt the words settle into him.

The endless staged rooms.

The fake kitchens.

The fake bedrooms.

The pretend offices.

The bathrooms under artificial light.

Homes without life.

Comfort without peace.

He looked away from the Ferryman and prayed to wake up.

But even as he prayed, he knew it was a waste of energy.

“How did I die?” Jim asked.

The Ferryman relaxed its posture.

“Brain aneurysm. You died in your home, sitting on the toilet.”

Jim stared.

“Jesus.”

There was a long pause.

“But I’m young,” he said. “I’m not ready to go yet.”

His voice cracked with panic.

“This has to be a mistake. There has to be some way for me to go back.”

For the first time, the Ferryman sounded annoyed.

“Death makes no mistakes. Do not waste what remains by bargaining with me.”

Jim tried another approach. Maybe if he played along, he could wake up. Maybe this was still a dream. Maybe this was some bizarre psychological event, some nightmare his therapist would later charge him another two hundred dollars to discuss.

“This is not a dream,” the Ferryman said.

Jim’s blood went cold.

“Get the fuck out of my head.”

The Ferryman reached across the desk and placed one leather-gloved hand on Jim’s shoulder.

Then Jim saw the truth.

Every moment of his life opened before him in perfect, crystalline detail.

His childhood.

His teenage years.

His first kiss.

The first time he rode a bicycle.

The jokes he told in school.

The women he loved.

The women he lost.

His marriage.

His divorce.

Every small cruelty.

Every tenderness.

Every wasted afternoon.

Every choice he told himself did not matter.

It all passed before him like a film made from the entire substance of his life.

When it ended, Jim was no longer in the store.

He was standing in his bathroom.

And there, sitting on the toilet, was his body.

Lifeless.

Awkward.

Undignified.

Human.

Jim looked at himself for a long time.

All his anger left him.

In resignation, he asked the final question he would ever ask.

“Now what?”

The Ferryman stepped closer.

Its arms wrapped fully around him.

The darkness beneath the hood opened wider.

Jim thought of the octopus on the television, pulling the fish toward its beak, swallowing it headfirst into the dark.

“Now,” the Ferryman whispered, “you join me in the void and face judgment.”

Darkness enveloped Jim.

Then, suddenly, warmth washed over his body.

A distant ringing filled his ears, growing louder and louder. Ahead of him was a light at the end of what looked like a tunnel, rushing toward him with impossible speed.

Jim opened his eyes.

It felt like the first time.

He looked around.

Then he breathed in what felt like his first breath.

Somewhere nearby, fluorescent lights hummed.