Read the Fine Print

It was better than bliss; it was heaven.

“Sold to the highest bidder. Well, bidders.”

A luxury like heaven really has no choice but to….

“Have a hefty price tag.”

Jon was taking initiative, finishing out loud, the sentence of the actress on TV, and normally, he would have satirized and sneered in silence, but for the 30-somethingish time that day, the same infomercial reappeared. The phony, pretty little advertisement was becoming more memorable the more times he saw it, a distraction that normally wouldn’t have mattered to Jon if he wasn’t already behind on last week's Channel Analysis.

His office was like a single seed in a pomegranate wedge. It was a snug, insulated cubicle that, in an attempt at looking “comfortable,” ended up looking like a pod. “Is a clone amongst remakes a clone or a remake?” Jon wondered. He loved annoying little questions like those. They made him feel less Matrix-y.

Jon’s government funded company boasted “adequate”, and “up-to-date” facilities, and boy, did they deliver. The remodeling left the office floors and hallways looking like maximized bee-colonies. In the Media section, where Jon worked, the rooms had the newest and best insulation. He would get headaches after being in his office for too long. Slumped in his slightly reclined chair, Jon reached back to massage his neck.

Work had been slow that day; “Channel Rotation” had fucked him, and left him analyzing his emotional response to the Weather channel looping for the day. Along with the occasional perky Weather Girl, the only thing that sparked Jon’s interest was the commercial playing before him and that seemed to be playing at an oddly high frequency.

“Better than any drug, better than any high, try explaining the ecstasy of a spirit fleeing from the confines of the bones and conscience.”

The on-screen pitch came in the unlikely form of a pretty, practical woman with shoulder-brown hair and blonde streaks youthfully tucked behind pierced ears. A modest heart-shaped locket shimmered around her neck. She was hot in a tangible way. The commercial, Jon evaluated in his head, according to The Commercial Law of Creation, was scheduled to arrive any moment.

“For just a few minutes, for a fair price…” (there it was: the first mention of coin) “regular people can experience the best, newest, coolest thing to do in the year xxx5.” The TV said with ferocity. Though in a state of stubborn laziness, Jon’s eyes lifted up at the last line. His friends were always doing fun stuff. At least they are when he sees pictures and videos of them in the Media.

They weren’t even friends, anymore, Jon thought, so much as they were always doing something to validate each other’s existence. The world was a shallow shell.. Who knew Bluetooth would eventually burn through people’s ability to hear each other at all?

Damn, thought Jon. He liked to stroke his ego every so often whenever he came up with especially clever quips and/or realizations. This last insight won him a 10 second fondle. Usually, he would have his hands full all day, especially for his lax government job at RiNew (pronounced re-new) Corporation. The Government always had such weird names for things.

“For a mere $100...safely turn life’s ON switch… OFF.”

The commercial continued only now they changed actors. A greasy man in a good looking suit picking up the reins.

“The ultimate trip to heaven and back again. Don’t waste your money on dope, smoke and bungee jumping! The future was supposed to be good, and Relax Reform Corporation pledges to be that answer of the universe. There’s more to life. Well, isn’t the beauty of life the fact that it ends?”

Jon’s leg shifted mechanically.

“Deep questions like this, as well as, “What’s it like when you die?” are answered for the first time via the public in a controlled, unique experience available only on location. Come cleanse with us and experience a rebirth into the world.”

The woman was frighteningly generic.

“You come back with an energy state comparable to a newborn-baby! This isn’t like Disneyland! You’re just not the same after this trip.”

The scene cut abruptly from the nice sales lady to testimonial videos, clips ranging from adrenaline junkies to monks.

Bad Editing, marked Jon on the paper with pen, eyes never leaving the screen. Transfixed. Crucified. Consider it brainwashing. Jon laughed though not too hard. That last run of the commercial must have been the 30-somethingth-time-too-much. It was stupid and probably a scam anyway, but why was he still thinking about it?

Jon’s spine pointed in his chair. “Oh, shit!” he thought. Slowly, blossoming from the pit of his stomach was his body’s detection of a new inclination; an inclination of the curious, of the inspired and of the lonely. An inclination that, somehow, made Jon so inclined to pause the TV and pick up his phone to make an appointment to experience “death and back again.”

The large doors were folded open at the top of white marble stairs. The building looked like a child of the Lincoln Memorial and a skyscraper. The draft caused by the cavernous, rotating doors guided Jon inside. Gulping, Jon’s head tilted up as his eyes studied the bleached, gargantuan ceilings and walls.

“Hello”

Jon’s body stuttered at the unexpected voice.

A woman sat behind a long all white desk at the end of the room. She would have been invisible if it wasn’t for her candied orange hair, high cheekbones and face like an arrow.

“Hi, I’m here to try that whole “die and come back alive” deal.” Jon said nervously. Was he making a joke out of flirtation or nervousness? Both?

“Aw, yes. Come on over here and we will set you all up.”

“Thanks.” Jon said, walking a few more paces closer to the desk before abruptly stopping. “Oh, my God,” Jon said after recognizing the small heart shaped locket dangling between the woman’s bony chest plate. “You’re the actress from the-“

“Commercial, yes,” the lady said with a deadpan reply. “They make any job seem like fun on the commercials.”

“Actually, I thought it looked like a lot of fun, Ha-ha.” Jon was bored but the woman was busy. “In fact, it was your performance, believe it or not, that brought me here. Hey, wasn’t your hair a different-“

“I’m sorry sir, but I am supposed to be on my break,” the girl blurted out, “and I have a lot more paperwork to take care of tonight.” Too weathered to feel defeat, Jon kept the shtick up.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, I understand. I’ll take a kill me quick special.” The joke fell to the shiny floor as the woman immediately began rummaging around her drawers collecting the necessary papers.

“Sign here, here, here and here.” She said as she handed Jon the stack of papers and a pen. Determined to help the struggling actress get to her break on time, Jon stood there signing away. He was nearing what looked like the last couple pages of the contract when the most embarrassing thought dawned on him.

It was a thought relating to a crime show he saw once, about how the human body releases all of your bowels when you die. Complete relaxation indeed, thought Jon. “May I quickly use the restroom?”

“Down the hall to the right.” She responded with her nose pointing over her shoulder.

Checking his hair in the bathroom mirror Jon walked towards an open stall and closed the door. After 4 minutes he flushed and began doing his pants back up when his eye caught on to the slightest deviation in the architectural perfection of the building. Well, it wasn’t exactly a blip in the architecture as it was a small carving. Words in fact.

Jon craned his neck downwards, towards the small cluster. Etched at the bottom-left corner of the stall door were the words “read the fine print” in strict, diagonal lines.

Bathroom graffiti carved in a building like that was not only out of place, it was bizarre. At first, Jon stood stagnant in the bathroom stall, pants still not fully fastened. Jon didn’t believe in a lot in the world. He did, however, believe in reasoning and when his gut told him something was off, to ignore that would be like ignoring science. There was nothing good about that corporation.

Jon thought that before, during even the first few times he saw the commercial. He could feel their wrongness in his bones but he didn’t know why. He started to panic. Sweat started to trickle down his back as he realized the simplicity of the current problem.

He needed to get the fuck out of that building. He yanked his belt and burst through the stall door, survival inertia kicking in. Practically running out of the bathroom, Jon went straight to the frontdesk, snatching up the pile of papers. Read the fine print, read the fine print, Jon thought, as he scanned the minute ink splotches on the page.

The woman who was at the front desk finally caught up to the situation and was already on headset with security. All of a sudden, on the second to last page, he saw it. Under the 2nd line of the page he was supposed to sign, he just barely made out a small line of text followed by a symbol. A line he didn’t notice before.

Jon could hear yelling in the background of the lobby, but couldn’t make the words out. He was focused too hard on the document.

“WE WILL SHOOT!”

Jon began speaking the words out loud to better concentrate.

“Thank you to the proud sponsors: the Federal Population Control Unit partnered with Capital Punishment.”

Jon barely got the last words out before being shot three times in the back and chest.