《The Rite of Sanctuary》21.5) Thereafter.

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The last thing Vernon Locklear knew before he died was the lack of sensation.

Not pain from the wound that killed him. Not a sense of cold as his as his body shut down. Just a faint murmur of voices as his eyes shut, and then nothing.

Until someone began shakings his shoulder. "Wake up man, I was sent here for someone and given all the blood. I'm guessing it's you."

Vern opened his eyes to see a much older man dressed in denim biker gear giving him a concerned look through thick glasses. "You do understand what happened to you right?"

The dead man glared at the guy in front of him. "I'm dead. Or at least I was. A sharp object in the gut tends to do that." Looking around, Vern could see his killer sitting on the pew across the aisle from him, shaking even as the big girl who had child proofed his shot gun pulled the kid into her arms.

The biker with the nearly white beard sighed in relief. "Good, I've only done this a few times and I hate having to explain it to people. Screw going though all five stages."

Vern stood up so he could check out his remains, but all that was there was the blood, and the gun he had laid down at his side. But no body. "What did they do with... me?"

The old guy began to speak, then hesitated before finally telling him, "They tossed it into the sea, went down pretty quick."

The dead man gave him a suspicious look and began to walk toward the doors to the balcony. Only to find each step away from where he died getting harder and harder to take. It was like the very air was becoming thicker with each step.

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The old guy walked up next to him. "You're locked to where you died. Usually it's better, I mean imagine if I had to go find you where your body ended up... on the bottom of the sea."

Vern looked at the old guy. "One of those giant snakes ate me, didn't it."

Biker guy suddenly grinned. "Yep, two of them went for your corpse, but the bigger one got most of you." He made tug of war motions with his two hand before pulling one away with a jerk.

The dead man rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Right. Got it. Died, and got torn apart by sea monsters. Now who the hell are you and what the hell is happening now?"

The older man held out his hand and introduced himself as "Cliff Stanford" and shrugged. "Grim reaper I guess."

Vern reluctantly reached out to shake the man's hand, then sat down a on the opposite side of the nearby pew, the side without all the blood. "You seem a bit... fleshy for a skeleton. Now to mention not having a scythe."

Cliff nodded. "Yeah, they offered me a job as a psychopot, and said it was like being a grim reaper. Since it sounded like a better option then being sent to hell, I took the job."

"Wait. Hell?"

The biker nodded. "Seems there are a lot of versions of earth out there.." He waved his hands around vaguely. "But they all had the same afterlife. So they brought us here from versions of earth that got hit with the toxin, but they either don't have a earth to send us back to, or just don't have the manpower to figure out which one was ours."

He shrugged and took a seat on the edge of the raised platform the lectern stood on. "So when one of those demons managed to pop a hole in the propane heater, me and most of my brothers who had been sleeping on the floor of the bar died in our sleep. Kind of wish we had kept the place a little cleaner so we would have noticed the smell."

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The biker shook his head. "We ended up stuck in the burnt out remains for a couple of days before the Director showed up, he gave us the option of being sent to our afterlife, or working for him." Shacking his head the old man stood up again.

"I decided that if the afterlife was real, then I had done a lot of things in life that I'm pretty sure meant I wasn't going to a nice part of it. And I had a few people that were going to be waiting for me that I didn't want to meet again. So I took the job"

He held his hand out again, his other pulling out a short, thin, white blade. "Anyways, it's time to sever your ties to this spot and move on out to the waiting room." He wiggled the blade around. "Don't worry, this only cuts you metafortaly I've been told. Don't hurt a bit."

Vern hesitantly stood up, holding up his hand to ask for a moment instead of taking the Reapers. "Before we go, tell me... Is the director hiring?"

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