"Why, hello again!" said a voice unknown but familiar.
They opened their eyes. A woman they'd never seen before was smiling down at them. She looked young but had laugh lines around her eyes.
"Who are you? Where am I?" they asked, confused, but not alarmed. They were sitting in a plush armchair. On their left was a placid black expanse of water; on their right, a sheer white wall with a door set in it. Turning around and craning their head, they could see that both the wall and the water seemed to go on forever. There was nothing besides the armchair and the woman in either direction before the gray plastic strip of floor between the two expanses vanished in the distance.
The woman grimaced slightly. "I'm Death. I don't know if this place has an official name, but I call it Betwixt." She was looking at them intently, waiting for a reaction.
"Oh. I see." They settled back in the armchair.
Death relaxed. A gentle smile returned to her face. "You're taking this well. You usually do, though."
"Usually? You mean I've died before?"
"Oh, sure, plenty of times. I'm always happy to see you." She was facing them in an identical armchair that wasn't there before, her hands steepled in front of her smile. "What do you want to talk about first?"
They gestured at their surroundings. "Can you... explain?"
"Of course." She set her head in one hand propped up on the chair's arm and gestured at the door with her free one. "That's the Door. You go through that when you get tired of talking to me and want to go back to living again. And..." She glanced at the water, then quickly back to them. "...we can talk as long as you want!" she finished awkwardly but brightly.
They pointed firmly at the water. "And what about that?"
Death flapped her hand dismissively, "oh, no need to worry about that, we can get to it later."
"I'd really like to know now. There are only three things here of interest, and a giant lake is a pretty big one."
Death sighed. "You're always insistent. Very well. That's the Water. If you go in there, everything ends. No more living or dying. Just oblivion." Her smile had faded. "But you wouldn't choose that, would you?"
They didn't answer. They stood up and looked down into the endless ink. It looked peaceful. It looked like everything they'd ever wanted.
Death put her hand on their shoulder. "Come on, there's no rush. Why don't you sit back down, we can chat for a while, give you time to think things over?"
They complied, with some reluctance, still looking at the Water. Death waited. Finally they returned their attention to her. "You say I've been through here many times before. Does that mean I've always chosen the Door?"
"Yes," she said, "but..."
"But what?"
"But it's always a close thing." She said this softly.
Their eyes wandered back to the water. "That doesn't surprise me. I'm more surprised I've ever chosen the Door, much less more than once. Hang on---" their head snapped back to Death, "---how old am I? How many times have I done this?"
Death pulled out a notebook from between the chair's arm and cushion and paged through it, mumbling under her breath. She looked up at them, the smile back on her face. "You have died a hundred and forty-seven times. You are six thousand, three hundred and fifty-four years old."
They were flabbergasted. "A hundred and fifty lives, yet I can't remember any of them but the last one. Couldn't, when I was alive."
"People usually can't. Getting squeezed into a baby brain tends to do that. But you might get flashes of them if you're very religious. Or take hallucinogens. Which you did." This last with a smirk.
"Yes, I did. Once. It was not a pleasant experience." They said "once" with a verbal underline. "I think I did catch a glimpse," they added reflectively.
"I think so too. Your eyes have a certain quality about them. Sort of haunted." That gentle smile again.
They found her sympathy oddly warm and inviting. "Is that why I'm so tired all the time? Because my --- spirit? essence? --- is so old?"
"No, that's just because you stay up late and don't take care of yourself."
"Oh. Figures." They mulled this over. "So, in my past lives. Was I always depressed?"
She didn't need to consult her book. "Yes."
"I've spent a million years being depressed?!"
"No, only six thousand and change."
They snorted. "Sorry, I've spent six thousand years being depressed. Much less pathetic."
"It really is!" she said earnestly. "A few thousand years is less time than a single breath on the scale of the universe. You're still a baby. You can grow out of it."
They raised their eyebrows. "Hundred and forty-eighth time's the charm? I know you're a, a god, or something, but you can see those are not good odds."
"Perhaps not," she conceded, "but you've made so much progress in other ways."
"Oh? Like what?"
"Well, the first time you came through here you were dripping with someone else's blood and tried to fight me. I nearly pushed you in the Water."
They scowled. "I guess I should feel embarassed, but it seems unfair when I don't even remember it."
"No, you shouldn't! You should be proud of how you've grown. Everyone starts out rough." She leaned forward. "After you calmed down, we actually had a very nice, very long chat."
They furrowed their brow at this, but really it was not hard to imagine Death having a pleasant conversation with anybody.
"The man you killed probably had it coming, honestly. Though you didn't need to use your bare hands. Or take out his fam---" she caught herself, glanced down, back up, "but you're not that person anymore."
They choked out, "I murdered an entire family with my bare hands?!"
"Well, yes, it was rather grisly. But not unusual. The unusual thing is that you didn't do it again. Souls tend to repeat their mistakes many times before they learn from them. Some never learn, even the very old ones. You're a beautiful soul, now, you just can't feel it yet. In fact, you haven't killed a single person since that first time. I think talking to me helped." She beamed at them like an LED headlight.
They squinted and turned their head back toward the water. "I may have learned not to be a mass-murderer, but not how to be happy. Which makes reincarnation an unappealing prospect. I may not be me, but I'd be some other sad sack all the same."
"Probably. But you'll be a kind and thoughtful sad sack. And I'll look forward to seeing you again."
They noticed the change in verb tense and looked back at her. "You seem optimistic I'll make the choice you want."
"You have done a hundred and forty-seven times already, so I like my odds. Even if you don't like yours."
They shrugged in concession. "As long as I'm here, let's have that long conversation you seem so enthusiastic about. What can you tell me about the universe? Are you God? What's it like being the personification of Death?"
Death just blinked at them.
"Well? You were so talkative before, is this topic just off-limits?"
She sighed. "You remember that time you took psychedelics --- once and only once?"
"Yes..."
"Do you remember when that was?" She was smiling that gentle, amused, loving smile at them that made them feel small in a good way.
"Um, it was. Well. Hm. I guess it's one of the last---"
Betwixt's ground rumbled. The Water rippled. The Door creaked open.
"I'm sorry, but I think we're out of time. See you soon." Death's face dissolved into that of their friend Jess. She looked bemused. They were surrounded by the ordinary walls of their ordinary flat.
"Finally coming down, are you? How was it?"
They glanced around wonderingly.
"I am never doing that again."