Really...

Marvin didn’t know exactly what killed him. It was sudden and unexpected. He expected fluffy clouds and pearly gates; instead, he got something that resembled the DMV office. And much like the DMV office, he waited. It seemed like forever. When his number was finally called, he stepped up to a counter where a surly looking older woman was reviewing his paperwork. Marvin tried to speak, but the woman cut him off.

“Sir, I need to finish reviewing your paperwork. Please be patient.” She groaned.

After a long pause, she meandered, “Sir, why are you here? Your paperwork says you aren’t supposed to be dead yet.”

Marvin answered, “It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. If I’m supposed to be alive, couldn’t I just go back?”

“I’m not sure you noticed how long this line was. You’ve been up here for seventy years already. You weren’t supposed to die yet, but I can’t send you back to what is now almost certainly a rotting corpse. But we do have a form you can fill out to request transfer into the body of someone who should’ve died but lived.”

The woman handed Marvin a form. As he filled it out he asked, “Do I get to pick the body I end up in?”

The woman rolled her eyes as she took the filled out form from Marvin. With a monotone disgust she said, “You get what’s available.”

Suddenly, Marvin felt like he was dying in reverse. As the dull bureaucratic afterlife faded, he was back in the street in a location not far from where he died. Feeling a breeze rush up his legs, he noticed he was wearing a skirt. The next logical thing he noticed was that he was now a woman.

“Really?” He asked as he looked up to the sky as if the afterlife could hear him. “Really? A woman? Come on!”