Paperwork After All

"Oh!  Oh!  And, uhh.. in... I want to say third grade?  I'm pretty sure it was third grade.  I gave Bruce Wilkins my pudding because he didn't have a lunch.  So... you know... that's pretty good.  Of me.  That makes me a pretty good person, right?  I mean, with all the other stuff?" The banker sputtered, clutching at verbal straws.  He sat in an uncomfortable, government issue plastic chair wearing an increasingly sweaty suit with his tie hanging loose around his neck.  In front of him was a desk, across which sat the main reason for his growing fear and discomfort.

In the much more comfortable chair across the desk sat the ibis-headed ancient Egyptian god Thoth.  He was wearing a crisp white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and had a nice silver tie on.  Nothing ostentatious, just... nice.  He was rifling through a set of papers in a drawer, not really listening to the man before him.

"Mmmhmm, yes, yes... that's nice." He muttered.  "Ah!  Here we go." He pulled a form out of his desk, and handed it across to the nervous banker. "Can you fill that out for me while I take care of the measuring?  That'd be great."

"Um.  Uhm" The banker shakily took the forms from Thoth, not taking his eyes off the bird-head that was busily ignoring him in turn.  "Do you have a.., a pen I could use?"

"Hmm?  Oh, a pen.  Yes of course." Thoth indicated to his arms, as a magician would to indicate there was nothing up their sleeves.  He then turned his hand upside down, and when he brought it upside right once more there was a pen in his palm.  He offered it to the banker absent-mindedly.

"Thank you..." He took the pen out of the god's hand, and examined it carefully.  It seemed like a normal, cheap Bic pen.  He frowned at it, and drew a line.  All normal.  He looked at Thoth once more, and shivered slightly.  Thoth was bent over behind the desk, apparently untangling something.

The banker flipped the forms over, and frowned.  "Hmm." He intoned.

Thoth looked up from behind the desk.  His body was bent fully over, but his birdlike neck stretched up without trouble, bringing his whole head above the line of the desk. "What?"

The banker held up the forms to show the god.  The ancient deity looked at the forms, then back at the banker.  "What?"

"It's in hieroglyphics."

"Yes, it's a 637-B form."

"I can't read hieroglyphics."

"You didn't say you were illiterate when I asked you at the beginning of the interview."

"I'm not illiterate!" The banker replied, ruffled.  "I can read and write english perfectly well, thank you.  Nobody uses hieroglyphs anymore!  Not for... thousands of years!"

Thoth sighed.  Humans.

"Oh yes, because that language lasts so long..." He muttered under his breath, which due to his long bird-beak was quite apparent.  "Here you go, I've switched it out for the 637-BeS, the simplified english form.  Just in case."

The banker looked at the forms again, and they were indeed english.  And... written in crayon.  He frowned at the bird-headed god again.

The questions were all about what kind of person he thought he had been in life, who he had wronged, what kind of conquering he had done, what he would likely have been buried with.  All very unsettling, but the cold, emotionless governmental style way in which everything was written really took the soul out of it all and he found he had little problem filling everything out.  When he looked up from the form after double checking all of his answers, he saw Thoth looking at him, and a small set of golden scales on the desk.  The kind you see on courthouses, or more commonly on shitty lawyer office ads.

"All done?  Great!  I'll take that." Thoth placed the form in the 'out' box on his desk. "You like the scales?  They're antique.  Won them in a bet with Justice.  For a blind lady, she's usually better at cards."

The banker just nodded slowly.  He was trying to figure out what they were for.  The last time he'd seen a pair was when he went to visit his dealer in person, up in the Hamptons... But Thoth didn't seem the type, somehow.

"Alright, now that the paperwork is out of the way, we can get to the important stuff. I know, it's a little unsettling. Don't worry, happens to everyone. A little anxiety before the big moment.  Judgement... scary stuff!  But don't let it get to you.  Everyone goes through here, or somewhere like here."

"Uhhhhh..."

"Tell you what, maybe I can help you calm down.  You like magic tricks?  Everyone likes magic.  So... tell me...." Thoth waved his hands in the air, fingers splayed out, and then clasped them together, as though around a ball.  "Is this your heart?" and he opened them, to reveal a beating, bloody, human heart.

The banker went white, and clutched at his chest.  He felt... an emptyness.  But what was more unsettling was what he didn't feel.  His heartbeat.

"Haha, don't panic!" Thoth said. "You want to hold it for a minute?  It's pretty strange, I know."

The banker shook his head vigorously, eyes like dinner plates.  He continued to clutch at his chest, expecting at any moment to keel over.

"Oh come now, calm down. Don't forget, you're already dead." And Thoth gave what the banker assumed was a smile, although beaks don't lend themselves to the motion.  "That's not the worrisome part, trust me..." And he placed the heart on one of the scales, watching it tip back and forth.

"This is."