Hi there! First of all, thank you to everyone who reviewed my first story, The Limits of Good Intentions. It's been nice getting back into South Park FF, both as a writer and reader, and I appreciate the support I've received so far since my recent return to this site.

This story will be a serial, and I have only fleshed out future installments broadly, so your feedback might also help to determine what happens next.

Happy readings!

TEPR

To my surprise, the first person I saw was Craig. It was in his bedroom, and he looked worse than I had ever seen him before. He had not been in school for the last couple of months, and now it was apparent: lymphoma. I'm not sure how or why I knew that, but I did. I didn't have to ask him or his parents, nor did I have to consult the medical records that I inexplicably knew were in the second drawer of his parents' bureau, on the left, under two of his dad's grimy undershirts and a pocketknife. I just knew, and that was more unsettling than anything else. What did I, a fifteen year-old, know about cancer?

I guess I should take a step back: my name is Kyle Broflovski, and I am dead. I know that much to be true, just as I know that I am an unknown presence in Craig's bedroom. He sees right through me, staring blankly at the wall as he silently gives himself the only pleasure that he can at this point. I debate whether he is modest or cold or both, since he strokes himself under his sheets as he thinks about Marla, the pale girl in his geometry class whom he is only half sure he will ever see again. He imagines fucking her and then holding her, and then they drift to sleep, but not before he finishes and then nods off here in his room, with me watching him silently. I do not know when Craig will die, but I can see it happen in my mind's eye, and I know that is how it will be.

"You goddamn idiot," Stan whispered to me as he choked back a sob. For some reason, that is the only thing I can remember from my funeral, though I am beginning to think more may come later. I didn't remember that detail until just now, and I have been dead for at least a day, or maybe a year. Time is different here, and I haven't quite figured it out yet.

"Eleventytembreth," the voice instructs calmly over the intercom. I look at my card, but I can see no indication as to whether that is me. The symbol hastily scribbled on my card is gibberish, but I hold it close to me, hoping some kind of sign will guide me.

The air in the waiting room is heavy, a fog of molasses. As I drift off, I vaguely recall how Stan felt the last time I saw him. He was sad that I was leaving him alone, vulnerable. I hadn't wanted to stay, though. The alcohol had propelled me to my feet and carried me out the door of Token's parents' mansion and into the street, unaware, where it had happened, where I was ended.

"Eleventytembreth," the phantom voice repeats, slightly more irritated this time. The obese woman beside me startles awake, looks at her card solemnly, and rises, waddling to the hulking security guard. She hands him the card, which he stares at intently for several seconds as he mumbles. "Coriander… aquamarine… dandelion." He sniffs her card and then begins to chew it before spitting it out onto the ground and directing her to the red door to his left. She enters through it, and there is silence in the room once again.

I think back to Stan and how defeated he had seemed that night. I had tried to cheer him up, to let him know that there would be other fish in the sea, that Wendy leaving him didn't make him weak or pathetic or any less of a man. (God—for someone so attractive and beloved, my best friend was incredibly insecure about his masculinity.) But he hadn't been in the mood to hear it, so when I threatened to leave him there wallowing alone in his remorse, he begged me to stay, but for whatever reason I had wanted to go, and so I walked out the door of the large house on Canterbury Lane, forever sealing my fate.

"Octwelvular, octwelvular!" the voice on the intercom snaps icily. I feel a hand on my shoulder, jolting me back to the present.

"That's you, kid," the guard says with a gnarled, toothy grin. He had walked over to where I was sitting in the waiting room and escorted me to where the obese woman had stood only moments (hours?) before. He studies my card carefully, mumbling something incoherent before sniffing and swallowing it whole. He smiles and points to the red door. I am not sure that I want to go, but my feet carry me almost without me realizing it. What I see next is even more bizarre than what I'd encountered thus far.

Nobody had taken the news harder than Ike. My brother, already a stoic lump of frustrated, pre-adolescent humanity, had been in no way prepared for my sudden, gruesome death at the hands of a drunk driver. Not that I am entirely without fault. After all, I had stumbled, inebriated, into the middle of the road, my reflexes not quick enough for me to extricate myself from the path of the speeding, erratic machine that would bring my physical death. But such trivialities do not matter to a child whose only sibling and most trusted friend has been snatched from him unfairly, quietly in the dead of night.

Of course, my passing had emotionally paralyzed my father, who was, as a result, now oblivious to the fragile state of his adopted younger son. Only my mother, with whom my brother had a strained relationship, noticed his pain and tried to make it better. Well-intentioned as they were, though, her kind gestures—a special snack, a later curfew, a too-long kiss on the forehead—only frustrated him further. What Ike was missing from his life now was not unconditional love but a friend, a mentor, a partner in crime. I could see that he could not articulate what it was that he knew that he would miss but that he was well aware that he had lost something that he would have to work very hard to replace.

"Well, suck my tits and call me a bitch, children," Chef said, laying down his cards and grinning. A chorus of groans filled the room.

"Goddamnit, Chef! That's the fourth hand in a row. You're cheating," Satan fumed, standing and throwing his cards down on the table. "This isn't fair!" he exclaimed before stomping off to his den of solitude. The others shuffled away from the table casually, Genghis Khan and Marilyn Monroe off to meet Thomas Jefferson for cocktails, while Chef headed off to his date with Cleopatra, whom he had heard was a real sphinx between the sheets.

Only Kenny lingered, tucking a half-finished cigarette that Marilyn had been smoking into his jacket pocket. When he saw me, his eyes lit up, and he rushed over.

"Holy fucking shit, dude! When did you get here?!" he asked as he enveloped me in a giant hug.

I looked around worriedly, marveling at the hideous décor. "Is this…"

"Yep!" he smiled proudly. "Welcome to Hell!"

My stomach sank. "What? No! I can't be in Hell!"

My friend rolled his eyes and put his hand on my shoulder. "You've got a lot to learn, dude. It's not like you think."

"But I'm supposed to go to Heaven!"

He shrugged. "You can if you want. It's work-at-your-own-pace here." He retrieved a small device from his pocket and showed me a screen. It had a picture of him, under which a display read 27%.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I'm 27% of the way to Heaven."

"But you've been dead for like five years! How long does it take to get to Heaven, dude?"

Kenny laughed. "I told you, it doesn't work that way here. I'll get there when I want to. I just haven't completed enough earthly service yet."

"Earthly service? What the hell does that mean?"

He fished a lighter from his pocket and relit Marilyn's stub. "Don't worry about that for now. Enjoy yourself while you're here. Have a drink. Get your Johnson worked on."

I stared at him in disbelief. "What the fuck, dude?! I have to get out of here."

"Suit yourself. I have to go, anyway. I have some ladies waiting on me back in my pod. I'll catch up with you next time you're around. And hey—don't worry, dude. All of the important stuff will be explained soon enough." With that he winked and vanished.

You never pay attention to the little things when you're alive. Now that I'm not, it's all I seem to notice—the singing of the wind in loose doorframes, the crisp color of the air, the way the snow crunches under my boots and my tracks vanish behind me as I drift through the night. I retrieve my karmambulator from my pocket and look at it again: 0%. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. Then again, I suppose that watching Craig jerk off in his bedroom doesn't exactly make me Mother Theresa.

Does God watch people masturbate? Surely he must. Even if it wasn't intentional, it'd be bound to happen eventually. There are so many people in the world, and people masturbate so often, that if God is truly omniscient, he must see it all the time. By that logic, there must literally be someone somewhere jerking it 24/7. If you think about it, God essentially watches live-action porn all day long. Fucking sweet.

That's something I miss—not porn, specifically, but arousal. Those things are different now. I'm not entirely sure how, but I know that nothing down there works the same way that it used to. I haven't had the balls to look yet (do I even still have balls?), but I know that it's not like it used to be. That's a weird thing about death. Everything is just a little bit off, but it still makes sense. I can't recall much of my Afterlife Orientation now that I'm back on earth, but I can clearly remember Objective 1: Help One in Need.

But who the hell is One? I assumed it was Craig, since it was his room in which I appeared when I returned to earth, but that can't be right. All he did was jerk off and pass out. There's not much I could have done there, other than lend him a helping hand. Heh.

This is so fucking weird. I can clearly remember seeing the vision of Craig's death, and now the memory is practically gone, a wisp of its former self that I can barely recall. It is during this moment of fleeting memory that it hits me. My knees lock up, and my arms go numb. My mouth feels heavy, full of sand, and I can see it: the gibberish scribble that was on my card in Purgatory. It's as clear as anything in my mind's eye, shining in the storage room of Tweek Bros. Coffee. I know what to do. I have found my One.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this first installment, and I welcome all feedback—complimentary and constructive—as I move on to the next. As you can see, I will be juggling multiple subplots here, and in fact, I have not even introduced all of them yet, so stay tuned for more to come in the next chapter.

Best wishes,

TEPR