Afterlife (short story)
| "Afterlife" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Stephen King |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | fantasy, psychological drama |
| Published in | Tin House, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams |
| Publication type | short story |
| Publisher | Tin House, Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | June, 2013 |
| Preceded by | "Morality" |
| Followed by | "Ur" |
"Afterlife" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the June 2013 edition of Tin House, an American literary magazine and publisher. The story was later collected and re-introduced in the November 3, 2015 anthology The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, in which King revealed that the idea came from his own musings on mortality as he grew older. Thought first published for mass consumption a year later, King read the story aloud for a charity event to raise money for scholarships at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on December 7, 2012. Footage of the reading was uploaded to YouTube.
"Afterlife" is the experience of a Goldman Sachs investment banker, William Andrews. He passes surrounded by his wife and children, and then enters a bureaucratic vision of the afterlife. There he meets a spiritual caseworker who offers him a difficult choice, seemingly with the knowledge that he has already made the choice many times before. As well as the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, in which Goldman Sachs was implicated, the story also refers to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City.
Dying of colon cancer in a hospital bed, William Andrews' wife leans down to him and sees a smile on his face, which she wrongly perceives as being for her. In fact, he is merely ecstatic at the sensation of leaving his body, and therefore all of his pain, behind. At the centre of his vision he sees a pinprick of white light which steadily expands.
He then finds himself standing in a regular office corridor, to one wall of which is pinned several photographs of a company picnic, in which Andrews discerns many faces from his past and, inexplicably, former president Ronald Reagan. Ahead of him he sees a door with "Isaac Harris" printed on it, and inside he finds Harris with a tall pile of folders, which are delivered to him by a pneumatic tube. Harris introduces himself as a spiritual caseworker sentenced to a purgatory, of indeterminate length, where he must convey the choice facing each recently deceased person. This choice is between two doors, which Andrews sees to his left and right.
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