A super short story from a prompt

 “I’ll see you in hell,” I said cockily, as I turned the gun toward the last man in front of me. It had been a long day of chasing down villains and gaining my long sought revenge against those who had killed my parents. It was the culmination of 10 years of training, hard work and long nights, traveling around the world to learn from the most dangerous of women, the deadliest human weapons ever known. And here was the last one, right before me, with wide eyes and wild hair and a mouth pleading with me in words I chose not to listen to. I smiled, started pulling the trigger, and my world blew apart in a searing pain.

I came to in an elevator, pimento green, with light organ music playing. Was that the girl from ipanema? I was sitting on the ground and quickly stood up, to lean against the railings and take my bearings. There must have been another person in the room I didn’t see, someone who shot faster than I did. I cursed under my breath. Was this then, the end? I came to the last stage of my quest and I died before finishing it?

The elevator door opened with a light ding. I stepped out into a cool blue room, filled with a hodgepodge of people. Some were in various states of disarray, sweaty and panting; others were dressed to the nines, still others just looked like they had strolled in from running errands at the grocery store. Everyone looked bewildered. It was strangely quiet.

A microphone screeched and thudded and the crowd winced en masse. A carefully coiffed Indian woman in a lime green skirt suit stood in front of a bland ikea painting on the wall, her long glossy hair sprayed and curled into high, large Jackie Kennedy style submission, a shiny red smile plastered on her lips.

“My apologies for that noise,” she said in a clipped accent as she folded her hands in front of her, a clipboard tucked under her arm against her side. “Welcome, welcome, to today’s intake room 23. If you’re here, you must have said, ‘I’ll see you in hell’ at some point in your life.”

I blinked at her along with the rest of the people. What an arbitrary distinction.

“Now, that’s a sin of wrath, so you’ve been sorted into this terrace of hell. But since we have so many souls to deal with these days, we’ve had to become very particular with our divisions of groups simply to make things more manageable,” she chirped at us. “Get used to this quickly; you’re going to be here forever and the snack bar is open but your options will never change. Okay, I’ve got to go run and welcome intake room 24! Have a lovely eternity!”

She switched the microphone off and ran off to a door on the side no one had noticed before, her heels clacking on the tile. The door vanished as soon as she closed it behind her.

I looked around at the others next to me, all of us dumbfounded into silence. The girl from ipanema still played in the background.