Work Text:
Post 1930 Purgatory
“Well hello there, Colonel.”
Colonel Ainsley William Ginger of the Royal British Army stood in a strange room, one that he was not previously in during his last moments of life. The room seemed small and cozy at first glance, but scale is difficult to determine when faced with the worst nausea known to man.
“How was your Ward 8, you prick?
Through blurred vision Ginger managed to grab onto an armchair for support. The leather squeaked under his pained grip as Ginger felt the full wave of nausea pass through him.
“You’ve gone through war and back, it’s not that bad. I went through it a bit ago and I’m fine.”
Ginger finally registered that someone had been speaking to him, and he swiveled his head to the direction of the noise.
Red , he thought. Ginger finally sat down in the chair that he had been death gripping for a while now. He was blinking through blurry eyes, but ringing in his ears was subsiding. The nausea was still worse than ever. The voice that had been talking to him seemed familiar, but not overtly.
“God?” asked Ginger, drunkenly.
“Christ-” Sangria remarked under her breath.
“Oh, sorry, Jesus,” Ginger apologized.
“If I was God, I would not want to be stuck here with you ,” said Vivian Sangria, in the most offended tone a previously-alive person could muster.
Ginger’s eyes were finally able to focus on details now. He was in a massive library, it seemed almost infinite. The warm Victorian tones were easy on pained eyes, and the arches made it easy for them to wander. Ginger’s head was slowly following his eyes, looking at the beauty above him. His mouth was slightly agape. The euphoria of the pain was subsiding, finally allowing him to relax.
A book slammed across his face, fast. The trance was shattered from Ginger’s face as the front of his body folded and as he grasped his jaw. He looked up.
Madame Vivian Sangria stood in front of him, with a beautiful orange book in hand.
“It was the least I could do,” she said with a smile. “You did kill several of my friends and family,”
Ginger looked up with more guilt in his eyes than pain. He took a pained breath and braced for the reaction to his upcoming question.
“I apologize in advance madame, if you could remind me of your name I would be forever grateful-” Ginger got another book to his face. This time the book fell in his lap. A book with a beautiful deep red velvet cover with golden embossed title that read Vivian Sangria sat closed before him.
“You’re glad I’m dead, otherwise that book would’ve been bigger,” Sangria said scathingly. Ginger looked up.
“Dead?” Ginger looked blankly. Sangria took a deep, disappointed breath.
“Dove meant to only poison you , but at the last minute the glasses switched and I got poisoned. She still got you in the end apparently, good for her,”
Ginger looked baffled. “Why would anyone want to poison me?”
Sangria looked at him with one of those looks that a grandmother would give that sends chills down your spine.“Everyone at that party has plotted your murder at least once,” Sangria said disdainfully.
Ginger looked quite offended (and frankly confused), his mouth opening and closing, expecting for a response to come out of it, to no avail. He did this for a while, and then remembered his past mistakes. His historic past mistakes. During this reflection Ginger took time to take in his surroundings. He was sitting in an ethereal and enormous gothic library. Along the open walls, there were beautiful intricate paintings of more classical depictions of purgatory. Ginger’s eyes traveled to the most notable thing in the room.
“What’s with the fireplace?” Ginger asked blankly. The fireplace was remarkable, it was the size of broad double doors, with the flames reaching to the top. He was surprised the library hadn’t burned down with how animated the flames were.
“It seems like there’s something weird with it, but I haven’t found anything about it since I’ve been here,” Ginger looked over to Sangria and saw the pile of books stacked next to her.
“Have you read all those books since you’ve been here?” Ginger questioned. Sangria looked at the books, and back at Ginger, somehow the most surprised she’d been with his questions.
“Do you not know how to read? When was the last time you read a book?”
“Does A.A. Milne count?” Sangria looked appalled.
Ginger, finally recovered from being shot to a different plane of existence, stood up from the chair, stretched, and started exploring the library. Across from the fireplace, there was an equally massive ornate mirror. It seemed as peculiar as the fireplace, with just enough off about it to require investigation. Upon raising his monocle to the mirror, he noticed that it did not seem as wholly reflective as he remembered mirrors to be. He could see himself, sure, but it seemed that there was light seeping behind the mirror that was catching his eye.
“Anything on this?” he motioned toward Sangria, while still maintaining focus on his reflection.
“It’s a mirror, Ginger,” Sangria said, going back to her book. Ginger gently put his hand to the face of the mirror, and the image began to warble and liquify. He snatched his hand back from it and the image resumed to normal. He hesitated, and then put his ear close to it. The slightest sound of clinking glasses and hearty laughter was just barely heard.
“It’s the party,” said Ginger, his face slowly brightening. He started pushing his shoulder through the mirror, successfully but with some resistance. Sangria got quite agitated at his actions.
“Ginger, you do know this isn’t heaven, right? This is purgatory, you could go into an eternity of suffering if you do anything-” Ginger could not hear her, as his head was fully inside the mirror.
Ginger was inside of the lovely little party that he was attending minutes prior. The most peculiar thing about being a ghost is seeing yourself in the third person, especially right after death. Most don’t take that very well. Ginger saw the others crowding around his body, some were more thrilled than they should have been. In his excitement and horror of being a ghost, he knocked over a glass that the bartender was reaching for.
It pissed the bartender off a bit.
Ginger was strangely excited to be a ghost, although he was not as excited to hear what the others had to say about him. He realized why most people don't see ghosts often; most people don’t have the greatest things to say about a ghost, no matter how great they may have been. Another thing is that it takes quite the energy to be a ghost in the living realm, especially inexperienced ghosts who recently acquired their ghost status. Ginger phased through the backside of the mirror, where Sangria was waiting.
“Are you done fucking around now?” questioned Sangria, raising her eyebrows in unamusement.
“They said some not very nice things about me,'' said a disheartened Ginger, avoiding Sangria’s gaze.
“Surprising, considering you did give some of them the blessing of being blown up,” she said, sarcastically.
“Not all of them,” Ginger said, pointing a finger at the mirror in defense.
“Enough to piss one of them off,” Sangria continued, continuing her reading.
“Alright, it's not like I meant to-”
“Don't start with me, I've read the reports-” Sangria started.
“H-how do you know that some of the reports weren’t doctored or-or inaccurate?” challenged Ginger. Sangria looked up from her book blankly.
“I’ve housed dozens of people who were at the incident. I’ve heard the story from the source, hundreds of times over. They have shown me their nightmares, their scars, their fears. Their eyes have been carved with the scene of the incident. You can see the reflection of the explosion in their eyes when they talk.”
“It was for the greater good, we saw the same vision-”
“Put a sock in it, Ginger. Clearly your ‘greater good’ is as good as you are now,”
“I at least out-lived you by an hour or something-,” Ginger said, desperately.
“But look where you ended up,” Sangria said, harshly. Ginger looked defeated, his shoulders finally falling from being defensive for so long.
“I hope you like reading,” Sangria said, offhandedly. Sangria noticed his aversion to reading for the rest of eternity.
“It’s either that or the fireplace,” Ginger didn’t like that either.
“Well, at least I-”
And so the bickering went on for the next decade and a half. (You would think they would get tired of it.)
At least until the next person would come in.