Their Kingdom

“Hello, Marshall.”

Marshall was pleased that he had made it somewhere, although he didn’t much like the receptionist referring to him as Marshall. He had not been called Marshall in years, and had enjoyed every second of it. He wasn’t Marshall. Yes, that’s right. That’s what he wanted to tell the receptionist. “I have a new name now.” But he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure why he was so tight lipped, but blamed it on the place itself. Wherever the hell this place was? Was this the place? It couldn’t be. Maybe it was some intermediary. Maybe -

“Sign here please.” His thoughts were cut short by the receptionist, whom he was really growing to detest, indicating a dotted line at the bottom of an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of white paper. The receptionist handed him a pen and smiled. “Are you okay, Marshall?”

“Yeah.” But he wasn’t okay. This wasn’t right at all. This was all far too mundane to be the place. “Where’s Bonnie?” he asked.

“Who?” said the receptionist.

This was going nowhere. This guy clearly had no idea what the fuck was going on. No idea of the gravity of the situation. No idea of anything. If he could only find Bonnie then he knew that everything would be alright. If he found her she would take him to where he needed to be. To where they all needed to be. All of them. He turned back to the receptionist, who was still smiling.

“Where are…I came in with a bunch of other people. Do you know what happened to them?”

“I really don’t like contradicting guests, but no you did not, sir.”

“Well then where did they go?” Marshall asked.

“Where did who go?”

“Everyone I came in with.”

“I’m not sure that I -“

“Everyone that I brought with me. I brought people with me. Where are they.”

“I’m sorry sir but if they’re not here now, well, they must be somewhere else.”

“Where’s that?”

“Not here. Somewhere else.”

It’s really tough when you put a lot of time into planning something only to have it not go well at all. It’s even harder when you were looking forward to it going well. You surrounded yourself with people who believed in you and who also wanted it to go well. And so maybe you overlooked a few things. Maybe your preparations weren’t as thorough as they could have been. But they were still pretty goddamn thorough. So what the hell went wrong.

“Could you please sign the form, sir? There is a line forming.” Marshall spun around again, hoping to see a familiar face, but alas nothing. Well, sure, there were people in the line - all different flavors and shapes of annoyed people - but none of them were any of the ones who had been with him in that house in Rancho Santa Fe. He turned back to the receptionist. No use in prolonging the inevitable.

Marshall signed. The receptionist smiled at him.

“Great. Now if you could just wait over there with all the others.”

“Wait for what?”

“For something to happen.”

“Has anything happened yet?” asked Marshall.

“Nope,” said the receptionist. “But something could any day now and we really should be ready. It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

Marshall sighed and looked for a vacant seat but all of the chairs had been taken for the last four thousand years. So he decided to stand. All that was left to do now was to watch the others talk with the receptionist. That was the most interesting thing going on in this…wherever it was that they were. A whole group waiting for something to make their existence meaningful. To make their existence make sense.

One day.

“This is some fucking kingdom,” Marshall sighed. And he was right.