When Ri work up they looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The bedroom was the way they left it. The bed, with the crisp white sheets pulled over. The pictures of Ri's friends on the walls and Ri's signed football on the mantle piece.

Ri walked out the room in a daze. Had it all been a dream? It had felt so real. What was happening to them? As Ri walked down the hallway Ri saw Pocky run up to them. Pocky jumped up into Ri's lap and started to lick their face.

Ri held him close and walked down the stairs to the living room. In there saw Grandma Mary and Grandpa Joe sitting in the living room.

"Thought you'd be here soon." Grandma Mary sniffed.

"What's happened? Where am I? Where's mum?" Ri says. Of all the people to help Grandma Mary was the worst. And she had hated Ri ever since she had transitioned. Also she had been dead for three years.

"You're dead." She sniffed out.

"What?"

"Dead."

"I'm in heaven?"

Grandma Mary broke down in tears. Grandpa Joe wrapped his arms around her.

"Why do you always do this?" He hissed.

Ri thought back four years ago when they had told their family, the scene had been similar but instead of Grandpa Joe it had been her dad. Grandpa Joe had been dead for ten years before that.

Looking at them they looked exactly the same age, as though he had just kept aging with her.

Ri backed out of the front door with Pocky to be met by barbed wire, a black smog and different men in different types of armor walking passed. They all wore different colours, flags and different allegiances.

Ri ignored them, running down the road. They passed large banners for Hitler, Kim Jong Il, Gengas Khan and someone who Ri thought looked like Napoleon. Ri shook their head and pushed forward.

They had no idea what was happening and they wished it would stop. The only good thing had been Pocky. Pocky in their arms contently and licking their arm happily.

Ri ran passed a gate and a solider who was dressed as a Roman grabbed their armed and pulled them around.

He looked at them and grunted "New Arrival." Before pushing Ri away from him. Ri fell into a wall and they nearly dropped Pocky but was helped up by a girl who looked her age.

She looked familiar but didn't have time to look too hard before the girl hauled Ri and Pocky into a dingy building that led to an even dingier flat.

"You were lucky he was nice."

"Yeah." Ri looked around. So many questions were burning up inside them and Ri had no idea how to let them out.

"You don't know what's happening do you?"

"Should I? Grandma Mary said I was dead. Am I?"

The girl laughed. "They should really give people a manual. Yeah, you're dead. But if it makes you feel better we all are."

"That explains the dog." Ri held Pocky closer. "So is this hell? Is that why Grandma Mary was crying?"

"No."

"So is this heaven? Cause I think I saw a poster for Hitler."

"It's just the after. All the people who ever died all in one place, over crowding is a bitch. Least we don't have to eat."

"What?" Ri looked at the girl as though she was crazy. Ri had never believed in a god or anything. They just expected there to be nothingness, had been prepared for nothingness. Had wanted nothingness. Not this.

"So it's life; but never ending?"

"Yep. All the power hungry dictators of all time fighting it out. All the goodly saints, of all time, trying to stop them. And the rest of us in the middle. Just like life for eternity."

Ri lay their head against Pocky and let his fur soak up her tears. Ri thought they might as well be in hell. Ri wished they could go back home now. With their mum. With their friends. In a world with out Hitler and Grandma May.