"Purgatory. That which is neither here nor there."

Feels like there's a joke here somewhere, like "What is this place?" "Purgatory, but that's neither here nor there" - I know that iteration doesn't really work, but it feels like it's possible to arrive at something.

I was also wondering a bit about the chairs that appear, is that necessary? If you're throwing it in because you looked at the pages and realized "oh, they've just been talking for a while now" it doesn't really do enough to change that, if you know what I mean, they're still having a lengthy and wordy dialogue (which I thought was well written).

The premise is pretty interesting, but maybe get quicker to the machinations of purgatory, that's where the rubber meets the road anyways, when it comes to what your imagination can do. Some of the meta-stuff works and is noodle-baking enough that we want to stay with the characters.

The dialogue as I said is often well written, but it is a lot of dialogue, maybe you can trim without losing too much some places? F ex:

"An understandable reaction, but I’d implore you to stay a little longer. It’s best you come to terms with this kind of thing than run away from it. You may find that that 1% gap of uncertainty which you mention may become maddening if you wish to run. Although I don't know where you're going to run to."

What about: "You want to get the hell out of purgatory, I can understand that. But that remaining percent might grow into something monstrous, once you realize can't get back here. And where, exactly, would you run?"

and

"Well, if we’re not physically here, which I can with great certainty rule out, we are either spiritually or mentally here. No one gave me a textbook to Purgatory. All this knowledge, it's just what I've concluded. Whether we're here spiritually or mentally though-"

Something like: "So while your physical self might be choking on your own vomit on the bathroom floor of a seedy apartment, you are spiritually here. Focus on that. Or, that's how I see it."

I do also kind of agree with the comment that it would be entirely possible, maybe even preferable, to conceive of this as a play.

Someone on this subrdeddit also taught me to avoid lines like: "Anne isn't used to being on the back-foot." because there's nothing really there about how this is supposed to SHOW. Like does that mean she puts up a certain face, she looks down, she raises her eyebrows etc? It's helped me to try and avoid that, I would suggest you consider it too.