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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Nineteenth Hole
The last thing Stuart Bellamy saw was a golf cart.
Not just any golf cart, mind you, but a souped-up, custom-painted monstrosity belonging to Judge Harold Pemberton III, who had consumed four whiskey sours at the clubhouse and was attempting to demonstrate that his new vehicle could, quote, "really haul ass."
It could.
Stuart had been standing near the eighteenth hole, lecturing his junior associate about the importance of billable hours, when sixty-two hundred dollars of motorized hubris came barreling over the ridge at approximately thirty-seven miles per hour. The last thought that passed through Stuart's exceptionally organized mind was: "This is going to be terrible for my handicap."
Then everything went dark.
When consciousness returned, Stuart found himself in what he could only describe as a waiting room. Not a particularly impressive one, either. Fluorescent lighting, plastic chairs, and a water cooler that made ominous gurgling sounds. The walls were painted the exact shade of beige that existed in every DMV in America.
"Number forty-seven thousand, three hundred and twelve," called a bored voice.
Stuart looked down at the ticket in his hand. That was his number.
He approached the counter, where a woman with reading glasses perched on her nose was typing something into an ancient computer. She didn't look up.
"Name?"
"Stuart Bellamy. Look, I think there's been some kind of mistake—"
"Date of death?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
The woman finally looked up, her expression suggesting she had heard every possible variation of denial and found none of them interesting. "Date of death. It's a simple question, Mr. Bellamy. I assume you're aware that you're deceased?"
Stuart opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. The golf cart. The whiskey-addled judge. The terrible velocity.
"Ah," he said.
"Indeed." She returned to her typing. "Stuart Theodore Bellamy. Fifty-three years old. Cause of death: vehicular misadventure. Occupation: attorney, specializing in corporate litigation." She paused, squinting at the screen. "Oh my."
"What?"
"Your file is... extensive."
"I was very successful," Stuart said, with the automatic pride of someone who had billed over three thousand hours annually for the past two decades.
"That's one word for it." The woman scrolled. And scrolled. And continued scrolling. "Let's see here. Defended Hartley Chemical in that groundwater contamination case. Helped Amalgamated Plastics avoid liability for... goodness, that's a lot of turtles. Represented the Bellingham Development Group when they—" She removed her glasses to rub her eyes. "Mr. Bellamy, did you ever win a case for someone who wasn't, shall we say, cartoonishly evil?"
"I won cases for whoever paid me," Stuart said stiffly. "That's what lawyers do."
"Mmm." She replaced her glasses and typed something with aggressive finality. "Well, according to our assessment matrix, you've accumulated quite the karmic deficit."
"The what now?"
"Karmic deficit. Think of it like a credit score, except instead of determining your mortgage rate, it determines your next life assignment." She printed something out and slid it across the counter. "Congratulations, Mr. Bellamy. You're going back."
Stuart stared at the paper. It was covered in numbers and codes that meant nothing to him, except for one line near the bottom that was circled in red ink:
SPECIES: Canis familiaris (Pembroke Welsh Corgi)
"This is a joke," he said.
"The afterlife has many qualities, Mr. Bellamy, but a sense of humor is not among them."
"I'm being reincarnated as a dog?"
"A corgi, specifically. They're very popular right now. Consider yourself lucky—with your file, you could have come back as a tapeworm." She stamped the paper with a heavy thunk. "Any questions?"
"I have several hundred questions!"
"Unfortunately, I have several hundred more souls to process. Next!"
The floor opened beneath Stuart's feet, and he fell into darkness, screaming objections that no one was there to hear.
