Sinners Please

SINNERS PLEASE

Hell has a border. You have the booth.

Every soul who arrives at the gate arrives with papers, a suitcase and a story. Some of them are exactly who they say they are. Some of them are not dead at all. Your job is to tell the difference before the queue backs up, the rent comes due, and the boss notices.

THE SHIFT

Read the papers. Name, date of death, sin, office of issue. Check them against the registry. The registry is not always right.

X-ray the luggage. Contraband, keepsakes, things that should not have made the journey. What is this holy hand grenade?

Ask questions. Basics are free. Everything else spends the budget. Choose what you need to know.

ADMIT or SHOOT. Two buttons. No third.

Twenty-eight days. Four weeks, each ending in an audit. Standing orders change. Memos from downstairs change what counts as a valid excuse. Bribes are offered. Watchlists arrive. The rules stack, and the queue keeps moving.

Every run is dealt fresh: the tricks are authored by hand, the people who carry them are generated new every time. A seed replays the same month. Nothing else does.

THE VISITORS

Ah Sundays. No one in hell likes Sundays. Death drops by. So does the Mother. So do the Trainee, the Inspector and the Hunter with their own ideas about how the booth should be run. None of them are souls. All of them are counting. Why can't they just let us rest?