Terry found himself hurtling through the ground, seeing gravel, an assortment of old rubbish, bricks and dinosaur bones whizzing past. For a fleeting moment he wished that he had studied harder in school and maybe if he’d paid more attention to those science videos in class he might be able to appreciate the things he was seeing now. Though blind terror took over very quickly, and he forgot all about it.

The one thing that did stick in his mind was that the closer he got to the centre of the Earth the more likely he was going to burn up. He tried to think of things that might slow himself down, and instead thought of some strange news night program about cats and their effect on the atmosphere. Then realised that this had absolutely nothing to do with what was happening at that time, but decided that the cat was more pleasant, and so let that thought linger a bit longer.

Soon though the ground around him turned an increasingly red colour, and he started thinking about his life, which took all of ten seconds, and thought of all the other interesting things which he could had filled it with, instead of meaningless drivel. And then thought about the cat again.

Then nothing. Everything went blank, and suddenly he found himself in an elevator.

Ding.

“Floor 6 million 5 hundred and 27. Have a nice day.”, said the female lift voice in a posh American accent.

The doors opened and in front of him was a large grey room with lots of people all over the place, and a huge mountain of oranges reaching as far as the impossibly high ceiling.

He walked out of the lift, and saw that everyone seemed to be doing something rather odd. Some people were trying to do ballet to sex pistols songs, a small group were trying to play the whoopee cushion to Bohemian Rhapsody, and some others were doing a very strange dance involving paper cups and a hat stand.

While wandering aimlessly around Terry happened to pass a woman in a brown dress sitting down at a table next to the mountain of oranges. “Hello Terry”, she called. He recognised the voice, though it was muffled through her eating something.

“It’s Mandy. Don’t you remember me?”, she said.

He knew who she was. Amanda Hall, “Mandy” as he knew her. His high school sweet heart, and at the time he had been the envy of every lad in the school, because of her blond hair and stunning figure. She was a bit rounder than he’d remembered her, but (he thought) who wasn’t in their mid thirties? She still had her looks though. And partly because of this was why he hadn’t even began to wonder why she was here. That and the fact that the last time he’d seen her 14 years earlier she’d turned him down.

“Erm, hello Mandy. How are you?”

With out any trace of strangeness of the situation she replied “fine and you?”

“I’ve had better days. What am I saying? This is the worst day of my life.”, then his brain started to work again. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m carrying out my task”, she said as she started to eat an orange.

“Your task?”

“Yes”, she said with her mouth full, “to eat 9 million oranges.”

Terry looked up at the literal mountain of orange above him. He was stunned. That wasn’t easy at the best of times, but especially today. He quickly tried to rack his brain as to any clue why his former girl friend (whom he had previously thought a sane woman) would decide to go on such a crusade. None came, so he asked her.

“Why in gods name would you want to do that?!”

“To hear it”

The furrows on Terrys forehead were getting more and more obvious as the seconds passed. “What is ‘it’?”

“The Story”, she said as if it should be obvious.

“Your going to eat 9 million oranges just to hear a story?”

She looked at him straight in the eyes and said : “Yes.”

“But why?”

“Because its my task.”.

Mandy nodded.

“Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?”

She stood up, which appeared to be something she hadn’t done in a while as she struggled quite a bit. But she eventually made it. “Not at all. It is an honour! When I’ve completed my task I will get to hear the great story”, then her eyes went dark and cold. “I must hear that story!”, she said with venom.

Terry was by now becoming very worried. Just then, behind him, a man from the whoopee cushion group (assumably the leader), started yelling at a young female member for dropping her whoopee cushion in the middle of the third verse of Bohemian Rhapsody. Terry quickly realised he had to get out of here.

Mandy, almost in a trance, sat down again and continued her insane (and quite likely impossible) task. Terry rushed towards the elevator to see if he could get out via the lift. But as he went towards it, he realised that it had disappeared. The huge grey wall that he had come out of via the elevator, now contained no signs that it had ever had a lift door on it. It was just completely blank and featureless.

He looked around at all the insane people doing their insane tasks. Would he become like them eventually? Then Terry remembered the woman at the desk that Mandy had mentioned. Would she be able to help him? Well it was worth a try, he thought.

He walked towards the reception desk, which was on the other side of the massive room, through the madness. The desk was part of the end wall which the only distinctive features were the desk itself, the glass which covered area above the desk about a meter till the grey wall started again, and a turnstile to the left of the reception. As Terry was looking at the turnstile the woman behind the desk was impatiently looking at him. “Can I help you?”, her thick glasses emphasising the expression on her face.

Terry quickly looked around. She must have been in her late forties, and looked just like every receptionist Terry had ever seen. “Erm, yes you can.”. She looked him disapprovingly up and down seeing the red T-Shirt and jeans which he had been wearing since this morning.

“Well what is it?”, continuing her impatient look.

“Well you see I, erm, fell through the ground to… erm, here and you see… ”

“Get on with it”, she snapped.

“I trying! Alright, so I was wondering if you could help me get out?”

She smirked, “So you want to get out of here do you?”

Terry nodded.

“Well the only way out of here is through that turnstile. And the only way you can get through that turnstile is by completing your task.”

“But I just want to leave. Is there no other way out?”

Still smirking, she shook her head.

Well, Terry thought to himself, he might as well hear what his task is.

“Go on then,” Terry said dejected, “what is my task?”

The receptionist went towards a filing cabinet and went to what seemed to be the “H” draw.

She came back with a cardboard folder. “Terry Horowitz, isn’t it?”

“How do you know that?”, Terry asked. She didn’t answer.

“Right,” she began, “can you tell me your name?”

He gave her a strange look and said “Terry Horowitz, But you already know ….”

She cut him off in mid sentence. “Okay you can come in”. Once again he was stunned. Though he was becoming used to the sensation by now.

“Why, what did I do?”