Life can be a bitch sometimes. You can do everything right and still fail horrendously. Sometimes the people you think you can trust to do what is right are the ones who you should never trust at all.
These were the thoughts going through my mind as I fell into the path of a subway train. I had done everything right in life, treated everyone who was deserving of it and many who were not with respect and dignity. In my corporate life I lifted many people from mediocrity and helped them with compassion and kindness. Why then was I pushed to my death? What kind of unspeakable sin had I committed, what horrible taboo had I broken to give me such a horrible end?
The man who pushed me to my death was someone I knew all too well. He was a coworker, or rather a former coworker. I had done my moral duty to uphold the good of the company and had defended the women he had abused by not only getting him fired but under arrest. The deranged smile on his face as time seemed to slow to a crawl was one of someone who had given up on life and intended to harm as many people as possible on the way down. The last thing I had heard about him was that he was being shipped to a prison, so how did he get out? Then it hit me. He was the son of the governor. It would be child’s play for his powerful and influential father to give him a ‘get out of jail free’ card. The sad part about this was that even with my death being recorded by horrified onlookers he and his father were likely to get off quite easily.
This world was a cruel place. Those who had everything could take what they wanted from everyone else as long as they payed the right people and brownnosed enough. He was probably going to get another cushy job and ruin the lives of more women, but this time he would not be stopped by someone with a moral compass like me. Too many people feared death for that to happen and he was sure to throw his influence around to make certain that anyone who voice disagreement was duly punished for it.
My life was flashing before my eyes, with an absurd amount of time being spent on my middle school life. My dark history, my eternal shame from those years was hammered into me for what felt like hours. My one fond memory from that time kept resurfacing. It was a set of characters I had created for my mental roleplay. One was an unstoppable master of Darkness and Death, the only human that had gained immortality without becoming undead. The other was his bride, a vampiress who was the most powerful of all the night’s children.
Kain Anathemas Nekronus von Darksol and Alexis Draculina Nekronus von Darksol, or just Kain and Alexis for short. He had fond memories of establishing a storied and detailed world that the two of them inhabited and the massive nation of the undead they had crafted through great effort and struggle. The battles they fought to secure a land to call their own, much to the detriment of the ‘Forces of Light’. The world where technology has stagnated eternally and the civilizations that dwelled there were locked in the Medieval times at best, the Ancient Greek times at worst. A land where the strong ruled the weak and the rich ruled the poor…
Not too far off from the world he was dying in.
The man closed his eyes and drifted off to a better place. He was not going to let my murderer have the satisfaction of making him yearn for survival. If he was to die, then so be it. He had done more good deeds in this world than not. If heaven did exist, he was assuredly going there and when my murderer breathed his last he would watch as he fell into hell, if it too existed. It was strange for me to contemplate such things, but he supposed that even an Atheist can have some religious thoughts from time to time.
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Then, there was only darkness.
He felt nothing. Not the nothing of not existing, instead he felt nothing in that there was no pain or sense of falling. No, perhaps nothing wasn’t the right word to use. He was lying down in what felt like a coffin. The claustrophobic environment should have been enough to send him into a panic, but instead he merely felt uncomfortable. Is this what it was like when you died? Would you just have your consciousness trapped in the coffin you were buried in forever? He could have sworn that he had insisted on being cremated after death so as to avoid the high cost of a gravesite…
He tried to move and found that he could do so quite easily, the problem was that there wasn’t a lot of room to move around in. It was then he heard a rhythmic thudding and scraping noise coming from above his coffin. Was he being dug up? He hoped he hadn’t become a zombie with a hunger for brains. Eventually there was a heavy thud on the ceiling… top of his coffin and the sounds of dirt and rocks being swept away replaced the thudding noise of shovels and pickaxes. The coffin jostled as it and himself were lifted out of the grave and he heard the sounds of metal scraping against metal. Was his coffin chained or locked shut? The rhythmic scraping eventually ended, and the sounds of metal being removed from around his coffin were heard from outside. He decided to play a practical joke on those who rescued him from his burial and prepared to give them the fright of their life.
He flung open the coffin and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“HEY, GUYS! WHATCHA UP TO?!”
The effect was incredible. Of the group that was around him, five passed out due to fright, three soiled themselves and about ten more ran screaming like the devil himself had shown his face.
“IT WASN’T A MYTH! HE’S STILL ALIVE! QUICK, RUN FOR YOU LIVES!”
With that scream, those who soiled their pants ran as well.
“Huh. Well, that was weird.” He said as he looked around in confusion. Now, where the bloody hell was he? He was definitely underground, in what appeared to be a very, very ancient crypt. Behind him was the hole he and his coffin had been pulled out of, or rather, the opened sarcophagus that lead to a pit that had previously been filled to the top with soil and gravel. Something about the soil and gravel that had been piled up around the opened sarcophagus felt weird, like it was something he should absolutely hate but the reason he should hate it was unknown to him. He noticed a stele that was at the foot of the massive black marble sarcophagus and despite it being in a language he had never seen before he could understand exactly what was written on it.
“Here lies the Embodiment of Evil, who was defeated by the Forces of Light and sealed within this prison. With his defeat the Forces of Darkness were broken and scattered, with even his wicked bride fleeing to parts unknown. Let the memory of the Dark God of Death be forever viewed as nothing but fable and myth. Let the tomb of the Evil Deity, Kain Nekronus, be undisturbed eternally, lest his reign of shadows corrupt this world once more.”
HOLY SHIT!
Did this seriously happen? Did he seriously get reincarnated into the world his Middle-School existence created as Kain Anathemas Nekronus? Was this a terrible joke, or a wonderful coincidence? Either way, the ones who fled were likely to try and get support and if he wasn’t prepared my second life would end in a way that was potentially even more violent than how he died on Earth. He didn’t feel overpowered, like Kain was supposed to be, nor did he feel like he was any different than how I was previously. Still, the coffin was pretty big, and it looked like one of the grave-robbers could fit inside and have ample room to move about. Yeah, he was definitely taller, more muscular and also probably more handsome than how he was previously. However, checking his body’s appearance would have to wait until he was out of immediate danger. There was no telling if and/or when the tomb raiders would return and bring backup, or even if they would simply collapse the exit and leave me trapped underground.
It was time to see what this new body could do.