Okay, let’s back up a little bit. I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Before I bore you with little things like, say, my death, I should probably fill you in on the basics first. How’s that sound? Good? Then let’s start over, shall we?

My name’s Bill, Bill Ryder. William Anderson Ryder, if you want to be formal, although I’m not sure why you’d want to be formal with a dead guy. It’s a pretty cool name, if you ask me, although it did get a little annoying a few years ago when The Matrix came out. For a couple of months, I had to deal with every single person I know ending everything they said to me with, “Mr. Anderson” in a deadpan voice. It was funny the first time, much less so the five-thousandth time.

Anyway, I’ve always liked how my initials spelled out WAR, kind of like W. Axl Rose, if a bit less cool, maybe. Although, since I go by “Bill” my friends have always pointed out that BAR might be a better acronym. I can’t really complain about that one either, since I might admit to spending a decent amount of time pounding back cold ones on the weekends.

Now, I’d love to tell you that I’m a private detective, maybe a boy wizard in training, or even a normal Joe by day/superhero by night, but that would be stretching the truth just a bit. As with all things, reality tends to be less exciting than what we would hope it would be.

Here are the basics: I’m twenty-four, currently single, and with no real potential hopefuls in sight. Well, there is Sheila, but we’ll get back to her later, especially since I’m not one hundred percent certain she’d be able to pick me out of a police lineup. Not that she has any reason to. It’s not like I’ve been stalking her these past few years. Sure, I know where she lives, what time she gets to work, what her favorite perfume is, but I assure you I’m definitely not stalking her. Really.

Oh, yeah, and she has this super cute ass that shakes so nicely when she walks...

Sorry about that. Sometimes I get caught up in the moment. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the basics ... I’m twenty-four; I think I might have mentioned that already. I have short brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, am maybe an inch or two above average height, and about twenty ... well, okay, maybe thirty pounds overweight. I’m not quite a hideous mutant, but the ladies aren’t exactly swarming all over me like pigs in shit, either. That might have something to do with the fact that I probably look like someone who’d be right at home sitting around a D&D game (which I might admit to doing occasionally ... or every Sunday, whichever comes first).

I have a degree in Computer Science from NJIT, graduated with honors, et cetera. I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy. Maybe not MIT material (fucking elitist cocksuckers!), but I can hold my own in front of a dual monitor setup.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Speaking of which, I work as a game programmer for Hopskotchgames.com. You’ve probably heard of them. You know Jewel Smash? Yep, that was me, baby. That little gem (no pun intended) alone has made the company millions in online revenue. I dare say I got a nice little bonus on that one ... emphasis on little. Cheap bastards. But still, I can’t complain, at least not too much. I make more than enough to support my “lavish” lifestyle, I get full benefits, and can work from home pretty much whenever I feel like it. Overall, there are far worse places to be employed. Don't get me wrong, though. The second I win the lottery, those guys can go fuck themselves sideways.

Anyway, my said lavish lifestyle consists of the top floor apartment of a building in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. I share it with my two aforementioned roomies, Ed and Tom. Ed is my partner in crime over at Hopskotchgames. He does graphic design for them, and we’ve partnered on more than a few of their top downloads. We met in college, and he's the one who got me the interview over there. Ed’s a good guy, if a little odd. He’s got a lot of talent, but is absolutely the least passionate artist I have ever met. Life is one big “Meh!” to him. Some days I’m pretty certain you’d need to set him on fire and cut his balls off with a dull hacksaw to get a reaction out of him, not that I fantasize much about setting him on fire ... or his balls, for that matter. But you get the idea.

As for Tom, he’s my main bud. We’ve been friends for almost twenty years. Of everyone I know, I’d vote him the most likely, in the next decade or so, to wind up in a twenty-room mansion with a hot trophy wife by his side. Tom’s all about the money. He works over in the Manhattan financial district. Currently, he’s little more than a toady to the higher-ups, but he assures me that’s the way things work there. You latch onto some upwardly mobile VP like a remora (in this case, attaching your lips firmly to their ass) and let them drag you up the ranks.

He rounds that part out by also being an obsessive collector. His dad got him into it when he was young, and then Tom’s OCD took over and kept it going in overdrive ever since. He’s got a storage bin back in Jersey, where we grew up, filled to the brim with comic books and action figures. That doesn’t even count the stuff he keeps locked in his bedroom. Most of it is worth shit now, and will probably be forever, but he’s got a few nice pieces. Just don’t let him catch you playing with any of them. Dude is a little psycho about it. I once repositioned his He-Man figure so it was giving it to Princess Leia doggy-style and you'd have thought I had poisoned his family. Shit, if I ever did poison his family, he'd probably get over it quicker.

So, that’s me. Not exactly Bruce Wayne, but then again, not a basket case still living at home with Mom and Dad either. My life is steady if a little dull: get up, get some work done, eat some food, then go back to sleep. Rinse and repeat until the weekend, when it’s more or less collect my paycheck, hang out with my friends, and bitch about the rest of the week.

Someday I hope to get married, have a few kids, and then I’ll probably settle into the same routine again. Except then I’ll spend my weekends with my wife, bitching about the rest of the week. You know how it is. My plan is a lot like anyone else's: maximize my good times, minimize my bad, and leave the larger stuff to people who give more of a shit than I do.

Or at least that was the plan, but then I had to go and fuck it all up by dying.