Bloody Orphan
By E. Anderson
Chapter 1
Fuck.
What absolute bullshit.
My vision was narrowing. Growing dark around the edges, like looking through a tunnel.
Well, that’s death by hypoxia for you. Can’t believe I’m choking to death on a goddamn ham sandwich. Some seriously embarrassing shit.
My cat, Elvis, walked into my tunnel of vision. He butted his head up against my face where it was pressing into the ugly brown carpet. “Mrrrrow?” He looked at me curiously.
Great. Not only am I going to die, my cat is going to eat my face after I do. I love that stupid cat, but that’s just adding insult to injury.
Nobody’s going to find my body for weeks. Not until the smell starts to get to the neighbors, or my landlord starts thinking about evicting me for failure to pay rent in a timely manner. That’s what I get for living alone. Still don’t feel bad about kicking out my cheating-ass ex-girlfriend though. Worth it, but damn, didn’t know it’d cost me my life.
Some friends would sure come in handy right about now, but I’ve never been much of a social butterfly. And, to top it off, my mom died last year, and that was the last of the family I had left to worry about me.
Fuck, this is unpleasant. The initial panic has started to fade. Not really anything I could do to save myself at this point. I can’t really move anymore, but I try one last time to grab my cell phone and call 911. Not that they’d be able to save me, but the cat wouldn’t get to eat me at least. I see my fingers twitch a little, my nails have turned an unpleasant blue color. I imagine my lips and face are doing much the same.
Didn’t even get to finish my sandwich. I hate wasting food, but it does mean the cat will have something tasty before he’s forced to start in on me. Lucky for him, the faucet in the shower leaks, he shouldn’t die of dehydration at least. He'll probably be put down for eating his owner, but thems the breaks, cat. I didn’t get to pick my death either. Fuck, I’m not even forty.
What absolute bullshit.
My vision faded to black as I finally relaxed into the inevitable and died.
Man, that seriously sucked.
Dying gets zero stars. Would not recommend to a friend.
Hmm, why am I not unconscious. I have to be right? I mean, I’m dead. Always assumed, when you died, that that was that. Game over. No replay. No extra lives. End of story. No credits. Just fade to a blank black screen, then lights out, and that’s it, forever.
But I’m thinking this, so that can’t be, right? Shit. You mean there IS an afterlife? What does an underachieving slacker like me have to look forward to? Nobody's ever come back to tell anybody what happens next. No reliable accounts anyway. Christians would argue of course, but I don’t put much faith in ancient myths. Or I didn’t anyway. May have to revise my opinion.
Starting to see lights. Little, bright white, lights whipping past me. Or am I moving past them? The lights intensified, both in number and speed. This shit’s starting to look like hyperdrive straight out of Star Wars.
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Cool, so that would mean I’m moving. Or my soul, or whatever I am at this point, is. That or my dying brain is just giving me a neat little send off, but I seem pretty lucid for that to be the case.
Suddenly, my viewpoint is violently wrenched to the side.
Ow! What the fuck was that?! That shit HURT. Did something just HIT me? Like, I thought dying hurt, but holy shit, ow!
Somehow I can tell I’m moving in a different direction. Still seeing white streaks as I continue moving, but something feels different. I see a bright white light coming up directly ahead, getting larger by the second.
A bright light at the end of the tunnel. I’d say it’s cliche, but the hyperdrive thing was pretty unexpected. I’m getting closer and closer and…
My head feels like it’s being crushed as it exits. I can feel an insane amount of pressure on my entire body, and all of a sudden I shoot out like a wet watermelon seed pressed tightly between your fingers.
I feel something slimy against my back and then I’m falling, spinning through the air. “Shit! I dropped it!” mutters an annoyed voice. I hit the floor hard. That hurts so bad I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. My breath is completely knocked out of me.
Wait. Breath? I thought I was dead. I strained against my own stunned diaphragm. I pulled in a whistling breath. I’ve had my breath knocked out of me enough times to know to hold my breath for a bit when I finally manage that first inhalation. Beats the hell out of having to wait for my body to be ready to breathe again, and once you let go of that first breath you may not get another for a minute or so. I’ve had enough panicking due to a lack of oxygen to last me for a lifetime.
Finally starting to feel like I can breathe. I slowly let half my breath out and tentatively sucked in another. Good, I can breathe, but OW! I had hit the floor hard, face first. I took stock, didn’t feel like I broke anything, but I was definitely going to have a nice collection of bruises.
Someone picked me up off the floor, like it was nothing that I weighed almost three hundred pounds. My eyes were blurry. I couldn’t really see who was picking me up like I was weightless, but they were fucking HUGE. I tried moving my arms and legs. They were all wrong. Stubby and weak.
“Slimy little fucker just jumped out, not my fault if he’s simple after hitting the floor like that.”
Oh shit. I’m an infant. I was just reborn.
What in the isekai fuckery is going on here?
I attempted to scream curses at the incompetent asshole that let me hit the floor at full speed. It just came out as a long continuous wavering cry. My tongue seems too big for my mouth. I couldn’t form words if I wanted to.
“Hmm, he seems fine I guess,” said the voice.
That was when I realized. The voice I’d heard had been that of a young woman, but she hadn’t been speaking English, and I’d understood her perfectly.
What. The. Fuck.
I’ve read a lot of isekai light novels, and I've watched plenty of isekai anime, and at least a lot of those poor assholes get a quick tutorial from a god after getting hit by a truck. Apparently I’m not going to be that lucky. I literally just got thrown into this world so fast and hard I hit the floor and bounced. So if my brain was magically implanted with the local lingo it wouldn’t be overly surprising, but that’s not what it feels like. I’m still thinking in english as far as I can tell.
The thing is, her language didn’t sound like any language I’ve ever heard before. Sounds like if a Scottish person tried to speak German with a fake Australian accent or something. It’s very distinctive, a bit guttural with an odd slurring brogue. I’d absolutely remember having heard something like it before, and I haven’t. So either this isn’t Earth, or it’s Earth way way in the future. Given the apparently magical language translation, not to mention the fucking hyperdrive, I’m leaning towards the former. Maybe I’ll discover I was born with some cool overpowered magic, like in so many of those novels I read, and I’ll find myself living the easy life.
I feel myself handed off. I’m being cradled by someone and feel a nipple pressing against my lips. Didn’t even wipe my slimy ass off first, moron. What the hell is wrong with you? Still, I know what I’m supposed to do, so I start sucking and drink my first meal on this new planet.
I’m off to a shit start, but surely there’s nowhere to go but up from here.