I've lived this nightmare so many times that the edges have worn thin, yet it never loses its grip on me. It always starts the same: I’m a teenager again, roaming the sprawling field behind my childhood home. The air is thick with the lingering warmth of a summer day, but the sharp edge of the heat has dulled. Golden light spills across the tall grass, painting the world in hues of amber and green, and the only sounds are the distant calls of birds and the occasional rustle of something unseen moving through the brush. I’m crouched low, hands parting the blades of grass as I search for field mice or garter snakes—creatures that once seemed like treasures to my younger self. There’s a simple comfort in these moments, a familiar peace that feels almost real.

Then it happens. A low rumble grows on the edge of my hearing, so deep it’s more like a vibration in my bones than a sound. I pause, breath hitching, and look up to the horizon just as a mushroom cloud blooms in the distance, monstrous and surreal. The colors of the sky bleed into it, a sickening blend of orange and ash. For a heartbeat, everything goes deathly quiet—the world seems to hold its breath, waiting. I’m frozen, caught between disbelief and a dreadful knowing. The silence is suffocating, stretching so thin it could snap at any moment.

And then it does. An invisible force slams into me, a tidal wave of scorching air that rips me off my feet. I’m weightless for a split second, a ragdoll tossed by some cruel giant. When I hit the ground, everything goes black, but the ringing in my ears remains—a high-pitched, relentless scream that drowns out everything else. I wake with a violent start, gasping for air, my skin slick with sweat. The sheets cling to me like a second skin, and my heart hammers in my chest, desperate to break free.

And just like countless other times before, I’m reborn—reset back to my younger, weaker, simpler self. The sensation is disorienting, like waking from a deep sleep only to find yourself in someone else’s skin. My body feels awkward, almost alien, as I groan and try to steady my breathing. My heart still pounds, slowly easing its way back to a normal rhythm, but there’s a heaviness that settles in my chest. I know exactly where I am, and, worse, I know what comes next.

The first dozen resets, I had hope. I thought there was a reason for this endless loop—a chance to change something, save someone, or maybe even be the hero of my own story. But those naïve fantasies faded fast. Now, I’m convinced I’m stuck in some twisted version of Hell. The kind of Hell where the punishment isn’t fire and brimstone but the monotony of a life you’ve already lived a hundred times over. Don’t get me wrong; I gave up on God a long time ago. If Satan’s out there, I haven’t seen his smug, horned face or had him pop up with a “Here’s why you’re here” speech. But if there could be a Hell, I can’t imagine anything worse than this—the same moments, the same choices, playing out like a broken record that I’m powerless to change.

Every time, it’s the same damn thing. The same childhood, the same mistakes, the same people whose faces I’ve grown so tired of seeing. I can’t even muster up the energy to pretend I care anymore. What’s the point when every path, every decision, leads to the same inevitable conclusion? I’ve tried every combination I could think of—being kinder, being crueler, running away, staying put. It doesn’t matter. I always end up right back here, staring into the abyss of another life I’m forced to relive.

My sister is dying tomorrow. Again. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched her die how many ways I’ve tried to stop it. Fate, it seems, is cruel and unyielding, and that semi-truck is always there, waiting to snatch her away. I’ve tried everything—every desperate, ridiculous scheme I could think of. Once, I forced her to stay late at school and made sure she missed the bus. But something delayed the truck, and Death found her anyway. Kept her home one day, thinking she’d be safe within those familiar walls. But no—Death came knocking all the same. I’ve thrown myself into the street, shoving her out of the way, only to feel the bone-crushing impact myself. My death. One more agonizing reset.

I’ve tried keeping her on the bus, thinking maybe she’d be safe with numbers. Instead, I watched in horror as the truck collided, taking her and a dozen other innocent kids. I can still hear the screeching of metal, the screams that seem to echo long after I’m jolted awake in yet another reset. Every time I try to alter a major event to pull a different thread in this tangled web, it snaps back into place with brutal finality. Every scenario, every choice, every frantic attempt to rewrite the script leads to the same cruel ending. Death.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m the one who dies a little more each time—watching her light go out, over and over, knowing there’s nothing I can do to change it. The worst part? It never gets easier. The weight in my chest, the cold sweat that beads on my skin as the day approaches—it’s always there, like a dark cloud hovering just above, taunting me with the knowledge of what’s to come. Tomorrow, I’ll try again. And tomorrow, I’ll fail again.

It’s embarrassing, really, how many hours I’ve wasted sprawled on some faded couch, spilling my guts to so-called professionals about my “condition.” I’ve been psychoanalyzed, medicated, and even hypnotized—anything to try to break the loop. Hell, I got so fed up with their theories and pitying looks that I went ahead and got a degree in psychiatry myself, once. Spent an entire cycle diagnosing other people’s delusions while knowing full well I had a front-row seat to my own. It’s crazy. I know it’s crazy. I’ve had clients ramble on about being reincarnated kings or prophets, and every time I saw their eyes glaze over with conviction, I knew—I have every single symptom. Yet, even with all that self-awareness, I can’t escape my fate, whatever the hell that might be.

I’ve lived over a thousand years, by my best guess, but who’s counting anymore? I’ve stopped caring how old I am. Numbers lost their meaning centuries ago. I’ve stared into the abyss of existence for so long that it’s hard to even remember what it felt like to have a future. Suicide? Done that too many times to count. And believe me, dying isn’t the worst part—it’s the waking up again, knowing I’m trapped in this twisted carousel with no way off. I’ve taken every exit I could think of, only to end up right back at the start, watching my sister die, again and again. I’ve watched my parents age and wither, my friends slip away, my children... God, the children. I’ve had more children than any man should ever have to lose. That’s why, these days, I make a point to get a vasectomy as soon as I legally can. I don’t need more ghosts haunting me.

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Did you know it’s impossible to have the same child twice? Took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure that one out. I mean, think about it. For one, you’d need to have an orgasm at the exact same moment, in the exact same place, with the exact same emotional state. And then there are the millions of sperm, all in a frantic race to the egg—each one a different potential life. And don’t even get me started on the intricacies of my wives’ biomes at the moment of conception. The math just doesn’t work. Every life, every moment, shifts like sand beneath my feet. It’s like a cosmic joke, and I’m the only one not laughing.

I guess none of these rambling thoughts matter at this moment. I do this far too often for my own sanity—narrate, that is—but when you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn that sometimes your best company is yourself. The trick is not to drown in it, but when you’ve been around for centuries, you start to realize that no one else understands the same old jokes, the same old stories. It’s easy to fall into the habit of talking to yourself. The problem with that kind of thinking, though, is that it doesn’t win you many friends. I’m often called an “old soul,” which sounds charming until you realize it’s the kiss of death at a college party, especially when you’re trying to flirt with someone who’s already had two shots of tequila. Nobody wants to date the guy who sounds like he’s been through three midlife crises before his twenties. But that’s a problem for another time. College is still a year away, and I’ll need to pick a new university this time around. You’d think revisiting the same campuses would be like coming home—familiar faces, familiar buildings—but trust me, the same beer-stained dorm rooms and droning lectures on freshman philosophy lose their charm after the first dozen rounds. But that’s a topic for another morning, another cycle, another version of me that pretends he hasn’t heard it all before.

What matters now is preparing myself for another round of goodbyes—a quick hug (but not too tight, don’t seem desperate) and another inevitable death of a sister I no longer truly know. Why don’t I know her? Because she died a thousand years ago, at least in my memory. Every iteration blurs the edges of who she was, like a watercolor left out in the rain, leaving me only with the clarity of this one day, this one moment, this one final scene that never changes. My sister is like a ghost, defined more by her absence than by her life. I remember the sound of her laughter, maybe, but even that is thin and distorted, like it’s coming from the far end of a tunnel. The truth is, I’m mourning someone I haven’t truly known in ages—only the echo of who she once was.

I let out a long sigh, feeling the weight of it settle deep in my bones, and turn my head toward the old alarm clock beside my bed. Once again, it reads five a.m., and the calendar says September 26, 1983—yesterday. The numbers glow a dull red in the dim light, a mocking reminder of my eternal Groundhog Day. I stare at it for a few more minutes, tangled in my sheets and my thoughts, before finally swinging my legs over the side of the bed. My feet find the cold, unforgiving floor, and I fumble for the desk lamp. A soft, yellow light spills over my cluttered desk, illuminating the mess of papers, pens, and an algebra book left open to last night’s homework assignment. It’s only half done, a few wrong answers scrawled in the margins like the ghost of my younger self’s confusion. I should be used to this by now, but there’s a strange comfort in the familiarity of it.

I sit down and flip through the pages, finishing the assignment with the detached precision of someone who’s done it a thousand times before, my mind already numb to the numbers. A part of me whispers thanks to my younger self for at least being organized enough to keep his assignments in his day planner. It’s a habit I drilled into myself at an early age, one of the few constants I’ve clung to through these endless years. There’s a small, bitter comfort in these routines. Even when everything else falls apart when the universe resets itself and throws me back into the same old narrative, at least there’s algebra to ground me. Numbers, unlike people, don’t change.

It doesn’t take me long to sift through the rest of his—my—homework as I dig through the worn-out backpack, finishing every assignment due over the coming days with the mechanical efficiency of someone who’s done it countless times. I don’t even bother reading the questions anymore or reviewing the material. Something about this day, perhaps due to its cruel consistency, has made these tasks a dull, unthinking routine. By six a.m., I’ve completed the familiar ritual, just minutes before my alarm clock begins its daily shrill reminder of where and when I am. I toggle the switch off, silencing it before it can start, and gather up my textbooks, stacking them carefully and packing them into my backpack more meticulously than the original me ever did.

I was a messy kid once—clothes strewn across the floor, papers crumpled and shoved in haphazardly—but the housekeeper had always been there to scold me, her voice a sharp bark that cut through my teenage rebellion. Over time, after too many cycles of annoyed reprimands, I’ve learned to refine those old habits. I now slip my books in with a practiced precision, the way I’ve grown accustomed to over centuries. Satisfied with the arrangement, I crack open my bedroom door, the hinges creaking in a way that is strangely comforting, and creep down the hall toward the bathroom, aiming to get there before my sister.

Before long, I’m standing under the showerhead, my eyes squeezed shut against the water, trying to hold back the tears that always seem to find their way out in moments like this. There’s something about the sound of rushing water, the steam curling around me like a shroud, that lets the dam break just a little. I’ve grown numb to the process of dying and being reborn, but it’s the loss of others that still stings. I used to think I could reconnect with friends from my past lives, but it always ends in disappointment. They are always the friends from a lifetime ago—or many lifetimes ago—frozen in time while I’ve moved far beyond those moments. My classmates don’t realize how much I’ve changed. I know everything about them, their habits, their quirks, their hopes, but they know nothing about me. How could they? I’m not the teenager they expect—I’m a stranger wearing his face. It’s tragically painful trying to replay the awkward friendships of this coming year.

Take Blake, for instance—my old best friend. Today, he’s just a seventeen-year-old kid, fresh-faced and reckless. Not the fifty-year-old fishing buddy from my first life, where we spent lazy afternoons on the lake, casting lines and talking about everything and nothing. I know how and when he dies, give or take a few years, and that knowledge sits between us like an invisible wall. I can’t be friends with his childhood memory; it’s too hard to reconcile who he is now with who he will become. My senior year of high school is destined to be a lonely one. People think I’m withdrawn because of my sister’s violent death—and maybe they’re half-right. But the truth is, my distance comes from the weight of my past lives, not just this one looming tragedy. I need to move to escape this crushing sense of déjà vu.