I died.

Yeah, that's how this all starts. Not really how you expect a story to begin, right? Well that's what happened.

I was minding my own business, walking home after a particularly grueling day at work. It was about seven in the evening, I guess, that time of the day where everything is just starting to get darker, but you can still easily see around you.

That last part is an illusion just so you know.

In that early pre-twilight, you think you can see easily around you. But since it's harder to see shadows and determine what's there and what isn't, things become tricky. And that's how I got done in.

I had just stepped past a wooden fence that went around someone's backyard, when I heard the BANG. It sounded almost muted to my ears. I turned around, and that's when the second one went off.

And a third. Then the fourth. I look ahead at a young man, probably a couple years younger than me. He's holding a gun in one hand, pointed at me, his arm held straight out. With the part of my brain that's currently not working as hard, I think that his shooting posture sucks, and his aim is probably a bit off.

Turns out I was right. Just not right enough.

His aim still put one shot into my back, just to the left of my spine. When I turned around, the second and third shots climbed up from there, hitting me just below my rib cage, and the last hit my heart.

The fourth shot missed. Like I said, bad posture, the recoil was making his shots climb.

Still wouldn't help me.

It was like slow motion was in effect all around me. I vaguely noticed that I was falling backwards, right before I hit the ground. The pain was starting to hit me then, as my head bounced on the concrete.

Funny that. I felt the pain from the concrete before the pain from the gunshots. Guess life, or death, is weird that way. And that's exactly what this is. Death.

My world started to go grey, like someone was draining all of the color away from my eyes. Kinda weird, wasn't expecting that. I was kinda thinking I would see my whole life before my eyes, like some weird power point slideshow.

But that wasn't happening. Weird. Instead, I watched as a strange blue mist seeped out of my mouth. I tried to cough, but by this point, I'm pretty sure my body was actually dead. It didn't respond at all.

That was when I saw the weird guys.

One I was pretty sure was Death. Why, you ask? Well, when you picture Death, the Grim Reaper I should say, you picture a skeleton looking guy, with a big scythe and wearing a hooded robe that covers him from top to bottom, right? Why, isn't that just a perfect description for contestant number 1? Yes, yes it was.

The other contestants, well, they're a bit weird as well. One is a young girl, dressed all in white, sitting cross legged on a cloud.

Yeah that's right. A cloud. A pure white, poofy cloud. I know that clouds are just water particles, but that cloud looks suspiciously solid. Weird.

The last contestant is also rather strange. It's a young boy with little horns sticking out of the top of his head. He's wearing a three piece suit, but no shoes, and he's got both hands in his pockets.

"Well, that sucks," he says, as I notice them. He looks at me,"You just had to die in front of us. Didn't you!?"

Like it's my fault I died.

The girl sighs," Luce, it's not his fault. He just died. It's not like he could have helped it at all."

The boy sighs in return," You are too lenient on them. Grandpa wouldn't be so lenient with them."

"That's why we got rid of grandpa and the others, remember?" the girl says.

"Yeah, but now the only one who plays with me anymore is either you or Thanatos, and Thanatos is kinda dreary. Though that whole 9/11 thing was rather fun."

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Both of them sigh at this point. The skeleton guy points his finger at me, and then says in a voice that's dry and raspy," You weren't supposed to die yet."

This causes both of the kids to startle."He wasn't supposed to die!" they shout.

They mutter amongst themselves, while Death just looks at me.

Nodding their heads they both look at me.

"Sorry!!!" they shout at me.

The girl then continues with,"Unfortunately, you are dead dead. Which means we can't put you back in your body or anything like that."

"But it does give us some options," the boy says,"Including allowing you to immediately reincarnate."

I kind of nod my head. I hadn't noticed before, but I'm kind of an amorphous ball of blue wisps right now. So nodding my head move my entire body up and down.

"Now for the bad news. You can't reincarnate on Earth." they both tell me, looking kind of sheepish about it.

"You see, while you weren't supposed to die yet, we were about to start Armageddon. Humans on Earth have started to do things that will get them into a lot of trouble, and we were just about to deal with that problem. But if we brought you back now, you would just die again, and neither of us want to do that as it takes quite a bit of energy to bring someone back."

I nod again, both understanding and agreeing. I don't want to resurrect just to die again.

"So, we'll reincarnate you on some other world. Thanatos will decide. The other bad news is that we won't know how you reincarnate. You could be human again, or something else. Won't know until you get where you're going."

I think about this for a moment, then mentally shrug to myself. I do the little bobbing motion that's the equivalent of my head nod.

The boy smiles, then says,"In that case, good bye."

And the world goes black.

*****

I would like to say it once again, Death sucks.

Not the actual death, he seemed pretty chill to be honest, but I'm guessing the two kids were God and Lucifer. And Lucifer is a little shit.

When I awoke once more, the world was still dark, and seemed to be ever so slightly spinning. Kind of like I had just tried to play pin the tail on the donkey, except the donkey then kicked me. I look around and see, well, nothing.

Did I mention it is fucking dark? Well it is. And, now I’m talking to myself. Brilliant.

It’s weird though, because I don’t feel in danger or anything, just kind of hungry I guess. It’s a weird hunger though. I can’t tell you what I’m hungry for, just that I want something to eat. Food…. Wait, what’s that?

A noise comes from somewhere nearby. At least I think it’s a noise. I still have my memories, but whatever body that God and Lucifer put me into, it’s really throwing me for a sensory loop right now. I can’t tell left from right, up from down. Not to mention, I think I just tasted a sound, which was weird.

There it is again! And yes, I definitely just combined like three sense into my hearing. I bet part of my problem is that this body doesn’t know how it’s supposed to sense things yet. I should work on that and soon. Smelling someone take a step is not just weird, but gross.

The sound I heard was someone walking slowly. Well, that’s not really accurate either, it wasn’t someone, it was something. Because the sound of the footfall was definitely from an animal of some kind. Wolf, big cat, not sure. We’ll find out. I’m still trying to recover motor controls. The only reason I know I’m not dead is because if I was, Death would probably be having a chat with me already.

Though I guess we already had a chat…. Yeah not thinking about that. Existential crisis out of my way, I realize that the foot falls, which I’m finally ONLY hearing, are getting closer. Definitely some type of animal, as whatever it is isn’t wearing shoes. And it’s pretty big, I think. Bigger than I am, but as I remember, the heavenly duo told me I’d be coming back in a different body.

And that they had no idea how my new body would look.

I was very suspicious about that point.

But before I could think any further, I felt someone pick me up. And suddenly I could see.

Probably should have waited for that one to be honest.

I was on a battlefield of some kind. A small oasis by the looks of it, with sand all around, but some trees and bushes here at least. I couldn’t see what source of water there should be, however that became very clear why after seeing just who picked me up.

A two meter tall “cat man”. The guy is huge, and didn’t look very nice. A scar ran down his face across his muzzle, and he had a mean glint in his eye. I couldn’t clearly guess what type of cat he was, if they even had the same types as Earth here, but I’d guess probably a lion or a jaguar, the African kind of course. He was wearing some simple clothes, mostly it looked like poorly tanned leather, and several layers of it too. His other paw? Claw? Hand? Had a mean curved short sword in it, and he was quite clearly picking through the corpses of this small battlefield.

And of course, that is when I got a little introspective again. And I realized that the reason this man had picked me up was because I was in fact a Emerald, about the size of a child’s fist.

I’m not going to lie. I panicked a bit. Well, that was a little bit of a lie. I panicked a LOT. Enough so that I started doing weird things. And then all of the battlefield scavengers were dead. And gone. But mostly dead.

While I was in my panic, someone had managed to throw me into the spring that fed this oasis. That’s actually about the point that I was actually calming down. I sank very quickly into the bottom of the pool of water, and it actually helped me calm down.

I began thinking. As I was thinking, I was in fact doing other things, things which I didn’t know at first. A portion of my new subconscious was helping me deal with things by doing the one thing it knew how to do.

Dig a hole.

And that’s how I started off. Calming down as my core subconscious dug the core deeper into the Earth. Granted at a certain point I came to, and rearranged some things, but it was a start. I already knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!