“Gah! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Yuki started off my morning by breaking into my room and waking me up with a bucket of ice water at six in the morning.

“Wake up you lazy ass! You have to walk me to Katie’s house!

Yuki’s friend Katie was essentially her apprentice. The two of them seemed to feed off of each other’s mutual need to see me suffer in whatever creative way they could imagine.

Every minute that they were left alone together meant another plan was formulated to torment me. I threw off my drenched blanket and tried to go back to sleep, content to just let hypothermia take me quietly. Five minutes later I was greeted by something very large and exceedingly angry landing right on my head.

“Oh god! My face!”

The bomb dropped upon Face Fields was Yuki’s cat, Booka. I had never been allowed to have a pet, our parents claimed that I was too irresponsible, but Yuki had been allowed to adopt the first stray cat that she had brought to them. The fat white asshole was approximately four hundred pounds of spite and hatred condensed into the form of a twenty pound cat. Yuki was the sole human in the world that the cat tolerated, everybody else received only claws and hisses if they so much as looked in his general direction. God save your flesh if you actually got near him.

Booka landed directly on my face and immediately got to work shredding everything within reach of his razor-sharp claws. He tore deep gouges into my beautiful face. By the time he had finished and took off, I was bleeding and decided it was time to get out of bed before Yuki deployed more destructive measures. Fully awake, soaked to the bones in ice water, and bleeding profusely, I got up and walked to the bathroom to dig out the first aid kit from under the sink. While I was busy cleaning out the scratches with disinfectant and applying band-aids, Yuki continuously pelted me in the back of the head over and over with foam darts from a toy gun.

While I was getting dressed I nearly jabbed my big toe on a thumb tack that had conveniently found its way into my shoe. That was something I had learned to check for. I don’t see how my parents could manage to ignore everything she did, how they couldn’t see her for the demon in little girl form that she really was. She had just turned eight, yet she could have given any medieval torturer a run for their money. Despite that, she was my parents’ favorite, to them she was incapable of doing anything wrong.

Me on the other hand? I was twenty-two, a college dropout, and a cashier working double shifts at a convenience store while I still lived with mom and dad. They just saw me as the worthless bum who kept blaming his kid sister for all of his worldly problems while she was their little princess. Yuki was the shining star with a bright future ahead of her.

Despite their poor opinion of me, I was actually a hard worker. They didn’t seem to realize that by putting in fourteen hours a day every day to pay off my rent and college loan I was actually doing more hours than both of them. Though, half the reason I spent so much time at work was because Yuki couldn’t just follow me to work every day. It was my safe haven from her. Yeah, that gave her all the time in the world to root around in my room and break or steal more of my things, but everything really important was locked in a storage unit where she couldn’t get to it, or kept on my person at all times where I could keep an eye on it.

As it turns out, having a demon for a little sister is excellent motivation, as with just another two months of work I would see the last of my debt paid off, and enough money in my savings account for me to put a down payment on an apartment. Everything was in place and ready for me to move very far from home, to cut ties completely with my parents. Then I would never have to deal with them or Yuki ever again. I wondered idly about where her aggression would turn with me gone, but so long as I was no longer the target I could deal with passing her onto someone else. They have therapy for that kind of stuff.

After I finished pulling sharp objects out of my shoes, I tied them on and stepped outside, following Yuki to the train station. She happily skipped along while I groggily trudged behind with an energy drink from a vending machine in hand. She knew damn well I had just got off the night shift. I’d gone to bed less than an hour before she’d woken me up. I was willing to be that she wasn’t even supposed to be at Katie’s house until later in the day, she just wanted to keep me exhausted.

Luckily I was only going to have to escort her a train stop away, walk a few blocks, then she’d be out of my hair for a few hours and I could go home and get some sleep without her antagonizing me.

While we were waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, Yuki occupied herself by kicking me repeatedly in the ankle.

“Do you know what I love most about you Big Brother?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“You are just such a perfect punching bag! You can never do anything about it no matter what I do!”

“Whatever.”

I ignored her, and scrolled through a manga on my phone to keep me distracted from the growing bruise on my leg. Her kicking suddenly stopped, and she cheerfully piped up.

“Look what I found!”

They say curiosity killed the cat, but I turned to look anyway. Yuki was standing a few feet away, holding her hand over a grate. Dangling from her hand was the necklace that should have been in my pocket. Attached to the black string was the golden coin that Grandpa had pulled from my ear on that day.

“Oops!”

She let it go, and it dropped down where I might never see it again.

I don’t think that I had ever moved so fast in my life. To everyone around us I must’ve been a blur of motion, leaving behind a metaphorical sonic boom as I rushed to catch the coin. I dropped and slid across the floor, my fingers stretched out. I just barely managed to hook the string on my index finger as the coin fell between the bars. The necklace was saved. I stood up, clutching the coin so tightly in my hand that the edges started to cut into my palm.

I turned to face Yuki, she stood there looking smug.

“See? No matter what I do, there isn’t a thing you can do about it!”

The rage that was boiling up inside of me finally reached critical mass at long last. I had quietly borne everything else that she had done, but this time she had crossed a line. She had tried to get rid of the last thing that I truly cared about, the last thing I had of my grandfather. Something came over me, an undeniable righteous fury boiled over.

I crouched down in front of her, getting to eye level.

“Yeah? Is that so?”

My hand reared back, and in her hubris it didn’t occur to her to so much as flinch away. For the very first time in the eight years that she’d been alive, she got slapped right across the face. Not a light slap like you would give a dog on the rear for misbehaving. Not even the slap of a woman offended by a pervert at the bar. No. The palm of my hand collided with her face with the force of the meteor that had wiped out the dinosaurs.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The shockwave produced by the impact could’ve outdone the sound of the eruption of Krakatau. I’m sure that it was heard across the ocean in China at the very least. If one were to have had a slow-motion camera pointed at her cheek, they could’ve seen the strike ripple across like a tsunami rushing toward the shoreline. It was already in the works at the World Slap Tournament Federation to give me an honorary championship medal and induction into the Hall of Fame.

She held her cheek in surprise, a tear welled up in her eye. My hand was left stinging, already swelling up and red from the blunt trauma that the recoil of the sheer kinetic force I had inflicted on her, rendered back upon myself. I would’ve bared that pain a thousand times over if need be. It was a divinely pleasant pain.

As I stood back up I put the necklace on over my head.

“In two months I’ll be leaving. Moving far away. You’ll never get to make my life hell ever again.”

My heart was absolutely thundering as adrenaline rushed through me. I had never felt so alive. Understandably I was getting a few questioning looks from strangers who had just seen a grown man dispense the Lord’s Wrath on a little girl’s face, while a few others looked at me like they wanted to crown me king of kings and follow me through the gates of Hell itself. I could care less about what they thought.

Yuki was left stunned, silent. If I had known all this time that all it’d take to shut her down was a tactical artillery strike to the face, I’d have done it years ago. I went back to looking at my phone, but I wasn’t even reading anything on it. I was replaying the memory of my hand connecting with her cheek over and over.

The station’s announcement system alerted everyone to remain clear of the tracks, a train was about to pass through. I made sure I was standing behind the red line, but just as the train was approaching I felt a sudden shove and started tumbling forward. I might’ve been able to catch myself, but somehow my shoelaces had come undone and then tied together. I tripped right over the side of the platform and right onto the tracks.

I landed on my back, and looked up to see who had shoved me. Standing above, looking down with rage and murder in her eyes… Of course, was there any doubt? It was Yuki. That little bitch had decided to kill me for daring to slap her. Just a moment after I had landed the train came barreling through. The last thought of my short life was about regrets of wasted opportunities or wishing I had done more, but instead with blissful joy that I’d finally gotten a little bit of revenge, and that I’d be getting away from that monster earlier than planned.

The first thing I thought to myself after the train hit was “Wow, the afterlife is really dark”. I was never religious, so the fact that I had consciousness after death was already a surprise, but the lack of anything resembling pearly gates or raging hellfire was a bit unsettling. There I was floating in absolute darkness. It was a moment to relax all by myself at least. I’m not sure just how long I was there. Was this all that waited for me? Was I doomed to an eternity in Purgatory? Was I to float around in this never ending void blind and numb until my mind succumbed to insanity and I forgot who I even was?

Why was I here?

Who was I?

“Oh geez! Sorry about the wait there! I forgot to check my inbox when I sat down!”

The voice seemed to radiate from every direction at once, the sound piercing my very soul with every syllable. I’d compare it to having someone install a subwoofer inside of my body and then cranking the bass to maximum. Suddenly the nothingness was replaced with a blinding light. When it faded I found myself inside what looked like a cubicle in an office building. I was seated in a comfortable chair that looked like the one Grandpa used to sit and read his morning paper in. My t-shirt and jeans were gone. The coin was still dangling from my neck.

I could hear phones ringing around the large room, illegible talking, typing, a printer printing.

Sitting at a desk across from me was a young man that looked to be in his early thirties, with bright golden hair that flowed in a non-existent breeze. His features were too flawless, his gaze with those deep blue eyes felt like he could see my entire life playing before him. Did I mention the golden halo floating a few inches above his head? He was wearing a pristine white suit that made it look like he was about to conduct an orchestra. Over his heart was a gold name tag, it simply read “Johnny”.

“I’m really sorry about that. I’m supposed to check the box three times a day, but I got so distracted after lunch that I just up and forgot! Silly me!”

He flashed a toothy grin at me, those pearly whites so bright they were nearly blinding.

“Uh… Where am I? Is this Heaven?”

“Heaven? No! Nothing like that my dear boy! This is Processing! This is where we handle special cases before deciding which afterlife you should go to.

“Oh… I see…”

Well, here I come Hell, hope you have good wi-fi down there.

“Indeed! Due to your great achievements in life, and due to pressing needs of the Mortal Plane, it’s been decided by Management that you’re going to be given a second chance!”

“Achievements? What do you mean? I never did anything important, did you grab the wrong soul?”

That provoked a hearty laugh from him.

“Ah, so humble! Very refreshing to get someone in here of your potential that still has a good head on their shoulders. Now then, we just need to fill out this paperwork so that—”

“Mr. Johnny, uh, sir, I’m sorry, but just assume for a moment that I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about? Could you please explain what I did that was apparently so great? I really think there’s been a case of mistaken identity here…”

He raised his eyebrow at me.

“You really do not know? Well, I suppose the first chunk of your life was pretty boring to be honest. Nothing special about it all really. Even kind of depressing by most comparisons.”

He was right, but it still stung to hear someone else say it.

“But that changed at the age of fourteen! Since then, your life has been worthy of songs in Valhalla itself!”

“What are you talking about! I didn’t do anything!”

“Please don’t downplay your valorous struggle like that! Your physical and mental fortitude have been spoken of very highly around here!”

“Fortitude?”

“Yes! For eight long years you took the full brunt of the Antichrist’s wrath! You alone kept her distracted from realizing her true powers and therefore shielded the entire world from her evil!”

“Look man, I know my little sister was a raging bitch, but even I think comparing her to the actual Antichrist is a bit much.”

“I’m not comparing at all! Your little sister is factually the literal spawn of Satan himself, sent upon the mortal world to sow devastation and to bring about the end of days!”

That was just too silly to hear. Yeah, it would make a lot of things about her make more sense, if any bit of it was remotely believable. Which of my parents did that make Satan? Did that mean I was technically Satan spawn too? I went into a church once, I didn’t catch on fire at the front door.

“And finally when it came down to it, you even sacrificed your own life in an attempt to strike her down once and for all!”

“Alright dude, I get it, you’re just fucking with me! This is all some cosmic level hazing ritual because I got bullied by my sister and then she murdered me. When do I get to move on and enjoy the afterlife?”

Johnny’s face lost its smile and his eyes narrowed. The ambient office noises around us went silent. It felt like the cubicle was closing in around me as he stared me down.

“This is not a joke. I’d appreciate it if you’d take this more seriously.”