I had always thought that hell couldn’t be that bad. 

Well, yeah, hell is obviously bad. Eternal torment and all that. But think about it. 

Being in a fiery abyss would actually be rather cozy, wouldn’t it? A warm heat always surrounding you, nice and dark… An introvert’s dream. 

That was probably why, when a angel descended and beat the shit out of me, I figured things could only go up from there. 

And I mean beat the shit. It dropped out of the sky and just started punching. The pain was excruciating. 

I had never been that religious. I mean, I’d been atheist for life. But when an angel appears, it makes you believe in the Abrahamic religions. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume hell existed. 

That’s what I told myself as I bled out on the concrete. 

After a long time, I drift awake. My memories are a blur and I’m sleepy. I can’t help but feel my consciousness slip away. 

Waking up. It feels like I’m floating in a pool. I can’t see anything, everything is dark. 

My body feels… wrong. Compressed?

Everything is warm. Comforting. Peaceful. 

Here, I don’t have to worry about anything. Grades. Annoying interpersonal relationships. I can just sit back and think. 

I drift away again, this time a little more willingly. 

I keep slipping in and out of sleep. My body feels odd. Like it’s… expanding? 

The fog over my mind lessens more and more each and every day. It makes it easier to think. 

It feels so easy. I don’t have to worry about people, or eating, or things normal humans have to. Briefly, I wonder if I’ve some kind of god or something, but that would be ridiculous. A blind god? 

There are no distractions. No school. No people. No funny memes. I can just think. 

It feels like stretching after a long nap. It’s comfortable in a way I’ve never considered. 

I’ve always considered myself smart. One of my earliest memories is from kindergarten. 

I was sitting in the corner, alone. I was lonely, but I was purposely distancing myself from my classmates. 

I had been certain that I didn’t need them. They were… lesser to me. They drooled and babbled. Inferior creatures. They weren’t my peers. I couldn’t connect to them. It was like they had never bothered to really think in their lives. 

A lot of my childhood comprised of staring at a wall. Thinking.  But never quite as fully as I did now. It was fulfilling. Emotions don’t hold me back as they once had. 

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My mental capabilities are far more unhindered now, my body not quite as uncomfortable. 

I think about the angel quite often. Sometimes I wonder if it was just my own delusion, but I’m certain it must have occurred. If I couldn’t trust my own memory, what  could I?

Female. Blonde. Pale skin. A face that would likely be considered beautiful, though I was no proper judge. Dove-like wings. 

It fits the classic description of an angel. I’m honestly a little disappointed. I would have preferred if angels were biblically accurate. Biblically accurate angels are the stuff of nightmares, and that’s what makes them so great. No stupid beauty involved. 

But their face. It was twisted in rage and disgust. Every time I played the memory back, it was unmistakable, the hatred it had had for me. 

At some point, I wonder how my memory got so good. I don’t have photographic memory or anything, but it was easy to remember. 

The question feels clumsy in my brain, and it slides right out. It feels insignificant; why think of something so pointless when I could be thinking of more important things?

At some point, I realized my body was coming into contact with a weird wall of some kind. Which was strange, because I hadn’t felt anything in what felt like years. 

Scary. The first word that occurs to me. I’m afraid of the unknown? The thought is ridiculous, almost painful. The thought of fearing anything feels beneath me. 

I hadn’t felt anything for a while, and it took me quite a long time to realize what the sensation was. 

I can only hope that this won’t mean anything bad. 

One day, as I ruminate on the nature of the prison and utopia that held me within, I feel a shake. 

That isn’t strange. Over time, I had become acutely aware that the true nature of the world was… still unknown, but moving in some way. But his shake was different. 

It was pushing me. Where? No! What the fuck?! I was just getting cozy!

I curl up, trying to keep my position. To my horror, I saw a glimmer of light open up. An exit from this abyss. 

Hell no!

The light is excruciatingly painful. After not seeing anything for forever, this shard of light was too much for me. 

As I’m pushed out, my senses are assaulted by a variety of sights, sounds and smells. 

My sight is a blur of colors. In my ear, it feels like someone is speaking some harsh, jilting language. 

But the worst part is the cold. It’s fucking cold. After spending an eternity in a wall blanket of coziness, I’m hit with some fucking 30 degrees weather. It’s too much for my Californian soul. 

I scream, realizing I’ve entered hell. 

I stare into the piece of glass irritably. I poke at my cheek, tugging it a little. I glare at my reflection. 

I’m pale, freckled, with a mop of pale blond hair and light blue eyes. I hate this. 

This is too much for me. Born with Indian ancestry with dark skin and sunny weather, obviously I wouldn’t be happy with this. 

I’m white. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s jarring seeing something I don’t expect in the mirror. 

My eyes flick to the outside of the tent. Snow slowly drifts down from the sky. This is one of the warmer days. 

Great. A frozen wasteland. I love having everyday be fucking 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m likely going to die if this continues. 

I’m bundled up in plenty of furs and pelts. It would be bad if a child were to get sick from the cold. The village has already lost a lot of children that way. 

Today, I’m about a year old by my metric. Probably a little off, but that’s fine. They still seem to have the concept of birthdays in this world, but if they celebrated mine, I wouldn’t know. 

I’ve been reincarnated in another world. Haha. Laugh it up. Yay. Isekai. I thought protagonists usually got hit by a truck and died painlessly. Instead, I get brutally murdered by a psycho angel. 

I’m a little horrified that my little slice of paradise had actually been my (new) mother’s womb, but oh well. It only took me a couple weeks to stop screaming constantly. At least people just thought I was crying. 

Speaking of my new mother, here she is now! Hello mother!

She speaks something in a cooing tone. Like a dog. I want to express my outrage, but we don’t speak the same language. Pity. 

The best I can guess is that she said something along the lines of: “Please tell me you didn’t shit yourself again.” 

Well, she probably phrased it in a nicer way, but I’m a little angry. At myself. And my tiny bladder. Fuck my tiny body!

I shake my head, causing her to frown. 

I have mixed feelings about my new parents. They seem nice enough, but there are problems with this. For one thing, I already have parents. For another, I have the mind of a high school freshman. I can’t exactly be their child for them. 

But I was sure things would turn out fine. After all, I had a genius plan. It was called: “Abandon parents as fast as physically possible.”