999.M41 A Few minutes after the fall of Cadia || ???

I watched the myriad of twinkling lights travel above me as a deep sense of regret welled up in me. Souls, I think.

Flowing in streams to places I dare not imagine.

In life I would have scoffed at the notion, well I did scoff at it when Mom tried to tell me about souls and spiritualism. If she was here, she would probably tell me 'I told you so!'.

I watched them for what felt like an eternity by now. I was like a cripple laying at the bottom of a valley, watching the beautiful shining stars swim across the night sky above me.

Why wasn't I among them? Was it because I didn't believe it? Shouldn't I be going to hell for that?

This feels much more like a limbo, purgatory if you will.

I had given up on shouting or asking for help long ago, it didn't help that I didn't have a voice and nor did it help that all the other souls ignored everything around them. They moved like cogs in a machine, with purpose yet no will of their own.

Maybe this was hell. My personal one for always thinking that only oblivion would await me at the end of my life.

I asked for oblivion and I got an eternity of this instead. The monotony would be driving a human mad by now but I just felt bored by it all. Maybe this was a result of not having a body or I was just weird to begin with.

The only thing I regret is that I died too soon, it was 2030 and I was only 23 years old fresh out of college.

I didn't get on well with Mom and I would be surprised if she only came to my funeral to berate me for dying so stupidly and light some sort of incense for my soul or something.

Dad died just a few years ago. I loved him even if he was far from perfect. Divorce from Mom hit him hard and he lost himself in alcohol whenever I wasn't living with him. He tried his best, I think and he was always sober and there for me when I needed him the most, unlike Mom.

I was an only child, my grandparents died while I was young and I only had a few close friends. At least some of the others would have probably mourned me.

My biggest regret both in life and now is that I was born too soon and died even sooner than I planned. I couldn't see where science would advance. Would neural implants work? Would we colonize Mars? What about AI or the new regenerative treatments?

I was obsessed with sci-fi and science. I wanted to know if our dreams would come true, yet I died.

Such a dumb death too.

Who the hell dies from slipping on a banana peel for real? Well, I did but that's not the point. I thought it only happened in cartoons.

I felt a faint sense of something disgusting on my 'skin' and I shivered.

Next thing I knew whatever it was had latched onto me.

The revulsion and disgust were overwhelming yet I couldn't do anything, I was just a soul, an inert and weak little human soul from Earth. I couldn't move before and I couldn't move now.

I was ripped out of where I was. I felt myself being dragged along with this thing as it traveled through the infinity of existence, and I began to wonder.

Was this a demon? Did he come to bring me down to hell with himself after I rotted in purgatory for god knows how long?

Maybe they liked to torment unbelievers with this, to let them think and marinate in their doubts before throwing them into the flames of hell.

The demon crashed into something and its frail shell shattered under his strength. He dragged me through the crack but I already saw it mending itself and the opening probably closed moments after we went through.

It stopped. Fuck. This was weird. It didn't feel especially hot in here.

He didn't let me think much before he plunged his hand along with my soul into something.

OHHHHHHHHH what the fuck is happening?

I felt again, though it was weird.

I could move.

I felt the air on my skin, the vibrations it carried.

I understood the vibrations to be sounds. No, words. "For...Chaos!"

Next came light. I could feel it with my skin just like air. Was I some kind of eyeball monster now to be able to see with my skin?

No. It was weird, but I knew my new body. I understood what it was and how it worked.

I reached out of this broken orb-like box I was in and 'looked' around with two of my tentacles like some kind of snail. Yeah, tentacles or well tendrils? Whatever, they were long and white and I could perfectly control them like they were my fingers.

Except, they didn't have bones or joints, so they bent however I wanted them.

Oh, this was trippy as fuck.

My weird soul 'vision' or whatever I had as a soul is still there, overlaid the current vision I had giving me an ever-increasing sense of nausea and headache.

I couldn't even close my eyes or turn my head away as I had neither. I was some kind of eldritch monster made up of only these white tentacles that didn't have a solid core or main body.

There was a feeling of dissonance that was driving me crazy but the nausea and headache went away as fast as they came. My new body couldn't feel those kinds of things.

I writhed on the floor once I managed to fall out of the broken orb, even if I could control the tentacles perfectly that didn't make moving my eldritch body easier.

I wish I had my previous body at least in this hell.

My discomfort and nausea came back in force as my body started to shift and morph subconsciously. I knew that it wasn't something that was doing this to me but myself.

A moment later when I looked down on a perfect replica of my human hands I knew it wasn't some god or demon that granted my wish but my own body. I still felt This monstrous eldritch body deep within me but the outer shell was human.

I sighed in relief and closed my eyes. Even if it was fake it gave me a calming sense of familiarity.

Just what the hell was going on?