It doesn’t matter.

That’s what I thought as I hammered a woman’s index finger into a flappy piece of meat and bone.

She couldn’t scream since I had bound her mouth behind several layers of tape.

She looked at me with teary eyes and a running nose all while breathing frantically and heavily. She was a short woman with fairly dark skin and short kinky hair.

Sitting, almost petrified, in the corner was her husband who was half covered in blood. He, like his wife, was in his mid-thirties, had long black hair that now messily covered his head, pale skin and was fairly small.

I had bound him, along with his wife, with tape and rope.

The last thing I wanted was for either of them to make a scene and wake up the hundred or so people who were asleep in the apartment building.

I returned my gaze to the woman’s mangled hand which I had pressed onto the dinner table in the living room.

She only had two fingers left but I raised my hammer once more only for the man in the corner to let out desperate groans and grunts from his nose.

I turned and queried him with my half-closed eyes.

He let out several more groans prompting me to walk towards him.

With a gloved hand, I undid the tape around his mouth and leaned over to his trembling lips.

The man whispered a few words in my ear and I gave him a nod.

“Alright,” I whispered while pulling out a silenced gun from the holster beneath my jacket. But it wasn't an ordinary gun.

“Wait… What are you doing? You said you wouldn’t if I gave you the other passwords.” He whimpered with a mouth that was missing several teeth and filled with blood.

I pointed the muzzle at his forehead and sighed.

It looked like he wanted to say something else but I pulled the trigger and a penetrating captive bolt promptly shot through his skull. This was the same instrument used to kill cattle and pigs, although it was incredibly effective against humans.

He limply fell to the side as I turned to his wife who stared at me with eyes that quaked violently in their sockets.

I walked up to her and, just like with her husband, shot her, filling the air with a suppressed bang.

It was still pretty loud so someone had undoubtedly noticed.

Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t be around for much longer and so I returned my gun to its holster beneath my left armpit, picked up a canister from the corner of the room and, after wearing a high-grade gas mask and some goggles, I sprayed he entire room with fluoroantimonic acid.

I made sure to pour an additional amount onto the two fresh corpses.

I then left the room and locked it before making my way out of the building via its emergency exit at its rear.

I had disabled the CCTV system by finding the server room in the basement and taking the hard drives to which all recorded footage was stored. I also cut its power, just go be sure.

This was an old apartment building so security was relatively loose and the only trouble I ran into was the single security guard who monitored the cameras but he was easy to get to since he frequently left his room to smoke.

I had incapacitated him just outside the building before making my way to my target's room.

I pulled out a phone from one of my hazmat suit's pockets while I walked towards my car, an old hatchback which was parked in the alleyway between the apartment building and the building next to it.

I dialled a certain number and pressed the phone onto my ear as I threw the metal canister in my hand into the trunk.

[Is it done?]

A voice asked as I got into my car. It belonged to a woman who had found her husband was cheating but that wasn’t what she had a problem with.

Both she and her husband were key political figures and the man I had just killed, a journalist who was working for a failing news company, was blackmailing her.

Neither she nor her husband could afford to have the truth of the affair coming out, especially since it was so close to the mayoral election season, so they hired me.

“Yes,” I whispered while driving out of the alleyway. My voice was distorted by my phone's microphone so all she probably heard was a sharp, high pitched version of what I said.

The call ended, and I put my phone back into my pocket before driving out of town while making sure to avoid spots I knew the police patrolled.

It was one AM in the morning, so traffic wasn't really a problem.

I drove by countless apartment buildings and various shops.

The further I drove out of town, the more rundown they appeared with the road becoming more worn and uneven with every kilometre I drove.

I eventually came across an old scrap yard tens of kilometres away from the city where I parked my car underneath a precarious heap of metal.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I exited my car and walked towards a rickety wooden building.

It had an eye scanner next to the handle of its only door and so I moved my goggles to my forehead and placed my eye in front of it.

The scanner let out a beep and the door opened, revealing that while one of its sides was made of old wood, the other was made of several inches of steel.

Also, in front of the door was a brightly lit corridor which I promptly walked into just as the door automatically closed.

I then walked up to a rectangular opening in the centre of the right wall and promptly threw my clothes into it where they fell into a kiln that was a level below.

I threw my gun, phone and canister down there as well before placing my eye in front of another scanner. One which was next to a clean white door.

This door opened revealing my house proper.

A large, brightly lit and mostly grey and white space.

I made my way into my only bathroom, another brightly lit white space.

I walked over to the sink and glanced at my reflection in the mirror above it.

Some blood had splattered onto my smooth, dark skin, just beneath my dull brown eyes.

I stared into them and found myself standing completely still in the silence of the bathroom for a few moments.

I bit my teeth while thinking back to the expressions and noises the man and his wife made as I tortured them.

I remembered their screams and they came as waves that threatened to tear holes into my psyche but I tucked them away along with the countless others.

I then shook my head and stepped into the shower.

I thoroughly scrubbed my body clean before drying myself up and changing into a plain grey tracksuit.

I grabbed some gloves and, after mopping the floor, I stepped into the initial passageway.

After this, I made my way to the kitchen, a brightly lit and white place, where I made myself a peanut butter and jam sandwich.

I also made myself a cup of coffee.

Two tablespoons of sugar, one table of coffee, piping hot water and about a fifth of a cup of milk.

I took my dinner to the living room where I placed it on my glass coffee table.

I then switched on my TV which sat opposite my single pale grey couch and tuned into a news station

My laptop also sat on the coffee table and although I had to log into the journalist’s accounts to finish my work, that could wait until after I finished eating.

Not only had I gotten the material he was using for his current blackmail, I had gotten countless other images and documents he had on other people.

The reason why killing him took so long was because I wanted him to give me everything else he had.

I grabbed my coffee and took a sip while hearing all sorts of things that didn’t interest me.

Economics.

The ever-changing climate.

Wars.

Murders...

What could anyone watching the news do to change any of it?

A human being could only ever live for about one hundred years.

What could one hope to change in that time and just how much did it matter if the world persisted for another hundred or even thousand years?

I knew the answer.

Nothing.

The sands of time would eventually eat away at every building ever made and every thought would be snuffed out by the infinite cold just beyond the bounds of our world.

I reached out to grab my sandwich but instead, all I could do was let out a pained squawk as an explosion tore through the right side of my house, sending me flying to the left.

My body screamed in pain as I crashed into the wall but, upon falling to the ground, I crawled towards the doorway.

Well...

I tried but I was mortified to find my right arm was unable to move so I tried using my left.

A man, clad fully in tactical gear and armour, then appeared in front of me.

He held in his hands an assault rifle and before I could even take a breath, he let loose several bullets that tore through my torso, rending my flesh and shattering my bones.

I couldn’t even cough in pain as nothing of my lungs remained so I simply let out bloodied gurgles while several more people rushed into the building.

I recognised their gear as belonging to a specific task force of the police.

One of them walked up to me and knelt while I convulsed in pain.

They then removed their helmet, revealing the face of a woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had pale white skin and fiery red hair.

“I finally found you, Eshu. After all these years...” She hissed although her voice came both as a blare and whisper to me.

“This is the least you deserve for trampling on the Garden of Life.”

Those were the last words I heard.

Spoken by a woman who had been hunting me for years.

They followed me as my vision darkened.

What came next was pitch black.

.

..

Mmm? I sounded internally.

Internally?

How was I still able to think? I wondered.

I knew I was dead and I always assumed nothing came after death.

I tried opening my eyes but it felt as though they were already open so I tried to blink.

Nothing happened so I tried focusing my vision.

I could see something...

Something dull and orange.

It swirled around me although I could not immediately tell if it was massive or small.

I looked around and saw nothing but the orange swirling light but, upon closer inspection, it looked less singular in nature and grainier. As though countless small things were rushing past each other at such high speeds, they generated light.

I let out a non-existent sigh since none of what I was seeing made sense to me.

I was dead and yet I could still think.

My thoughts were also in the centre of some whirling... Something so...

Maybe I wasn’t truly dead.

I toyed with the possibility that the police hadn’t killed me and instead took me to the hospital or something.

Maybe this was all a fabrication of my mind.

If that was the case then-

I let out an imaginary gasp as the swirling intensified.

I then watched as it grew closer to me and as it did, it grew brighter.

The swirling then grew so small that I could see its outer limits and what I saw lying beyond was dark.

I let out another internal gasp as the swirling grew small enough to fit within a point within my thoughts that I couldn’t see but what remained shook my mind.

I beheld the cosmos.

I watched as countless stars formed and died in the unimaginable distance and I watched as one of those stars formed near me.

I tried looking down at myself but the mere thought alone sent me hurtling downwards.

I then crashed onto the surface of a dark and burning world.

It convulsed violently since its surface was made almost entirely of molten matter.

I watched as the oceans of fire cooled to form jagged rocky planes and as this happened, my form revealed itself to me.

I was... Small.

A small, wispy figure made of countless strands of bright white light.

I raised my hands to find that I could clearly see past them.

I wanted to panic about my appearance but my attention quickly shifted to the countless objects that hurtled towards the world atop which I stood.

I covered my head and crouched as the first of them struck the world’s surface.

My non-existent eyes then widened as I spotted a small, dark blemish on my thigh.

Several more rocky objects then struck the planet along with a few gigantic white crystals and I watched as my form was darkened by blemishes and wounds.

I looked up and begged the nightmarish rain to stop but no matter how much I silently pleaded, it continued to rain comets, meteors and gigantic white crystals.

I wasn’t in pain but something deep within me agonized at every impact.

Some of the meteors brought with them all kinds of matter which instantly evaporated but instead of drifting out into space, it clung to the planet, creating a blanket of smog that covered the surface.

The arrival of the smog coincided with a reduced amount of impacts and it’s here, as more of my body changed, that I came to realise.

This wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t the desperate efforts to cling to life by a man who was lying in some hospital bed somewhere.

No.

This felt far too real.

I didn't know why but somehow I had died and had been reincarnated as a planet!