Iam floated bodiless, drifting on unseen currents. The white void and words were gone, replaced with nothingness. He had a sense of his existence but no physical evidence to corroborate it. It was disorienting to not any senses, only the gentle floating feeling that he didn’t understand. Despite the confusion, whatever was happening was peaceful, and Iam instinctively knew it was what was supposed to happen. This was his soul’s journey to whatever came after death. His soul reacted to each shift in the current, sometimes resisting one direction over another, sometimes violently fighting against the flow. Iam feared where those currents were leading him. If they led anywhere at all. His afterlife could just as well be this shifting, disembodied nightmare.

The current changed, though it wasn’t a directional shift. It was a change in intent. Whereas before, the journey was justly purposeful, now some malevolent interference pulled at his soul. It was trying to force him onto an unearned path, and Iam knew it would be worse than before, even if his intended afterlife was the ole capital H. This was an attack on his soul.

Iam tried to project his being against the attacker, but neither he nor it had a physical form. Yet somehow, he felt the pain, felt the rush of the current as it careened his soul through the between. His soul screamed into the unhearing void as the power redoubled its assault. Not knowing what else to do, Iam thrust his desire to escape into the void, away from the currents shredding his soul. The current reacted to his intent and slowed slightly.

“Very good,” a voice said. It was soft and pitched like a prepubescent boy.

Iam wanted to call out to the voice to beg for help, but he had no mouth. Instead, he poured more of his will into slowing himself. In response, a blast of arctic fire scorched his naked soul. The attack enervated him, and his soul closed in on itself, the agony overwhelming him.

“Less good,” the voice said. “I cannot interfere, and if you cannot escape, I cannot use you.”

Iam wanted to rail against the indifference in the voice. This was his soul, dammit. It deserved more than a half-hearted commentary of its demise. The ice-cold assault stopped, and Iam took a mental breath. What he really wanted was to take a real one. He felt like the act of breathing in and out would be calming. The between tugged at him, pulling him beneath an invisible surface. The desire to breathe became more urgent as instinct kicked in. Before he knew it, he had lungs, then a mouth. He gasped in a lungful of air, then coughed. It was acrid and mildly acidic, like inhaling battery fumes. It was simultaneously the most beautiful and horrid experience he’d ever had.

“How do I get out?” he coughed.

“Ah-ah-ah,” the voice said, “No interference, remember. Though, I would act soon. She’s getting impatient.”

Just then, Iam felt an overbearing presence. He knew it had been behind the change in the current, just as he knew it had only been mildly interested then. Now, its full attention was on Iam’s soul, and it wanted it. The between started to flow faster, shunting Iam’s soul directly toward the presence. Iam remembered going to the beach as a kid and getting caught in a riptide. The panic of being pulled underwater gripped him as it had that day, and he froze. He’d gotten out of that tide, but how? A flash of memory sparked, of thirteen-year-old Iam letting the current have him and swimming at a slight angle to it. By the time he’d escaped its pull, he was nearly two miles offshore, but he was free.

Iam didn’t have a body, but he’d managed to create a mouth and lungs, so instead of putting his will into resisting the evil presence, he gave in and redirected his energy to swim out of the current. His arms stroked in large circles as his legs kicked. Slowly, a torso filled in the gap between them, and he was swimming. It felt precisely like escaping the riptide. In a matter of minutes, he was free and standing on solid ground. That surprised him, and he looked around to find he was back in the white void, only this time it had substance.

“Where am I?” he mumbled.

“In this case,” the voice said, though with a pronounced Mexican accent this time. “the destination really isn’t as important as the journey.”

The voice came from behind Iam, and he turned to face it. His jaw nearly hit the floor as he looked upon the most offensive stereotype he’d ever seen. Before him stood a short Mexican man in a straw, high crowned sombrero, brightly colored wool poncho crisscrossed with bandoliers of bullets, and two six-shooters at his side. His pants were dust-covered blue canvas, and his boots looked on the verge of falling apart. He had a black mustache that drooped at the corners of his mouth and ended just below the jaw in fine points. In short, it was a caricature of a Mexican Vaquero.

“You can’t be serious,” Iam said.

“Why not?” the Vaquero asked.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“I mean,” Iam started to say, then raised his arm and swept it up and down, “come on, that’s offensive, even to me.”

“Oh, I offend you?”

“No, but I can think of a lot of people you would offend with a getup like that.”

“Getup?” the Vaquero said.

“Come on,” Iam said, “the clothes. I may be dead, but I’m not blind. That shit’s objectively offensive.”

“Ah, you’re one of those people.”

“One of what people?” Iam asked.

“You believe people are too stupid to know when they should be offended, so you become so on their behalf. How comforting it must be to speak for entire populations. If only they had the benefit of your enlightenment.” The Vaquero bowed. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“Now hold on,” Iam said. “I never called anyone stupid. That outfit’s an obvious stereotype. It’s offensive.”

The Vaquero looked down at himself and ran a hand over the handle of one of the guns. His body grew until it was three times Iam’s size, and the voice boomed when he spoke.

“If my form displeases you so, perhaps you don’t belong here after all.”

Lightning quick, the gun flew from its holster. Iam knew if a bullet from that gun hit him, it was oblivion for him. Not even the malevolent entity that tried to snatch him away would be able to stop his soul’s obliteration. The clack of the hammer pulling back reverberated, and Iam watched the index finger tighten on the trigger. The scene held for a few tense seconds before a new voice broke in.

“You do have a way with words,” Jackson said. The titanic man wrapped his fingers around the barrel, and the Vaquero, now normal size again, lowered it. “It’s okay, boss. I’ll teach him.”

“See that you do,” the Vaquero said. “Or I will.”

Jackson looked hard at Iam. “Trust me, you don’t want that.”

Iam looked between Jackson and the Vaquero, his lips parting several times. Words flew from his brain but died on his lips. What the hell was Jackson doing here? How did he even get here? He opened his mouth again, but still, words refused to form.

“What the shit, man,” he finally blurted.

“What the shit, indeed?” Jackson said. “Your first meeting of a god, and you insult him? That’s not smart, Mr. D’Mann. Not smart at all.”

“God?” Iam said. “As in, like, for real, God?”

“If you mean the lord of all, no,” the Vaquero said. “I do not even know if that one exists.”

“Do you have a name?” Iam asked tentatively.

A smile peeked through the anger on the Vaquero’s face. “Is that the question you meant to ask?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” Iam said.

“Very well. Yes, I do,” the Vaquero said.

Jackson barked a laugh which caused Iam to scowl.

“Well, what is it?” Iam said.

“That really should have been your first question. I am called Tejas by your species.”

“Oh yeah,” Iam sniped. “What do the plants call you, then?”

“You would recognize it as a molecular chain rather than words, but if you insist, I will tell you.”

Before Iam could protest, Tejas rattled off a string of letters and numbers. It took minutes, and Iam recognized the abbreviations for oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, but that was it. The rest was gibberish. As soon as the recitation stopped, Tejas started growling and barking aggressively. It caught Iam off-guard but didn’t end there. Without pause, the growls morphed into purrs and meows.

“Stop!” Iam shouted. “What are you doing?”

Tejas stopped making noises and leveled an impassive gaze on Iam. “You seem to use more questions than needed to get the information you seek. Therefore, I intuited that you wished to know what all my names are. I was attempting to save you the trouble of asking.”

“You gonna do anything but stand there and laugh?” Iam shouted at Jackson.

Jackson held up a hand as if to say, who me? “Yes,” he said at last, “have fun, boss.”

With a pop, Jackson disappeared, leaving Iam alone with Tejas. The Vaquero god put on a predatory expression and leaned closer to Iam.

“Now, ask me what you really want to know before I lose my patience.”

Iam gulped. “Why am I here, and where is here?”

“Where you are isn’t important. Jackson can explain that later. Why you’re here, now that’s a funny story, actually. Do you remember when you were six, and you and Jessis were playing with the Legos in your room?”

“Of course not,” Iam said. “What does that even have to with why I’m here?”

“You see,” Tejas said, “what you don’t remember is that Jessis really wanted the red square Lego, but you didn’t want her to have it. You didn’t need it, it wasn’t yours to claim, but Jessis wanted it, and that was enough for you to take it.”

Iam did remember the day, now. They’d had a massive fight over it until their mom came in and took all the Legos. Now that neither of them had the toy, both he and Jessis had declared victory. That only made the fight worse later.

“What’s funny about that?” Iam asked.

“You’re the red Lego,” Tejas said, slapping his thigh and laughing uproariously. “You’re only here because someone else wanted you.”

“How the hell is that funny?” Iam screamed.

Tejas calmed a little, but chuckles still came through as he spoke. “Okay, maybe not funny to you, but hilarious to me. To make it better, the goddess that wanted you is pissed that you escaped her. I bet she’s not going to forgive you for a long time for that.”

That was it. Iam didn’t have anything left. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the floor. Tejas watched his fall with bemusement before reaching out a hand. Iam grabbed it and was pulled to his feet.

“So that’s it,” Iam said. “I’m not important or part of some plan? I’m just a thing you didn’t want some other god to have? How can you treat your people like this?”

“My people?” Tejas said.

“Yeah, you know…humans?”

“Oh, I see the misconception now,” Tejas said, all humor gone. “I am a god of the land, not the people. You are to me as a hammer to a carpenter, a wrench to a mechanic, useful tools for whom I care because it is ultimately less troublesome than replacement. Do not mistake my affection or tolerance I may exhibit for any particular useful object as love for all similar objects. You were not acquired for a purpose, but to a purpose you will be put. Be useful, and you will have my care. Be benign, and you will have my indifference. Be troublesome, and you will have my displeasure.”

Tejas snapped his fingers, and Iam vanished.