The blurriness faded from my vision as I found myself in an unreasonably small baseball field. I rose to my feet and examined the surroundings. It was difficult to see anything distant because of a thick smog that smothered the field, constricting my breathing. After a few painful minutes of coughing, the smog began to lift.

The sky, now visible, became a cascade of yellows, rapidly oscillating between various shades like maracas. I felt the reverberation of a single word pounding at the sides of my head, trying to escape: “Tchadd.”

Suddenly, as the sound reached a deafening volume, the voices stopped, and there was silence.

“Welcome to my office, mortal” said the figure, who I deduced, after some deliberation, was Tchadd. The man was tall, with a muscular build. The bright yellow cap he donned above his eternally left-facing head and diamond-cut chin immediately caught my attention.

“I’ve chosen to hire you as one of my employees.” He punctured me with his oceanic glare.

Some nervous laughter escaped my lips against my will. It didn’t seem like something like this was possible. Regardless of what I thought could happen though, it did happen.

“Umm… Hello? I guess you’re probably Tchadd?”

“Impressive.” 

“Well you were kind of shouting it at me earlier weren’t you?”

“No, that was just my presence.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Right… So where exactly are we?”

“You’re in a sort of interstice, between your death and the next life. Most people will never remember this, but, as I’ve shown interest in your conscription, I’d like to make a deal. If you agree to be my eternal slave, I will destroy Sweet Cakes and you will be made essentially immortal.”

“Well that’d be nice, I guess. And what would happen to me if I were to refuse your offer?”

“Like anyone else, you would be reincarnated into the next world with your memories and history erased forever.”

“That doesn’t really sound all that bad, especially not if everyone else has to go through it. What is this next world like?”

“Hell. Literally. You’d burn forever.”

“Oh… that’s intense... and what kind of life would I have if I were to be your servant? Just curious.”

“You’d get to do cool stuff and shit, the precise activities depend on where you end up.”

“And what kind of places might I end up? Sorry if I’m asking too many questions, but I hope you understand why I’m apprehensive about this whole thing.”

“Oh, there’s a lot of jobs I need done. My goons aren’t enough to take care of everything, so as my employee you’d be doing a lot of assassinations, genocides, war crimes, or other nefarious deeds. You’d be taken to pretty much everywhere you could imagine, since again, eternity and all.”

“Oh wow. What kind of company is this? Why would I be doing these things?”

“We’re an insurance company. You’d be doing it because your alternative is to burn in hell, bitch.”

“Well I suppose that’s true. I intended to join with you after you told me about the eternal damnation thing. I guess it's probably in my best interest to accept your offer, then.” I figured that it must have been a good thing to die at this point in my life, because it would be really unlucky for that to happen otherwise. I had hoped that this would finally offer me some kind of meaning.

“Yeah, you better. Bitch.”

“Please don’t call me that. Anyways, where do I begin?”