I beat back the airbag from my face and brushed off the shards of glass from my arms. There was the sound of a car horn stuck in an “on” state, it’s usually sharp and attention-getting sound becoming a highly irritating and disorienting white-noise in the background as my foggy brain struggled to take in the scene of twisted metal and broken glass all around. I normally considered myself a rather cautious driver, but there is very little you can do when, on the open freeway, during rush hour, someone side-swipes another car leading into a chain reaction of cars hitting other cars and creating an unholy pile-up.

Despite the 55 mile per hour crash, my body was doing relatively fine. I would happily attribute this to the decades of being thrown to the mat I had experienced in the soft-fist martial art that I practiced. Being repeatedly slammed against another surface, it jostles the organs just enough to begin building up more fibrous connective tissue, cushioning them against future jostling of the sort. Due to this, I’d taken this collision relatively well. However, there was another person in this car I was far more concerned about.

After groaning a little bit, I turned my head to the side, toward where my granddaughter should be in the passenger seat. At just 5 years old, she really should have been sitting in the back, but her old grandpa wanted to spoil her today. As I saw her there, not moving, with her head planted in the airbag, I knew immediately what had happened.

“Katelyn!” I shouted. Like a wild cougar jumping out at me on a hiking trail, a vicious beast called panic gripped my throat between its teeth while it’s clawed hands reached right into my chest and took my heart into it’s vicious grip.

As I looked, I saw the little girl. She was slumped down with her face buried in the nylon fabric that was the now rapidly deflating airbag that had already done its work. Her hands laid limp at her sides. The normally very bouncy little girl who had been happily chatting with her grandfather mere seconds ago was now laying as still as death.

No. There were several other explanations for why she might have gone quiet and was not responding.

My work as a trauma nurse immediately took hold and helped me to fight off the horrible creature that was trying to rip my rationality from my mind. It was as though my mind had split in two. The concerned grandfather who was wondering if his granddaughter was even alive or dead took a back-seat and became an observer in my own body. Meanwhile, my professional mind began moving my body as though I were a robot. As my breathing calmed, I saw my hands reach out and carefully brush the passenger airbag aside while carefully cradling her head.

I don’t even remember taking off my own seatbelt, but I must have done it at some point because I was now leaning over her and reaching for the lever to lower her seat-back in order to lay her flat. With one hand occupied to pull the lever on the seat, I had to support her forehead between the side of my own head and the palm of my right hand as my right elbow pushed the seat down to a reclining position.

I had not confirmed a neck injury, but considering the kind of trauma she was just subject to and her unresponsive state, I had every reason to suspect it and little reason to even consider anything else.

As soon as she was laying down, I pulled some jackets from the back seat and used them to support her head from the sides, making it into something of a make-shift neck brace. As I was setting her up, I also watched her chest. I brought a hand to her nose. I felt the air on the back of my hand. I carefully observed her tiny chest and saw it moving up and down. I let out a breath I had not even realized I was holding.

She was alive. That was the worst fear availed. But... why was she not responding?

“Katelyn? Hey, Katelyn!” I tried to get her attention again. I gently tapped on her fore-arm. Normally, if I hadn’t suspected a head injury, it would have been her shoulder I’d have tapped on. However, in this situation, I had to avoid any jolt that could affect her neck.

It was then that I noticed an acrid stench and looked down between her legs. She had lost control of her bladder. That was definitely not a good sign. Very soon after being relieved of the fear that I might have killed my granddaughter, an even worse possibility began to seize my heart. That wild beast of panic had become replaced by a malevolent demon as I was descended upon once again and the concerned grandfather part of my mind re-asserted itself.

“Katelyn!” I shouted, almost angry at this point. I took her hand and pressed down hard on the base of her cuticle with my thumb nail, a technique that could even wake some comatose patients with the jolt of pain it would cause. However, she didn’t even respond.

I reached my hand down to her legs which were dangling over the front edge of the seat. I tapped on her patellar ligament with my index and middle finger. No response. I did it again, just in case maybe I had missed... Still no response. I did it one more time. Damn it!

I reached up to her face and pulled each eyelid open, one at a time. Her pupils contracted normally. At least there doesn’t seem to be cerebral bleeding, but… shit!

“Damn it!” I turned and punched the steering wheel. I threw myself back into my chair in anger. I lowered my head into my hands. Just then, I heard it.

“Do you want to heal your granddaughter?” A voice suddenly asked. I looked up for its source, and saw a bizarre sight. There was a woman in an elegant plain black dress. Her upper body was passing straight through the side of my car on the passenger side, making the otherwise normal looking woman seem like a nightmare image of body horror as the disembodied upper half was coming straight through the closed door. And there she was, down at Katelyn, practically hovering over her like some kind of specter of death.

I was certain my mind must be playing tricks on me. My first thought was that she was leaning in through the window, but upon closer inspection, her body was definitely passing right through the solid door.

“Heh, I’m hallucinating.” I said out loud to myself. "That’s gotta be what this is."My guilt and grief for probably turning my 5 year old granddaughter into a quadriplegic has me hallucinating." I thought

The woman stood up, going fully outside the car for a moment, before walking around my granddaughter’s limp body and passing through the back of my car as though she was a ghost. Suddenly, she sat down on the back seat, brought her feet up to be fully inside the cabin of the car instead of having her feet phasing through the floor, and then... the back-wheel suspension suddenly sagged under an increased weight in the vehicle.

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After this, the woman reached forward and grabbed a bit of skin on my fore-arm and twisted, painfully pinching me.

“Ow!” I exclaimed, jerking my hand away from her. I looked down to see that my skin was scratched from her fingernails that had even dug in and drawn blood, and the soreness from that vicious pinch was definitely still there.

I looked back at the woman. She smirked back at me. “I am very real, and I am also very much not human,” she said. “My name is Amashilama, daughter of Ninisina, the goddess of healing. My ability to heal is not as versatile as my mother’s, but it is more powerful. However, it comes at a cost.”

I glared back at the woman who just claimed to be some kind of goddess of healing. As a strong agnostic Christian, I had never doubted the existence of other gods and goddesses than the Abrehamic god, but if anything, my acceptance of the existence of other gods and goddesses only made me more cautious of this woman’s claims.

“So, are you about to propose some kind of Faustian bargain to me, then?” I asked. “What do you mean by a cost? And can you really heal a broken neck?” I definitely suspected her, but I also wasn’t entirely unwilling to pay whatever her price might be. At 60 years of age and as physically fit as I am, I still had several healthy years left in me. However, that was nothing in the face of the life of suffering my carelessness had just condemned Katelyn to. Whether or not this woman was after my soul or anything else, I might actually be willing to pay her price.

She seemed hesitant about how to respond to my question.

“Well…” she said, and paused. “My healing powers only work with blood. I would have to take some of your blood, and then feed it to the girl.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded, for a moment. “That’s it?” I said. “Just a blood transfusion? That’s all you need?”

“Well…” She began. “That’s all I would need to heal her, but…” She hesitated again. “But, I was hoping I could also ask for some help from you if I did this...” she said.

“Help?” I stuttered. “How… exactly do you want me to help you?” I asked once more. I didn’t know why I went along with her so easily. Perhaps I was still a little disoriented from the crash, or maybe this was all just so crazy that my sense of discernment had just shut down all together. Most likely, it was a mixture of both.

She looked at me again, hesitating and silent. “Key to the void.” she said.

“Uhh… what?” I asked, my mind stumbling over the strange nonsensical non-sequetter of a phrase she just said.

“That was what my mentor called it.” she said. “Key to the void. It is the name of some kind of special meditation. Nobody trains it anymore, but… it seems like you have accidentally re-discovered it on your own.”

I silently considered the woman for a while. I really wasn’t following what she was asking from me at all. What she said, though... key to the void. I am not certain, but if it has a name like that, then I have a rather good guess as to what she’s talking about. But, it was just a training meditation. Something meant to sharpen your focus while going through the physical motions of the demanding martial style I practiced. But, she talked about it as though it should actually mean something for her.

“What exactly does this void meditation do for you?” I asked.

“Well…” She hesitated again, this time looking like a guilty child. “I want to leave Earth.” she said something outrageous. “There is no more room for other divinities to grow in this world. I want to escape, but the barrier that surrounds this world is too strong. The key to the void is the only thing that can open the way out of this world.”

I stared at the woman in the back seat of my car, carefully considering her words. She was avoiding eye contact... Still looking guilty as hell, by the way. Every last fiber of her body language just screamed that there was something more to this, and she didn’t want to talk about it.

“There’s something else to this, isn’t there?” I asked. “You would not look so guilty if it was just a matter of you taking some blood and then me doing my void meditation for you. If that was all you needed, you could have just snuck out any time by stalking me while I was training in the dojo. You wouldn’t even have to let me know you were there in the first place.”

She nodded. “Yes. It is not strong enough if you just use it as you do while you are training. The… the only way for the key to open a world border as thick as the one surrounding Earth is if the practitioner himself uses it to leave Earth.” She hesitates again before looking straight at me. “And a physical being is not capable of leaving in this manner.”

I sighed. “So, this really is a bargain for my soul after all, huh?” I asked. She cringed and looked away. “Alright, fine.” I said. At my words, her head snapped straight up and she looked at me in shock.

“You… really?” she asked.

“Well, from the moment you sat down I had already resolved myself. If it means saving my granddaughter from a life of hell as a prisoner in her own body due to a horrible mistake on my own part, I would gladly give my soul to the devil himself.” I told her.

“R… really?” she asked. She seemed a little unsure about my choice of words, but she still looked very excited.

“Yes, really. Now, how exactly does this work?”

She leaned forward and put both hands on my shoulder. I could feel her breath on my neck. It was not in a sensual manner, much more like an excited dog than anything, and I swear I saw her mouth part as though she was about to take a bite out of me.

“W… well, I guess you need to start doing your meditation. I’m going to take the blood to heal your granddaughter, and then… Well… just keep up the meditation. Even after you…”

“After I die?” I asked, and then sighed. “Alright, fine.” I agreed. “I’m going to start now.”

I had long since grown used to this meditation, but it was still meant to be a moving meditation. It was a little difficult to do it from a sitting position. However, with my knowledge of mantras and mudras, I was able to go through a few of the preliminary stages of the meditation I based my higher level void meditation off of. I kept my eyes closed and focused on my breathing. There was a very particular sequence of long and short breaths involved in this, and they had to be done in sequence. Meanwhile, I focused on the image of the energy of heaven flooding me.

The energy of heaven was a very peculiar thing. One of the key properties of it is that it did not like to ever be stagnant. As such, it refused to go into any vessel if there was not a way out on the other end. Most meditations of this form advocate spilling the energy out into the world around you, but I had found another method. A way to make a “way out” for this energy that seemed to cause it to respond far more vigorously, increasing the flow beyond anything I felt with the normal method.

This meditation was originally a 5 phase meditation. It focused first on the 4 elements, Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind in that order. But then, the fifth phase, the fifth “element” of the meditation was void. I focused on the concept of void, and I felt the awesome energy flood my body.

“Alright, I feel it.” the woman, Amashilama, said. “I’m going to take the blood now. Keep it up, just like that.” After those words, she bit down, right on my jugular vein. I couldn’t believe she actually bit my neck. She had said this would involve me dying, but… I was still shocked.

She spat the blood back out into her hands a moment later, and I saw her feeding it into Katelyn’s lips.

I heard my granddaughter moan. More importantly though, I saw her little hand lift up to wipe off the offending fluid leaking from the side of her mouth.

With a still bleeding wound in my jugular vein though, I had only around 6 minutes to live. Even fewer minutes of consciousness. I could already feel my vision blacking out. I remember Katelyn’s voice screaming the word “Grandpa!”, and then, it was black.

I do not know how long I was in that blackness. However, the very next memory I had was gaining awareness inside the warm envelope of what I could only conclude was my new mother’s womb.

Seems like reincarnation was real after all.