It hadn't been a good day. First, my boss had, as always, acted as asshole-ish as possible. Then, I'd accidentally dumped a whole crate of expensive ingredients in the wrong place, forcing me to spend the next two hours putting them away individually.

Then, as if that hadn't been enough, a horribly drunk driver had taken the time out of his or her day to think, 'Wouldn't it be nice to turn that innocent, fresh-out-of-college woman into meat paste?'

And then they proceeded to do just that.

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Death wasn't actually as bad as you might believe. Sure, there's that short moment right before your end where you realize that, yes, you're about to die. Although, luckily for me, that moment had been quite short for me. Driving a truck straight into me and then using a wall to turn me into a pancake had been blessedly short and painless.

I was no Christian. I did not believe in heaven or hell, although even I sometimes wondered if God was real or not. Hence, I had no clue why the hell I hadn't just... stopped existing. It made very little sense.

I could sort of feel my body, so maybe I hadn't died? But that was impossible. I'd felt it as my head literally exploded, along with the rest of my body. Not a pleasant experience, mind you.

I felt... weird. Warm. Like I was at home, where I belonged. It was a difficult sensation to describe, almost as though something within me begged to remain.

I had little reason to deny that part of me. Strangely enough, it didn't take long for me to fall asleep, or at least I thought it was sleep. Perhaps I was just daydreaming, and if I fell asleep, I would truly die.

I found myself not really caring. I'd already resigned myself to death the moment I noticed the truck swerving right towards me, so if I did die, whatever. If I didn't, that's great.

If my brain cells, or whatever allowed me to think, had been a bit more active and focused, I might have wondered where this apathy came from, but as it stood, I simply slipped away into blissful sleep within moments.

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Drifting in and out of consciousness isn't a necessarily enjoyable experience, but personally, it wasn't that bad either. I'd already gotten used to it back at college, where I would go to sleep extremely late and try to wake up early, only to fail and enter into a half-asleep, half-awake state.

Time was borderline impossible to grasp when I'm like this, and thoughts more complex than simple 'muuh' and 'maah' were also impossible.

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I couldn't tell when it eventually began to happen, but after a long, long while, I found the part of me that wished to sleep forever and never move slowly fade away, while at the same time, I found myself getting tighter and tighter.

It took me a while to decipher what that feeling meant. I was in a cage of sorts, and as time passed, the cage grew smaller.

Or rather, I grew bigger. One day, after an indeterminable amount of time had passed since my 'death', something within me finally decided that enough was enough, and that I needed to do something.

Coincidentally, that was the moment I finally woke up for real. My brain whirred into action, trying to understand everything that was happening and draw conclusions from it.

As an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi novels, I had some suspicions. Still, I'd never really believed reincarnation was a real thing, so I held off of that line of thought for now.

My body felt strange and difficult to move. It didn't necessarily feel foreign, but rather, it felt... weak. Still, something in me urged to act anyways, and it was difficult to disobey this feeling.

I pushed my legs, trying to press the cage constricting me away. It was difficult and exhausting, as the cage seemed to be incredibly tough. Still, I didn't relent as I just kept on going, desperate to escape while also being urged by my strange feelings.

It took quite a while, maybe an hour, maybe two, maybe far more, but eventually, I heard a crack, and light spilled into the darkness of my cage.

Reinvigorated, I pushed against that spot even harder, slamming against it with all of my feeble strength. I pressed and pressed until, finally, with a much louder cracking sound than before, an entire section of my cage fell away.

I was tired, extremely so. Nonetheless, while the strange feeling from before had subsided, for now, my own curiosity pushed me forward. I stumbled out of the cage, dragging myself forward with everything I had.

I immediately regretted my actions. The light in whatever place I was in wasn't strong and held an ethereal look to it. Still, it was plenty enough to illuminate the absolutely massive being hovering above me.

My eyes were blurry, and seeing through them was difficult. Still, I could vaguely recognize an outline of nine serpentine heads hovering in the air. Long, snake-like necks attached them to a massive, scaled body with four thick, strong legs. Despite the creature being far larger than me and barely fitting in the suddenly much smaller-looking cave, I had no trouble taking it all in with my eyes.

One of the heads of the creature lowered down, approaching me. Surprisingly, instead of immediately rendering me to pieces, it simply nudged me gently with its muzzle. The strange feeling from before roared back to life, urging me to go closer to the monster.

I was far too exhausted to question it, or anything else that was happening. Under the gentle urging of the creature, and the much more annoying urging of my own feelings, I scrambled forward, powering through the exhaustion until I was right underneath the creature.

My eyelids dropped on their own, and before I could do much of anything, I was once more deep in sleep, all rationality and sense of self-preservation thrown out the window.

Nonetheless, that seemed to have been the right thing to do, as the nine heads of the massive monster curled up in a circle around me, shielding me from the dull, blue light that shined from the ceiling.