The day I died, I was walking home from the bus stop. If I remember correctly, it was a Friday night. I had gone for drinks with coworkers after work that night, so alcohol make some of the details hazy. What I do remember is the face of the man behind the wheel of the truck that hit me. He had looked young, wasted, and definitely not fit to drive. Anyway, I don't really remember much after kissing his bumper at high speeds.

See, after the multiple crunches and splats that I felt more than heard, the next memory I have is of a dark and warm place that felt very claustrophobic. I couldn't feel my arms or legs. My mind felt like the mush it should have been, sluggish and slow as it was to even attempt to form a thought.

What I hadn't realized yet was that my soul was shunted into a new body a universe away. This body was not human.

When I was able to finally gather my wits about me, the darkness was freaking me out. I couldn't see anything and I felt like I couldn't breathe. The pressure I could feel on every inch of my body didn't help either. So naturally I started trying to flail about. The flailing amounted to nothing, if not more panic. The egg I was rebirthed into had some give, but not much.

So I struggled. I struggled for an unknowable amount of time. Had I air to scream, I would have been hoarse. I was finally able to crack a slit in the egg to start sliding out. The way I achieved this was by slamming my face against the shell as hard as I could. The change to outside was sudden, and it caused me to freeze.

See, what's before me is something that shouldn't exist. There also seems to be another voice in my head. This voice I have come to call Instinct. The newly realized Instinct is telling me that the creatures in front of me are Mother and my siblings. These beings are about as far from human as one can get.

The ones that Instinct is calling siblings are small green snakes, but with two heads each. Currently, they are tearing into the corpse of what looks like it could've been a rabbit. Mother, on the other hand, or, I guess head, towers over us with a grand total of seven heads. Her scales are a much darker green than my dozen siblings. I can't tell how to read hydra emotions, so when she swings one of her heads and stares me in the eyes, I freeze. When she doesn't make a move towards me, I slip the rest of the way out of the shell. I sigh, taking in the nice fresh air, but what comes out is much more of a quiet hiss.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Human me had allowed Instinct to take over for the moment, getting me over to the carcass. Mother's gaze never left mine. Her eyes were a green color, and I could see how her clear eyelids slowly blinked. I can't really look away. They're beautiful in their depth, but the spark of intelligence wasn't there.

When she turned those eyes back to the entrance of he den, I, no Instinct was about halfway done with scarfing down a chunk of rabbit leg. It was at this point that I realized that, yes, just like my siblings I also had a second head. A glance to my right revealed what Instinct's head looked like. Its, well, my head was green. There are little splotches of white and black scales on the nose tip, which is upturned like that of a hognose snake. Instinct's eyes are currently closed on account of the chunk of rabbit they're forcing down into our stomach.

When my, no Instinct's eyes open again, I see they are the same color as Mother's eyes. A dark green, almost black. Then, near the slitted pupils the color lightens considerably. I also am able to see my own face. My face is identical, save my eyes. They are the color of molten gold that lightens to a silvery color. Glancing around at my siblings and Mother while Instinct goes for another bite, I notice that my eyes are the only golden ones. All other pairs of eyes are the same green as Mother's.

So here I am. I think I might be in shock. But, it doesn't seem like there's much I can do about it. The meat tearing under my, Instinct's fangs wakes me from my stupor and reveals how ravenous I am. So I follow Instinct's lead and sink my fangs into the chunk of leg left. I'm pretty sure I've never had rabbit as a human. The flavor that floods my mouth tastes utterly divine.

I lose myself to Instinct's control as both my heads try to consume as much of the remains as possible. There's not much, considering my dozen siblings, but we are small. At best guess, we're about the size of a human hand from nose to tail. When the rabbit is but bones, my engorged stomach causes my eyes to droop. I move to the wall and curl up around myself. While I drift into a dreamless sleep, my siblings piling around me, I can't help but think about how strange all this is. I mean, when I had woken up and lived as a human, I didn't believe in God or reincarnation or really anything. It would take a rude morning awakening for it to truly sink in that this was my life now. My time as a human had come to an end.