I woke up this morning and forgot where I was again...It’s nothing big, it used to happen every other day, and now it happens every other, other day. I figure it’ll eventually stop happening once I get more used to things. Just like with the night terrors.

Once I remembered where I was, I realized that I needed to use the bathroom.

I took one step outside my bedroom door  and what should I see, but a pale, dark haired, specter drifting through the gloom, heading towards my direction.

It turned out to be Agnes. Hospitable and earnest as always, she asked if I needed anything.

Fortunately for my dignity’s sake I didn’t piss myself. I don’t know what to say, she made Cornelius’ heart beat madly and she does the same for me I guess. Though in my case, it was  for a very different reason.

*****

So...it turns out that resurrections usually take a minimum of eighteen hours, but they can take up to a week, or longer. It makes sense that it’d take time, after all, we’re talking about reversing complete cellular death here.

In my case it took longer, maybe it was because I was more ‘dead’, maybe it was because I’d chopped up into so many pieces.

*****

So I went to work today, figuring that I’d gotten a grasp of things, and was comfortable enough in  my new skin and my new memories to try living a new life.

Or rather I figured it was about time for me to step back into normality, whether it was Cornelius’ normality or my own didn’t really matter to me. I’d been ‘elsewhere’ so long that I’d take any kind of normal.

Anyway I went to work and the woman at the counter was weird, or maybe I was the weird one, I’m never able to tell with these things. I went to my office and did some work and basically did work things.

You know, six to seven hours of actual work, intercut with numerous micro-breaks that you illicitly take because of eyestrain, wrist strain, boredom. As well the fact that simply just working would result in  finishing early, which would either lead to more work, or looking like a loafer.

Considering that this was pretty much the same stuff I used to do in my old life, before things got…

‘you know’...I figured I had a handle on things. I did some data entry, sent some emails to the guys directly above and below me and pretty much did whatever was on the todo list for the day.

Everything was fine until the guy walked in. Lean, red hair, blue eyes, clean shaven, but with his shirt untucked. His clothes slightly loose and rakish in a style that might have seemed ‘cool’ or dandyish  if he were so old and strung out looking.

“You?!….What the fuck are ‘you’ doing here?” he said.

His eyes wide, a deep scowl on his face.

I’m ashamed to say it took me a while to think about that and even after I’d had a good think the best I was able to do was to turn to my computer and point.

“....Working?”

“W-working? It’s been a fucking year, Corny.” he said. Speaking more to himself than to me.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The guy’s brow furrowed, he glared at me. My...Cornelius’ murderous buddy Daquain,(Ducky to his friends), glared at me.

Daquain, seemed like he was going to say something, like he was going to shout or laugh, or pull out the side arm I knew he always wore and kill me for a second time.

Even though I was kind of expecting to be attacked He didn’t. Instead he just pulled a hand over his face and simply pointed at me and at the door.

“Okay it’s been a whole fuckin’ year and she was only my bitch half-sister anyway, so I’m not ‘that’ mad anymore, but ‘you’ need to get the fuck out of here. I’m not going saying anything else. I’m not going to call security. You get the fuck out of here and we’re done. Don’t show your face around here, don’t show your face around our usual hangouts or at the club. If You do, then the next time I kill you, it’s gonna stick. At the very least I won’t be so nice, as to leave your meat and two potatoes  in the same heap as the rest of your pieces.”

*****

So Timeskip fifteen minutes and here I am, outside waiting at a bus stop, with a box full of crap and the usual stolen office materials.

Naturally I didn’t stay to argue or fight, nor did I do anything silly like threatening to go to the police. Though, ‘that’ was mainly because I knew that the police in this world were more about order, than they were about law and Corny here, was a relative nobody.

I left the building without argument, and with only a little sulleness and grump for the sake of saving face and not inviting extra trouble by looking weak.

If it seems I was being to compliant about the whole thing, then let’s suffice it to say that I was struck by how lenient Ducky was by A)letting me keep my reproductive organs, B)not setting my corpse on fire and C)not going after my family, on top of killing me.

He could have or he could have asked his uncle who was a senior member in the gang to do it. He didn’t and for that I was grateful. Consider first that these bloodthirsty gangsters where talking about and consider the nature of my...Cornelius’ transgression.

If it seems weaksauce for me to be grateful, please bear in mind that if ‘I’ was Ducky’s place and saw that the death didn’t stick, I’d have already killed me again, burnt the corpse and salted the earth afterwards. That was just how bad Cornelius’s conduct had been.

Though none of his friends were Saints, and all of them were guilty of similar or worse. That didn’t mean the act Cornelius nearly perpetrated was any less despicable. Being one scoundrel amongst many didn’t make you a better person.

It just meant that you were bad company, ‘in’ bad company, garbage in a garbage heap….but I digress. Having suddenly found myself forced to resign, and abandon my position at the office, I had two things to think about.

One I’d apparently lost a year which meant Mom and Dad...I mean Cornelius’ Mom and Dad, would be freaking out. Two, I was currently unemployed. Jobless in a post-apocalyptic economy.

“...Shit.”