I wake up and for the first time in a long time, I’m not looking at a hospital ceiling. Instead I’m… standing up? Was I sleepwalking?

Looking around I see not much of note. The floor is warm and hard but not tiled. The ceiling is just not there, and the walls rise up into infinity. They seem to be made of marble bricks, interlocked with each other in the usual way. I turn my head and look at the entire room. There is no door.

Oh, I’m dreaming. This is all right. It’s better to sleep when my illness flares up badly. And this isn’t a scary dream, at least.

“Welcome, Ellie Dancer. I am Jinx, your friendly God of pranks, misunderstandings and general things-going-wrong. How do you feel?”

I spin around. There was nobody else in the room a moment ago, but now someone is talking to me. I look around and finally catch sight of him. It’s a man, but I can’t focus on him. When my eyes fall on his figure, he seems to shift and melt away, reappearing in my peripheral vision. After a moment, I give up. Dreams are strange like that, I guess.

“I feel… pretty good?” It’s true. My body doesn’t ache and my head isn’t fuzzy with pain medication. I am standing and dressed in some kind of nightgown that hides my body well. Not that I am ashamed of my body, but the only men who have seen it are doctors and I want to keep it that way for now. I pace around, keeping the man in my peripheral vision but pretending not to see him.

The man claps, and the sound echoes well. “Hurray! I did it right, then. Well, you’re probably very confused right now, hey?”

I shake my head. “Not really. Dreams are weird sometimes. This isn’t even the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”

The man—Jinx—laughs, and suddenly he isn’t a man anymore. His voice changes pitch and tone and she speaks with a woman’s voice. “Oh, silly girl! You’re not dreaming! You’re dead.”

I stop walking and frown. “That’s not funny. I really could die from my illness.”

“And you did,” says Jinx. Her voice sounds a little sad, but also a little excited. “And I was looking at you, thinking how your whole life was a cruel joke when you passed away. Incidentally, the reason you died was because of an error. The doctor prescribed too much pain medication, because your cries at night broke his heart. He didn’t mean for you to die, but what’s done is done.”

I purse my lips when Jinx says my whole life was a cruel joke, but she isn’t wrong. I lived until I was almost twelve before my disease manifested, and then everything went downhill for me. My parents couldn’t afford to pay for my treatments and gave me up for adoption, but nobody would adopt a sickly girl who would never get better. I celebrated four birthdays as a foster child, but when I turned sixteen my illness got worse and I had to be hospitalized. I had just passed my seventeenth birthday when… I guess I died.

A thought entered my mind. “You were watching me in the hospital? Did you see anything—“

Jinx, who has become a man again, waves his hands in the air. The movement makes me look involuntarily but he slides away out of my focus as usual. “Of course not! I would never watch someone’s private moments.” He pauses for a second. “Unless they were funny. Like the time you tried to get up and go to the bathroom yourself without help and—“

“Stop!” I yell. I know exactly what he’s talking about and I don’t want to remember it. The looks of sympathy from the nurses, combined with their soothing words, still burn in my mind. “I don’t want to hear about what you saw. Instead why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”

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Jinx flits around me, like a hummingbird looking for a place to perch so they can drink nectar. “Why, I thought that you deserved a second chance. Nobody’s life should be all bad jokes and cruelty! So I’ll make you an offer. I am a God, but only a minor one. It’s just barely within my power to reincarnate you into the world I help manage. What do you say?”

I touch my mouth with my finger. “You said you’re the God of pranks, so I think I should ask questions before I answer.” Jinx laughs in my ear. “First question: what kind of world is it?”

He flaps his hands. “Oh it’s a wonderful place! There’s magic and monsters, dungeons and castles, and kings and queens! Elves and dwarves and other races all mix together, finding common ground and conflict aplenty. There’s no industrial revolution like your world had; something I think your Gods should have nipped in the bud in my opinion. Too late for them now! People’s lives are simple but there’s always something new. It makes for a very interesting world, and I hope you’ll become a part of it!”

I nod my head. “Second question: can I choose what I reincarnate as?”

Jinx laughs again. “Of course! What would you like to be?”

“I want to be healthy. I don’t want to ever get sick. I want to be big and strong. Oh! But I still want to be a girl, of course. Don’t turn me into a man!”

“Mmm hmm, mmm hmmm, anything else?” I hear the sound of a quill scratching paper. How do I even know what that sounds like? I’ve never heard it before. Must be magic.

“I think I need a skill of some kind. I don’t know anything about that world, so just dropping me in there with only what I know now will be challenging. With some useful skill I can at least make a go of it. And I need to be able to understand the language.”

“Okay, that’s doable. I can do that.” I can hear the giggle that Jinx is just barely trying to restrain. “So any other questions before I get your answer?”

“Why are you doing this? What does it benefit you? Does everyone get reincarnated when they die?”

“One, two, three questions all at once! I’ll answer them backwardly since you’re being so straightforward. No, not everyone gets reincarnated, although your world is the only place I know of that we can take people from to reincarnate. What does it benefit me? Why, I get the satisfaction of watching you fumble about and learn and make mistakes and just generally make a mess of things. It’s like you’re my own personal prank on the world, albeit a small one.”

Jinx stops there, and I wait a second before pressing him. “And why are you doing this?”

Jinx’s voice changes. Now it’s neither male nor female, but halfway between the two. It reminds me of a throaty, tomboyish woman or a young man who smokes too much, maybe. “Because it’s my turn to do so, and this time I’m going to do it right.” There is a pause, and then Jinx goes back to her womanly voice. “Does that answer your questions, Ellie?”

I think for a long while. There is one more question on my mind, and Jinx answers it before I can answer.

“There’s no heaven or hell for you. Your Gods left your world a long time ago, and when you die, you just melt away into nothing. Such a waste! The mechanism that creates souls and places them in bodies will go on forever, but what’s the point if the soul can’t earn a reward in the afterlife? So if you choose to decline my generous offer, I’m afraid I’ll be the last person you ever see or speak to. Not that you have anyone that would be waiting for you in heaven, mind you. Your parents would definitely go to hell for abandoning their daughter just because she had the bad luck to be born with a sickness.”

Her words should hurt, but they don’t. They echo my true feelings about my parents. When they left me I imagined myself getting better and them coming back, and then I imagined them coming to their senses and taking me home. None of that ever happened. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist anymore. If there is a hell, they belong there. Or not; I just don’t care.

“All right. I accept.”

Jinx claps her hands. “Thank you so much, Ellie! This is a huge help for me. Really enormous! If you said no I’d have to go find someone else to reincarnate, and honestly, I wanted it to be you. The last guy was just… well, the less said the better. Okay, brace yourself! I’m going to reincarnate you in three… two…”

Wait a second. I haven’t told Jinx what skill I want, or whether I wanted to be an elf or a human or something else! I try to call out, but nothing comes. Looking down I see that my hands along with the rest of me, are fading away into sparkling dust. I turn one last time and finally get a good look at Jinx. She looks almost familiar, somehow.

The last thing I see is Jinx winking at me. Then the marble walls fad away and I am pulled into a new world.