Ch 01

I was just walking to work as on any other day. As I walked up to the busy intersection where cars were interchangeably passing through the lights, I hit the button to signal the crosswalk to allow pedestrians to get across the street without being hit by a car. The music in my headphones bumped loudly as I waited for the light to turn and then steppe out into the street.

Maybe they were in a hurry that day. Maybe they did not see the light or the person stepping out into traffic too engaged in their phone and music to pay attention to the oncoming minivan. Either way, I Ken Hemdall was suddenly struck by more force than a human body can withstand. I felt the worst pain of my life as my body was torn, and my ribcage shattered. Tumbling through the air and rolling onto the hard ground I coughed up blood and then everything went dark.

*****

When I came to there was nothing but darkness around me for quite some time. I was sure I had died but could not remember anything after. As more time passed, I decided that I must have ended up in purgatory, a boring place of nothingness for those who are neither good nor evil but perfectly neutral. Some would consider this worse than ending up in the Christian Hell as there was literally nothing to do but think. After a time, I began to inspect myself and discovered that I did not have any body or anything else for that matter, I was merely a disembodied consciousness floating in this endless dark void.

Just as I was beginning to give in and despair my fate a light appeared in front of me. It was not a bright light, in fact in many cases it would have been too dim to notice but after a period of time spent in absolute darkness it seemed very bright and comforting indeed to my panicking consciousness. The light was only the size of a small pebble but as I watched it grew and became brighter until it was the size of a basketball and so bright that it was painful to look at despite not having eyes.

As soon as it had reached this size and brightness the ball of light seemed to stop growing and after a moment I heard a voice in my head that was both a man’s and a woman’s at once, not androgynous but rather having two vocal tones playing over top of each other. “I am God” the voice said to me from within the depths of the light ball. “First, I would like to apologize for your death, it was not supposed to happen for many more years and you were supposed to have many more chances to experience life before coming to the end of your time on Earth” after a short pause in which I tried to ask questions but found that without a body I of course had no voice. “Second, I would like to apologize for how long you had to wait here before I showed up to explain what was going on, of course you can understand that being God I am an extremely busy being” the voice continued. “Now, I would like to send you back to Earth in order to make up for your life being cut short but unfortunately your number of times reincarnating on Earth are all used up and so I will have to send you to another world instead. Don’t worry though, I will make sure that you will have more excitement in the next life” and with that the light disappeared and everything once again went dark and my sense of consciousness faded out again.

*****

As light once again filtered into my eyes, I became aware that I had a splitting headache and placed my hands over my eyes to block out the light. That was the point at which I noticed that I once again had a body and was able to do such things as cover my eyes. Excitedly I tore my hands away from my face and looked at my surroundings. I was in what appeared to be a cell with some ten or so other people, although I have to use the term loosely as while some of them where humans an equal portion was clearly at least partially something else.

At the sight of a girl with dog ears and a tail standing next to what looked like a burly pig man with an angry look and long tusks I began to feel very out of place. After examining myself I noticed that while I was still clearly human I had a rather short and weak looking body and the clothes I was wearing could barely be considered to be such as it was little more than a sack with holes cut for my head and arms with a bit of knotted and dirty cloth around my waist.

“That damned dirty God tricked me!” I exclaimed out loud realizing that instead of a new and exciting life I was instead coming into this new life as some sort of prisoner and wearing nothing but a dirty cloth sack of an outfit.

When the others heard my outburst, they began to look uneasy. “SHUT UP!” the pig man grunted at me fiercely and grabbed hold of me by my sack pulling me close to his face. “Are you trying to bring the damned guards down here?! Stupid crazy human! Don’t cause trouble for the rest of us, if we are lucky, we might get sold to a decent master but if we get beat up by the guards we’ll look like troublemakers and end up in the mines or the arena for sure!” After hurriedly giving out this information the pig man dropped me back down onto the floor hard and my ass hurt from the impact. After considering the pig man’s words, I had decided that it was better not to make any more noise and so I didn’t complain about the pain on my backside.

The realization was coming to me that I was not just a prisoner but going to be sold off as a slave. Silently I cursed the God that sent me here as a stupid, incompetent, and lazy deity who was consistently making mistakes in their handling of my lives. After I had cursed my fate and the God that sent me here to my heart’s content I fell into a fitful sleep. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought to myself optimistically that it could be worse. I am alive, largely uninjured, and there is a chance of being sold to a decent master. Maybe this life won’t be so bad after all.