Being dead wasn’t so bad.

I died while connected to a virtual world, and the headset transferred my consciousness as a backup.

Things only really started getting strange around a year later. There were a handful of others that had the same fate as me, and we decided to form a little group. We wanted to make the best of our circumstances, so we opened a venue for musical talent to perform and dancers to dance.

We called it the Necro Disco.

All the staff members dead—virtual recreations of their deceased physical selves. The living people who visited had no idea, but the dead were able to tell right away. Many of them decided to stay.

Ratio wise, we were around twenty dead per one living soul on any given night. We had one rule; never tell a living soul that we were no longer alive.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey, you’re staff right? Where are the vis mods at in this world?” A woman shouted over the thumping music.

I turned to find the culprit—a woman who’d taken the form of some new age game character, standing behind me. It was clear she was a living person from the glow she gave off; A halo of white light surrounded her that appeared like an outline that diffused with the background behind her the further it reached outwards.

I raised a pointed hand towards an entrance on the far side of the club. She nodded and walked off.

The rest of the night went on as normal.

The following night however, a deafening scream rang out one hour into the first performance. It was the same woman, but this time, she took on the form of a human rather than the game character she appeared as before. Her glow was no longer present. She was dead.

Her previous form lay still on the floor beside her with a knife wound clear along the front of its neck. She was murdered. And the murderer was standing beside it, and the glowing light that poured from the corpse was now shifting into them. They were stealing the life from the woman.

It was all we could to do gather around in shock at the sight as the woman sobbed uncontrollably. The murderer shifted out of existence.

Bloodshed ensued, and soon, no living beings stood among us. They’d either been killed, or had logged out before they could be.

From that day forward the Necro Disco served a very different purpose.

It was a trap.

If any living being dared step foot onto our dance floor, they would be killed, and their living soul would be harvested by one of our members. It made sense from a business standpoint—advertise that you can bring people back to life. The living would come directly to us—idiots and daredevils, mostly.

Our members loved the idea, and who could blame them? It gave us all a second chance at life. That was something many of us had long since dismissed as fantasy.

It wasn’t all bad for the prey, either. Any being that died while visiting the club was given a free lifetime membership. It was only fair we give them chance at reclaiming their life.

This proved to be somewhat unsustainable. It didn’t take long for the living people of the virtual world to recognize the pattern, and many stopped coming. So, instead of targeting the unsuspecting visitors that chanced upon our club, we set out to prey on those that didn’t know any better.

The duties of the staff members changed, and we were rewarded handsomely for it. We set out in teams to visit the worlds the living frequented. Then, after convincing them to come to the Necro Disco, they’d find a hundred or more visitors waiting eagerly for their arrival.

This proved to be quite lucrative, too. Staff members that brought one hundred living souls to the club were rewarded a soul of their own, and many took that opportunity.

Eventually it came to be my turn to dive back into reality, but I refused. Almost all of our members were killed on the premises at that point. So I decided to stay until I was the last remaining member of the club. Only then would I claim a life for myself.

Years passed, and sure enough, membership gradually diminished.

Everyone had moved on, but I continued. Some took lives for themselves, but many decided that they liked their new immortal digital forms better than they did their real life and were content to stay dead.

The only other staff member left was the first victim—the woman that was murdered all those years ago. She’d gathered more than her share of living victims and could easily claim one for herself, but decided not to for whatever reason.

The existence of Necro Disco became a novelty. It was viewed as a tourist attraction for brave souls looking for a thrill. The living now saw it as a tall tale, and a shell of its former self.

And generally, this was correct. Operations shifted from the dead re-entering the world of the living to reliving its original purpose as a music club.

Even with our membership shifting to living thrill seekers, the woman waited. She could have claimed any soul for herself but decided against it.

One night there was one particular patron that she set her eyes on. It was her murderer. He entered filled with awe at the sight of so many living souls populating the floor, and seemed to be salivating at the thought of taking more lives.

She approached the murderer from behind. In one swift motion, she slit his throat, and he fell to the floor.

The living and dead bodies of the murderer now separated—a process we were now very familiar with.

But she didn’t claim the soul for herself. She looked towards me, then gestured towards the light. She offered it to me.

And I obliged.

The soul entered my body. It felt like blood had re-entered my veins, and warmth overcame me. It was the first time I felt alive in years, and I was instantly thankful to have been given the opportunity to experience this once again. The process only took a moment, but it was wholly satisfying.

The woman placed a cold hand on my shoulder and smiled.

I didn’t waste any time in logging out for the first time in nearly a decade. But what awaited me made it clear why she gave it to me.

I woke up in a location that was all too familiar. Leaving this was the reason I’d escaped to the virtual world in the first place. It flowed back into my mind after years attempting to shut it out. It was the life support ward.

All that existed of the woman in the real world was a severed head, kept alive by technology. It was no wonder she’d escaped to the virtual world in the first place. She preferred death over this, and I couldn’t blame her.

My body was in a similar situation that ultimately led to my death. My relatives couldn’t see me in that state for any longer, so they pulled the plug without my consent, unaware of the repercussions.

She gave me this soul as punishment for taking the lives of so many others.

I had claimed life, but to me, it was not a life worth living.