1 I'm dead... well that's new!

The darkness was suffocating.

It surrounded me so tightly that even my arms were completely beyond my vision.

The only light visible were little motes, dancing in the distance. They flickered into being and then drifted far down until eventually, they flickered out altogether.

Those motes of light were the only reason that I could see the two creatures before me, creatures that made my headache and my heart pound.

They were nothing more than silhouettes, a ghastly darkness that somehow appeared to be even darker than my surroundings.

A pure black.

A dark so deep that I felt my mind slipping just by looking at them.

I was certain that if I looked at them for too long, I might just go insane. It drew closer and, somehow, though I couldn't even make out my own form I could distinctly see what looked like a veiled, hooded figure.

"Well now, that is quite peculiar," the figure said, its voice seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. "I was sent to collect the soul of a small girl and yet… well, you're a fully grown adult male… most peculiar indeed."

"Collect… Soul?" I rasped, my voice cracked and broke like a record on an old vinyl player as if I hadn't used it for years.

"Well now," the voice continued, "an adult male who is able to generate enough will to vocalise in the Chasm, the peculiarity never ceases."

The dark figure surged toward me until it filled my vision entirely. I was only just able to bite back a hysterical scream.

The creature was immense. Bigger than anything I had seen before. It didn't seem real. It couldn't be real. It stretched upward for what seemed like an eternity and was just as wide. The shape of a colossal hooded man.

"What… Happening…" I stammered, unable to croak out a coherent sentence.

"Oh now now now, come on, you can do at least a little better than that, can't you Human?" The voice sneered its question, disgust lacing every word.

"Besides, the truth is that I should be asking you those questions, little mortal. How did you come to be here, and what did you do with my charge?" It pondered aloud, though the questions were clearly rhetorical.

"No? Can't quite muster the will to speak up again? No matter, your words would be tainted by your own experiences, I have other methods to tell me what has gone wrong here."

A smaller tendril of inky darkness detached from the larger whole, whipping through the void toward me so fast that it almost blurred.

My instincts took over, and while I could barely muster the ability to speak moving seemed to come easier.

I dived out of the way at the last possible second. I felt a surge of foreboding radiate out from the creature, and for a moment I felt like a rabbit who had been caught in the headlights.

Then everything faded away, as the tendril wrapped around my neck and poured into my eyes

…

....

...….

a KiD….

She was just a kid. A kid with headphones on, completely engrossed in whatever was happening on her phone. She was a kid, with headphones on, completely engrossed in whatever was happening on her phone… and she couldn't hear the sirens.

The sirens of a police car.

The sirens of a police car, chasing a van that was going faster than any vehicle should have been going on a road that was right next to a school. She couldn't hear them. They weren't going to stop.

When I was growing up I'd always thought that my life would lead up to a specific moment of monumental change. A moment where things would all become different. But she wasn't going to make it across the road in time, and she wasn't going to notice the oncoming danger.

So this was it. This was the moment.

Time slowed, my legs began to move off their own accord. It only took three large strides. I was there. I was in the middle of the road. I had pushed the little girl out of the way.

Then… The van hit me.

"Jacob Lyre, date of birth the Third of December, nineteen-ninety-four, date of arranged death the fifteenth of August twenty-fifty-three. These are what your numbers were supposed to be, what your file would read if such a thing existed. But here you are, now, with your body expired and your soul waiting in the Chasm to cross the Veil to the Maw. This should not be. You should not be dead, Jacob Lyre," the Void creature said, almost absentmindedly to itself.

"I'm dead?" I said, also to myself, "Well, that's new."

The malevolence from the creature flickered for a moment, giving way to what could only be considered amusement, which itself gave way to annoyance rather quickly.

"Lyre, you have slipped off the mortal coil some forty years too early. For that, I am truly apologetic," the creature said. "I assure you, this sort of thing really does not happen often, and when it does we do try to offer… reparations, before your eventual journey across the Veil to join the rest of your kind past the Chasm in the heavenly realm of Maw."

It was all a little overwhelming, and I felt myself losing track of the conversation.

In the space of, what to me, felt like only a few minutes I had died, been transported to what a massive creature made of shadow had described as The Chasm, found out that I really shouldn't have died at all, not until at least another forty years had passed. Who knows what cool advances humanity would have made in that time!

I was going to miss it all.

"You said… reparations?" I swallowed my fear and confusion to ask. "What exactly did you mean by that?"

"Well, Human, before you enter the Maw you must have first lived a full and meaningful life," the creature began. "Yes, you may have found some base level of meaning in saving a young girl who was slated for an early end. But, on the whole, your life was… well… Shall we say below average?"

"Now, hold on a-" I started, but the creature started up again before I could get a word in edgeways.

"Bar the heroism that landed you in this mess you hadn't really done anything of note. When someone lives a life that isn't particularly fulfilling we allow a clean slate reincarnation into the being's home universe, a second chance if you will.

"However, when rare circumstances occur. Circumstances like the one that you yourself have been through, and reparations have to be made… well, we do like to push the boat out a little."

My head had begun to spin, "What… does any of that even mean?" I asked, my patience beginning to wear thin.

"Well, Mr. Lyre, today I am offering you the rare and quite incredible opportunity to exist on another universal plane! To join another world as if it were your own, while retaining the memories of the dimension that you just left!

"I will drop you down into a new world, one where you are able to succeed and prosper in ways that will allow you to live a fulfilling and exciting life. That way, when your time comes once again, you can join up with the rest of your kind in The Maw," the creature elaborated.

"So what, I just get to go off and live a brand new life in another world?" I asked, it all seemed just a little too good to be true.

"Quite right Lyre, quite right. I will be sending you to a realm where you can thrive to your absolute potential! In a sense, this new world will be one in which your wildest dreams can become a reality! Well, that or they'll be turned on their head into a waking nightmare!"

Before I was able to respond to that last, all too chipper, remark the motes of light that had provided the only illumination I had in this so-called Chasm began to flicker and fade away.

The darkness melded together, pressing in closer and harder until I passed on into the bliss of unconsciousness.