Chapter one: then the nightmares ceased

“Uh?” I grunted as I was violently snapped back into reality. The scent of unwashed clothes and unventilated, mouldy air beckoned me back to my usual reality; no longer was this the picturesque country-scape of nature and happiness, but the dull reality I had lived in for almost thirty years. I knew it was all just a figment of my lonely imagination, but the sensation of that young girl’s warmth and softness still lingered in the palm of my hands.

“Ugh, was it always this dark?” I wondered to myself as I navigated over to the unused light-switch in the corner of my room. Yet, something stopped me as I reached out to flip the switch. It just didn’t feel right. My home wasn’t dark because I enjoyed living such a dreary life. No, it was because I didn’t want to see it. To turn on these lights would mean confronting the wretched life I had been leading. The only semblance of luminosity in this room came from the flashing lights of my computer screen. “Yeah,” I shrugged. “This is… ‘home’,” I suppose I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I did. I certainly didn’t enjoy it; however, I had grown accustomed over the years and found a sense of content in it.

I moved over and picked up my phone resting upon the dusty mattress I had used in place of a proper bed. It was past 4 in the afternoon which would make me almost eight hours late for work. I scrolled past almost a hundred missed calls from my boss and just tapped ‘clear all’. “Yeah no,” I shook my head. Calling him back at this time would just be a death sentence and it was probably wiser on me to look for a new job. Besides, even after wasting away four years at that workplace I never grew to like it. The manager was a dick, the customers were worse, and every day I just felt like I was slowly killing myself over a place I never gave a shit about. It wasn’t even a good job. Just your everyday, rundown and ill maintained fast food joint.

After washing my face in the sink, I fully woke myself up and headed over to the computer. I clicked around to remember what I had been doing before that strange fever dream. What sprawled across my screen was an online game I had been particularly enamoured with for the past few years. It wasn’t anything grand or popular, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable – at least enough so that I sank literal thousands of dollars into it without a second thought. My character was boosted to such absurd levels of strength and skill that most other players found it hard to even compare me to them, which wasn’t anything to brag about. A lot of modern games have become like this; it was all about the free premium model and stuffing the game with microtransactions until your wallet bled. I guess I was just one of those idiots giving this shitty game company money to continue this horrendous business. “Whatever.”

None of that was important anymore. I had already spent the money, and to be honest I enjoyed my miserable time fuelling my ego by making my character almost untouchable. It was my pride. It was my ‘only’ pride.

“Is this how you want to spend your life?” a sudden voice called out to me. A very ‘familiar’ and deeply personal voice.

“Huh?” I froze for a second before mustering up the courage to turn my chair around. The one to greet me here in this dark, crowded room was, “me?” Standing there with a dead, depressing stare was a lanky fellow with unkempt hair and a mean look in his eyes. Perhaps it was his unhealthy, pale complexion, or the way he hunched over, or the dark rings under his eyes, either way there was a general sense of unpleasantness emanating from him – from ‘me’. “What the hell?”

It freaked me the hell out. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t be perturbed by this strange and perplexing scenario. My doppelganger sighed in a manner reminiscent of a parent who was disappointed at their child. “What’s wrong with you? Even after death you still return here. Is this some sort of a curse?”

“After death? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You… don’t remember?” he asked with a confused look about him.

“Uhh, no? I think I’d remember something that extreme.”

“Evidently not. I can even give you the exact time of our death. August 23rd, 2023. It was exactly 11:43. Do you want to know how you died?”

“Wait,” I stopped him. “Wait just a second,” I felt a powerful headache stinging at the back of my head. His words jogged a particular memory, but I couldn’t properly recall what it was. No, it wasn’t as if I had forgotten, more like a different part of me was actively sealing off that memory. That date and time repeated in my head over and over. “No, no, it can’t be. No, but I’m still here. If I’m supposed to be dead, then why am I still here?”

He stared intently at me for a few seconds before opening his mouth again. “I see. I think I’m understanding the situation here.” If he understood it then I’d be delighted to hear about it, or so I wanted to say. “It might be a sort of negative feedback from remembering too much,” he continued whilst I still had no clue. “Tell me, is there anything else you remember before arriving at this… ‘place’?”

“Well,” there was one thing in my recent memory. “I… umm, saw a dream. About running around carefree in some sort of countryside with a young girl. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with what’s going on here, but that’s the only thing that comes to mind.”

When I told him that he let out a small chuckle. It was honestly quite creepy to see myself laughing like that. “Well, if god does exist, he certainly has a merciful side to him. I guess your next life will be quite the improvement to this mess. Good luck out there, though I get the feeling you’ll probably come back here sometime down the line.”

“What do you mean? Explain, dammit. Just what’s going on?” cutting off my thoughts, the ground suddenly trembled beneath my feet. “An earthquake?”

“Not quite. It just means you’re waking up.”

“Waking up?”

“It’s fine. Everything will be fine. Oh, but before you go there’s one thing I need you to remember. You have to --.”