When your eyes finally snap open, all you see around you is clear blue skies and something flapping against your chest. Looking down, you see a seagull.
Checking the situation, you see you are basically freefalling at mach speed, and you notice the ground is getting oddly close.
Grabbing the bird, you slap it a few times across the beak, trying to get it to fly; unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work as you both continue hurtling toward the ground. Both of you are desperately hugging each other, and you continue your rapid descent.
"Goddammit, Jessi-!"
Before you can finish your sentence, you smash onto a metal balcony and then another and then another, and just for good measure, you land in a metal bin filled to the brim with trash.
You try to catch your breath, but it's hard to do when you just fell 20 stories.
After laying in the waste for a good minute or two gathering your thoughts, you get out of the bin and look around, and before you is a street bustling with people pushing and shoving each other with no regard, yellow cabs honking, and Italians shouting.
"New York...dammit, why New York!?, why not Atlanta or even Florida for peets sake, something better than the Chinese knock of London? I hate this town; it's always so goddamn crowded." After you say that, and after smacking your head against a wall for what felt like an hour, you finally walk out onto the busy New York City Street.
Looking around, you have no idea where to go. Looking down at your hand, you remember the injection from earlier. You try and pull it up, but unfortunately it shows fuck all, so its up to luck.
You look left and right, trying to decide which direction would be the most entertaining to venture down.
Eventually, you just shrug it off and head right to the crosswalk. As you walk along the road, images of people are shown through their windows.
you see families of all types At that moment, you are reminded of 707's words, "I love humans; they are all so unique and lovely."
As the words wander around your mind, your eyes are glued to the window inside. You see an old couple in chairs holding each other's hands and a young couple cooking together.
"Especially the children." As the thought enters your mind, in one of the windows, you see three kids, all playing and having fun. The sight makes you stop in your tracks as your head is enveloped in a pain you thought unimaginable, but through the pain, you hear a faint voice: "Come on, Hail! Let's go to the river!"
Some of the words are distorted, but once you snap them out and shake your head vigorously, everything seems to be okay, but you are uncertain about one thing: who the hell was that? As that was not your voice.
You try giving the moment more thought, but suddenly you start hearing soft sirens in the distance, and looking up, you see the flashing red and blue lights bouncing off the glass building.
After you walk three blocks with your head filled to the brim with thoughts while staring down at the pavement, you feel like turning back and heading home, even if it meant facing Jessica.
You make your way toward the sound and find five police cruisers and two ambulances in front of what seems like a bank.
dozens of officers are either in their cars or on the street working with the paramedics. Of course, without noticing you, some officers even run through you as they rush in and out of the bank doors. With a sigh, you shove your hands in your pockets and walk through the main doors and make your way through the bank.
As you walk up the stairs and get closer to the front desk, you hear a man angrily screaming. Walking towards the sound, you can hear it even more clearly when you finally spot the culprit; it looks like a man in his early 40s.
He looks just like your typical douchebag, with hair that has so much gel on it you'd think he just got back from a bukkake session, a big bushy beard, and a worn-down shirt that looks almost as wrinkled as an old guy's hands after a bath—except, you know, a ghost.
When you get a good look at him, you see that he's standing over a pregnant lady and screaming his lungs out at her. "You dumb fucking bitch!! Why did you have to move? I could have gotten out!"
You try to step closer to him to quiet him down. You put one foot forward, but you hear a squishing sound. You look down, and your foot gets lightly moved as if you stepped on the ice and not ceramic tiles.
You look down; you see blood splattered everywhere; chunks of flesh are strewn about the bank floor; it felt a little like the 4th of July; you could see pieces of brain matter splattered on the floor, railings, walls, and even on the ceiling in some places; and what you stepped on was, unfortunately, a human eyeball.
"Mmm, yummy, just like mom used to make them."
You say this with a grimace while peeling off the eyeball from the bottom of your shoe.
Looking over the scene and seeing multiple police officers talking to multiple victims and asking what happened, you never understood that. Why bring back the trauma of what happened by asking menial questions?
shaking your head and looking back towards the man; he's now staring at you with wide eyes and quite frankly looks like he could shit himself.
After you stare him down for a while, he finally snaps out of it and stumbles back, only catching himself on the desk that's behind him.
"I know I'm hot, but didn't Mommy teach you staring at people is bad?" you say while leaning against one of the pillars. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't find it as funny and simply looks on in horror at you.
"Who the hell are you?"
You roll your eyes at the question, "Take a wild guess."
he thinks for a moment before his eyes widen even more "Your, the grim reaper."
You snap your fingers at him in a finger-gun motion "Wow, so you're not a complete idiot; what gave it away? Was it the mask? Or the fact that you're dead?"
The man looks at you for a second, blinks a few times, and his legs start shaking. He grabs his head in disbelief and crumbles to the ground.
"Oh boy, here we go again," you say with a groan as you lift up your hair and rub your nape, after which you lean against a solid white pillar
"No, no, no, no, I can't be dead; I was doing so well; I was getting paid a shit ton; my wife finally agreed to a threesome with another woman; and my daughter got into college; this is some sick joke, right?"
You look him over and a sinister grin spreads over your lips. "of course, it's a joke, dummy! "
"Really?!" His gaze shoots up towards you and is filled with hope.
Unfortunately, you are not able to stop yourself, and you laugh out loud and pretend to wipe a tear from under your eye. "No, no, you really are dead; you should have seen your face though."
However, the man doesn't find it all that funny, and he shouts out, "I can't be dead! I just can't."
You give an exaggerated shrug and, with a smirk, say, "Well, what can I say? The evidence points to you being dead; I'm pretty sure I saw one of your eyebrows glued to the front doors, and then there's also this."
You say, nodding to the body lying in front of you. Pushing yourself off of the pillar, you slowly make your way toward the corpse. "Unless you're saying this mangled corpse ISNT you and I am just incompetent at my job?"
As you say this, you reach down to the body and grab it by its hair and pull its head up, making bits and chunks fall off. The body itself is very fresh, less than an hour old, and when you pick it up, blood is still dripping from the wound. "No, no, this is you; it's a spitting image of you."
Of course, you kid, the body's face is barely recognizable as human anymore since the upper left half has been completely blown off.
dropping the head to the ground, it splats onto the floor, sending a ripple through the blood puddle Looking back up at the man, you say, "So, are we going to do this or what?"
unknown to you while you examined the body, the man had started to sob profusely tears and snot bubbles the whole nine yards.
"Well, aren't you the handsome buck?" you say with a grimace while looking down at him.
"What is there to do?! I'm dead; I'm worthless trash now."
I look down at him and, with a fake sympathetic look, say, "Aw, don't say that you were always worthless trash; now your just dead worthless trash."
Looking back up at you, his eyes are filled with rage and wanting to strangle me.
you put your hands up in a mock defensive manner. "Oooh, scary. Be careful not to scare the neighbourhood cats."
"Why the hell are you even saying that?! Aren't you supposed to help me get to the other side?!"
"Hmm, yes, I am supposed to help, but nowhere does it say I have to be pleasant about it. And you're seriously not making it easy, so I'll ask again: Are we going to do this? Or are you going to sit here for an eternity until you become a ghoul? Because I have no problem leaving you here."
He gets up from the ground, wipes off the tears and snot from his face, and looks at you. "What will you do to help me?"
You don't answer him, but simply pull your hand out, and a menu of sorts pops up. Scrolling through the options, you find what you were looking for and proceed to scan the man.
"What was that? What did you do to me?"
"Calm down, you little wuss; I was just checking you out. And not in that way. "
After a while, a ding sound emits from the menu, and a picture and biography of the man pop up, scrolling to the top of the list, you say.
" So, your name is Jerry Bryan, 34 years old, born and raised in New York city, father of one daughter, and happily married... a married man, so basically, the plainest human being ever."
"hey..." The man says meekly
"Shut up"
Jerry simply nods as you speak to him. After a while of thought, I nodded my head and said, "To be able to help you get to the other side, we have to look through your life and find what you did wrong or right and what your final wishes are."
"I know what my final wish would be."
You briskly throw him a suspicious glance. He starts trying to say something, but words won't come out, so you look back down at the menu and say, "Nobody knows for certain what they want. That's why your assholes are so annoying."
"Hey! What do you mean, 'you assholes'?"
"I meant humans in general, Jackass; you never know what you want; you always fight for that last shred of hope that you'll miraculously come back to life, but it ain't happening, buddy; your dead; get over it."
With those words, you see from the corner of your eye as Jerry slouches down as if the fighting spirit left his body entirely and he had given up completely.
which is exactly what you wanted—for him to be weak and easily seen through—makes your job easier.
After that, you both stand there in silence. While you work on something, Jerry just stands there, blindly looking off into the distance. Finally, cutting the silence, you turn off the menu, and three wormholes appear in front of you. Out of shock, Jerry falls over and starts crawling backward from the portals.
"What the hell is that?!"
"Those, my dear dumbass, are the most important moments in your life."
"Yeah, but what are they for?" Jerry asks hesitantly
"Well, like the lovely pieces of work you are, most humans would never tell the truth about their lives if they did good or bad things if it meant they had a chance to get a spot in heaven, even though it's not as fun as it sounds, but fortunately for me, you can't lie about something I can physically see."
"What about my future?"
"Do I look like the ghost of Christmas in the future? I can't show you your future because your frontal lobe is on the staircase, and half your temporal lobe was on that lady's face," you say, pointing at the lady with glasses and a black dress.
"I stepped on one of your eyes, and don't even get me started on your occipital lobe; in my very humble opinion, that makes you pretty dead, but I am no doctor, so let's go ask for a consult."
A huge grin spreads over your face as his expression of anger and confusion slowly turns to disappointment and sadness as he realizes, finally, that this is the end.
However, you quickly shake it off and turn your attention back to the portals, and after a while, you finally decide to go through. Patting Jerry on the shoulder, you head inside the left portal.
Guess who's back to editing the story at 2 a.m.? This guy! XDD Anyway, maybe you have or haven't noticed, but I've decided to cut back on the amount of story I release weekly. I just don't feel like editing more, to be do hope you enjoyed the beginin of chapter 2. here i'd put some shit like "what will 457 learn from the portal about Jerry's past, Tune in next week to Soul Path to find out," but I suck at building anticipation, so suffer and wait. okay see ya