Michael did not expect to die on a Tuesday.
No, not really and not anytime soon anyway. Tuesdays were harmless. Boring. They didn't feel like the kind of day that ended lives.
One second, he was crossing the street, earbuds in, mentally arguing with himself about whether pineapple belonged on pizza
(It does, by the way. People are just cowards.)
And the very next damn second, a delivery truck swerved sharply into view.
Its tires screeched with the horn's blaring loudly. Michael's brain supplied a very intelligent, very useful thought.
'Huh.'
His gaze flicked downwards and there stood a cat in the middle of the road.
Frozen stiff and wide eyed. Like it had just realized it was at the center of a Final Destination movie and had accepted its fate.
A streetlight snapped at the base, the metal screamed as the bolts tore free and the concrete shattered.
Gravity being the overachiever it was did the rest.
The pole didn't fall normally. No, that would've been too merciful, instead It bounced.
Once, like reality itself hesitated and went,
Then it landed perfectly upright again.
Except Michael was now between it and the sidewalk.
The impact was instant and horrifying, his body folded in on itself, his spine compressed, ribs screaming, organs shoved violently out of where they very much preferred to be. He was bent at an angle the human body was never meant to achieve, like a lawn chair no one bothered to read the instructions for.
Pain detonated through him in blinding waves. There was no dramatic slow-motion realization or a tunnel of light.
It was just heat and pressure. The wet, nauseating sensation of something very important inside him rupturing and blood splattering on the pavement.
He couldn't scream out as the air refused to reach his lungs. For a moment everything went quiet.
Then, someone screamed at the suddenness of it all. Pure horror, raw and uncontrolled.
Someone else laughed nervously, disbelieving and immediately said,
"Bro… are you fucking serious?"
Michael's vision dimmed, the world shrinking into fragments of sound and color.
His last conscious thought was oddly calm.
'Wow. If this ends up on the internet, I hope the comments are funny.'
———————
Somewhere That Was Definitely Not Heaven
Michael woke up before looking around, that was the first weird thing.
The second was that he wasn't lying or standing, just suspended in place, weightless.
He looked around and saw the white. Endless white. No floor. No sky. Just an empty void like someone forgot to finish rendering reality.
"…okay," he muttered. "That's new."
Then he looked down at himself.
Or rather through himself.
He was completely naked and slightly translucent, like frosted glass with human proportions.
Michael grimaced.
"Of course I'm naked. Of course I am."
He waved a hand experimentally and watched it ripple faintly, light passing through his fingers.
"…great. I'm dead and indecent."
Drifting forward a few meters away, he noticed movement.
In front of him stood a man in a sharp black suit, arms crossed, posture immaculate and clearly mid-argument with… something.
No.
Someone.
Another guy hovered opposite him.
Translucent and appeared to have glowing . Veins of red-black energy pulsing beneath his spectral skin like a badly rendered special effect that hadn't finished loading.
"I TOLD YOU," the glowing soul yelled, voice echoing unnaturally, "I WANT MORE. Hellhound and witch isn't enough. I want Dracula's powers. Castlevania Dracula. All of it."
The suited man pinched the bridge of his nose.
"No. You get what's on the form."
"I AM NOT SIGNING SHIT WITHOUT THE DRACULA PACKAGE."
Michael blinked as he looked at them wide-eyed.
"…huh?"
The suited man froze.
The glowing soul froze.
Both of them slowly turned toward Michael.
"…huh?" the suited man echoed.
"…huh??" the glowing soul snapped
There were three full seconds of silence.
Michael stood there, stunned, floating awkwardly, naked and semi-transparent, before finally gesturing vaguely between the two of them.
"So, uh am I early," he asked, "or did I miss the part where this stopped being a budget anime afterlife?"
The glowing soul lost it.
"WHO IS THIS GUY?!"
He pointed at Michael like he'd just found a cockroach in his food.
"HEY! YOU! YOU JUST INTERRUPTED MY REINCARNATION!"
Michael squinted.
"…you were reincarnating that loud?"
"SHUT UP!" the soul screamed. "THIS IS MY MOMENT!"
The suited man sighed deeply and shook his heard.
The kind of sigh that suggested he'd been doing this job since before patience was invented.
"You were this close," he said calmly, "to being reincarnated as a hellhound–witch hybrid."
The glowing soul smirked.
"Exactly. And I wanti more.
Michael tilted his head, then shook it as he looked at the furious soul.
"Greed really does kill people twice, you know. And shouldn't you be cautious of the suspicious man in a suit offering you power?"
That did it.
The soul rounded up on Michael furiously.
"You think you're funny?! You're a nobody! A background character! You probably died tripping over—"
"Streetlight," Michael cut in. "Very dramatic. Ten out of ten on irony."
The soul screeched incoherently and spun back toward the suited man.
"ERASE HIM. HE DOESN'T BELONG HERE."
The suited man stared at the soul for a moment.
Just stared.
No anger or annoyance. Just a calm, assessing look like someone deciding whether to delete an email or permanently block a sender.
Then he snapped his fingers.
The screaming cut off mid-note.
The glowing figure vanished instantly, like a buffering video finally giving up and closing itself.
Michael stared at the empty space with what he assumed were wide eyes. He couldn't feel his face anymore, but he was fairly confident his expression was somewhere between shock and I-should-not-have-survived-that.
'Calm down, he told himself.'
'Calm down, calm down, calm down.'
'Do not panic. Panicking has never helped anyone. Especially naked ghost-you.'
"…so," he said slowly, making sure not to look up too fast, "is that what natural selection looks like up here?"
The suited man let out a short chuckle.
"Oh," he said, amused, "I like you already."
He straightened his suit tonperfect lines, no wrinkles and finally turned to face Michael properly.
"Name?" he asked
"Michael Keller."
"Well, Michael Keller," the man said pleasantly, as if congratulating him on a promotion, "congratulations. You're being reincarnated."
Michael frowned.
"Do I get a say in this?"
"No."
"Figures."
The man continued, unfazed.
"You'll be reborn in the world of The Vampire Diaries."
Michael's eyebrows shot up.
"…okay," he said after a beat. "That's cool. Terrifying. But cool."
"You'll possess the powers originally meant for that… unfortunate soul."
He waved vaguely at the empty space where the tantrum had ended.
"A hellhound specifically in the vein of Jordan Parrish and witch power."
Michael paused.
"…that sounds incredibly unbalanced."
"Yes," the man agreed cheerfully.
Michael opened his mouth. Closed it. Then tried again.
"Wait," he said. "What's the catch?"
The man smiled.
"You'll be inserted two thousand years before the main storyline."
Michael stiffened.
"Two—"
"You will become part of the world's lore," the man continued smoothly.
"A foundational figure. A forefather of the supernatural. Your existence will ripple forward."
Michael swallowed.
"So I'm basically," he said carefully, "a walking historical problem."
"Exactly."
The man raised a finger, already anticipating the next question.
"And before you ask no, this arrangement is non-negotiable."
Michael exhaled slowly, long and controlled.
"…do I at least get immortality?"
The man's smile turned knowing.
"You're a hellhound."
"Right," Michael muttered. "Dumb question."
The man snapped his fingers.
The white void cracked.
Reality folded inward like paper being crushed in a fist. Light bent as the
Space screamed without sound.
"Oh," the man added casually, just before everything collapsed,
"one more thing."
Michael looked up and saw the man's smile widened just a little too much.
"Just remember," he said lightly,
"nature can be a bitch."
Snap.
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