《Sonny Samhain》


 1: Right Person, Wrong Reality

    I¡¯m not sure, and I don¡¯t really understand ¡®how¡¯ I did it,  but I think I might have done something terrible. All I remember is walking home from work one day and then there was place that was all white and black and inhabited by these things that I neither able nor inclined to even attempt to describe. I remember pain and fear and a numbing sameness that ate the soul. All of that was like faint snatches of a maddening dream. My clearest recollections were when the door  came and finally brought some change. A brief reprieve. I remember wanting to get away. Then suddenly like a miracle there was a door. An exit.


    I don¡¯t think I should have gone through that door, except it was calling to me. And in that place where I was, I couldn¡¯t ignore it.  That place in the blinding light and impenetrable darkness, it wasn¡¯t meant for people. It wasn¡¯t meant for things that think, so when I saw the exit of course I was going to take it. Give a thirsty man water and he will drink. Giving starving man food and he will eat. While I¡¯ve been told a man always has choices, I¡¯ll say right now, I pretty much didn¡¯t. Which is the only excuse I can give for what I did...


    *****


    I¡¯ve never gotten the appeal of horror games. Horror movies and horror stories were one thing, but being forced to play through a nightmare scenario, wasn¡¯t my idea of a good time.By nightmare like scenario I meant a scenario that was literally like something you¡¯d find a in a weird nightmare.


    A world where things made just enough sense that you didn¡¯t pay attention to how bullshit your situation was. One example would be a certain game where it cost you power to keep the fury robot demons in a certain eatery from breaking into your office and trying to make you one of them. You spent your time watching them, to know when they were about to sneak up you, just for the sake of keeping the doors closed if they got too close. It was only later, when you weren¡¯t playing and could reflect that you¡¯d think, ¡®hey wait a minute¡¯. Security doors don¡¯t work that way.


    *****


    I woke up in a bathtub, one of the old fashion type that was propped up on little paws. I was soaked through and the water I was sitting in was dyed a dingy frothy red. Everything hurt except my head, which was surprisingly clear.


    I looked up and saw a woman staring down at me. Dark hair, pale, luminous eyes. Thick lank, locks and a taste for drab chic. Eyes that were too wide and a gaze that was a little too direct. A complexion that looked like she was either had recently shuffled off the mortal coil or wasn¡¯t going sticking around for too long. A bit spooky looking honestly. Imagine if the creepy little girl in nine out ten horror stories made it to adulthood.


    I didn¡¯t recognize her. Except I think I did. Actually I knew I did, or at least part of me did. It was hard to say.  If you die and you don¡¯t notice, did you really die? If something eats you and you eat that something and  you become that something, then who really ate who?


    ******


    There was once a man by the name of Cornelius D. Douglas. He wasn¡¯t a very nice man. Actually, to be frank he was kind of piece of shit. I¡¯m all for enjoying yourself while you have the time to do so.


    Heaven knows that ¡®I¡¯ certainly didn¡¯t and I definitely regretted not doing so when whatever it was that happened to me, happened. Leaving me in a place with neither time nor space, nor sensation. Still there was a limit to such things. Forget drinking to excess, our dear friend Corny was the sort who¡¯d smoke, snort, swallow, shoot-up, whatever new fangled thing you brought him.


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    He was like that kid you met in primary school, secondary school and college, the kind who was always doing crazy things for attention. Mainly because he genuinely believed being called Crazy [put name here] was some kind of badge of honor. Though fortunately age and drug testing for work had forced him to slow some of that down.


    He¡¯d originally been in sales and did surprisingly well, but then again he ¡®was¡¯ a consummate liar. He probably could have done well there if he hadn¡¯t been fired from that job for skimming off the profits.  He was sharp tongued and loved absolutely loved racial using epithets.


    When he was younger picked fights for no reason. Whether it was bar fights, or just more or less mugging people just for the thrill of it. He slept around enough that it was almost certainly a legitimate miracle that he¡¯d avoided catching anything permanent or fatal. Choosing partners that were sometimes a tad too young and not entirely willing. He worked at an office, that was really a dummy company for a certain shady organization.


    While he was generally just a clerk at the fake office, that he fake worked at, occasionally he¡¯d be pulled in for other errands. He yearned for a day when he¡¯d be made a full member of the group, but even this humble ambition was just based in the slightly worrying desire to hurt people and a petty desire to be a shotcaller like the rest of the real members were.


    *****


    Of course just like for everyone else in the world, there was a backstory there. Nothing groundbreaking or really engaging though. With minor exceptionan overly glorified history of school yard romps, he was pretty run of the mill till he turned sixteen.


    Normal childhood, normal parents. Slightly posh upbringing, with a fairly robust education that he got surprisingly good grades for, but he wasn¡¯t some long lost noble or anything.


    The only thing that stood out from my own, humdrum life story was where he met a manic pixie dream girl during his seventeenth year. Except she wasn¡¯t a manic pixie dream girl, she was just a normal girl who just happened to ¡®really¡¯ like amphetamines and new age philosophy and she proceeded to kick his heart in the balls.


    The memories were blurry for that period, mainly because of all the drugs they took. I could faintly remember a brief period of sobriety where he was in court for assault and battery charges but dear old dad help him beat those. Rich Parents, you gotta love ¡®em. Which ended the romance, or kind of did, with the exception of a faintly stalker-y period that he had. Trying to win his decidedly less manic dream girl back.


    ******


    In summary, Corny D. Douglas was a mean, violent,  callous, selfish, petty, greedy, lustful stupid idiot. Managing to hit not just seven of the seven cardinal sins, but even managing to hit the eight that was usually forgotten. The deep well of self-loathing and despair that guided almost all his decisions was thick enough to almost make me gag on it.


    Taking in the man¡¯s psyche and memories was like gnawing on rotted flesh. Both rancorous and oddly ordered like a serial killer''s bathroom. Innately repulsive. gnoshing on cheese that was more mold than cheese. It was just...foul.


    I could remember his death, a fairly meaningless death that involved him being a little too forward with an associate¡¯s kid sister and getting shot for it. In my humble opinion it¡¯s good riddance to bad rubbish, but then again. That might just be me trying to justify the fact that I was at least eighty to ninety percent sure that I¡¯d just sublimated the guys soul.

 2: Identity and Need

    ¡°...Come.¡± said Agnes. My...Cornelius¡¯ wife of six maybe, seven years and because I had no other real recourse besides staying in that little steel tub of salt water and blood, I obediently did as she asked.


    We walked through a house that was far bigger than the original Cornelius should have been able to pay for. From what I saw there were four bedrooms, two baths, a den, a living room, a kitchen and a separate dining room, which was where our little tour through the house stopped.


    It wasn¡¯t the biggest houses, but it was far from tiny and just looking at it was all worth far more than my...his...piddling paycheck could cover. I¡¯m the kind of guy who doesn¡¯t sweat the details until he does and then I sweat them a lot.


    Seeing the semi-tasteful furniture and tidy, almost lovingly arranged decor it was starting to bug me. At least it did until I looked into my,... his memories and recalled that the house was a wedding gift, from his over indulgent parents. Then it made more sense.


    ¡°How¡¯s your body?¡± said Agnes.


    ¡°Good...I think.¡± said I.


    Rolling my shoulders a little, craning my neck, doing the kind of tiny stretches one did after being sedentary for a long time. I could feel things popping into place, and was surprised to find that all my aches and pains were steadily fading. More surprising than that, was finding how nostalgic it was to have aches and pains again. Well, I¡¯d had pain, in that place where I¡¯d been, but it¡¯d been more of a mental, spiritual anguish sort of deal.


    Physical pain, was something simpler, something easier to deal with and its presence confirmed that everything that I was seeing and experiencing was real. In short though it hurt, I found I didn¡¯t hate the feeling.


    ¡°How do you feel?¡±


    ¡°Not bad¡­¡± I said.


    ¡°No sense of crushing despair, or paranoia or a feeling that something is calling to you from a place of icy shadow?¡±


    ¡°Huh? Um...no.¡±


    She sighed in relief.


    Then she turned and sat at one of the chairs of the dining table and then gestured.


    ¡°Well...Your dinner¡¯s there, like usual. It¡¯s probably cold by now though.¡± said Agnes.


    Again, either because I was unsure of what my options were, or maybe because I was too overwhelmed by the current state of affairs, I did what I was told.


    I sat at the other end of the table and I ate. It wasn¡¯t bad. Macaroni and cheese, with grilled asparagus shoots and baked chicken. It was mundane fare, but damn if I couldn¡¯t do with a little more of the mundane in my life. As I sat gnawing on a strip of breaded chicken, I almost cried.


    It wasn¡¯t like  the food was ¡®that¡¯ good or anything, it wasn¡¯t bad either, mind you. It¡¯s just my feelings of that moment had nothing to do with what was actually on my plate.


    That meal, was the kind of meal I¡¯d already given up ever having again. And I don¡¯t know what else to say about it.


    When you¡¯re in an unfamiliar place, you get homesick. If its unfamiliar but there¡¯s enough for you to get used to, with enough time that becomes your new home. However that assumes that there¡¯s at least a few points of familiarity for you to settle into.That assumes some measure of commonality.


    That assumes that the new place fits within your common sense and ability to think, if not your ¡®way¡¯ thinking. The people might speak a different language, but at least they speak a language and at least they¡¯re people. The food might not be what you¡¯re used but there¡¯ll be enough palettes and flavors that you¡¯ll eventually find something you can eat. Experiences that were truly alien and strong were nothing like that.


    There¡¯d be no commonality. You¡¯d simply find yourself in a situation so far removed from your own reality that you kind of have to go insane to be able to cope. Giving up any reasonable expectations on what should be and would be, just to be able to keep moving forward.


    That¡¯s what an entirely alien experience was like. It was a world where love was cannibalism and hate was calculus, and you died and were reborn, every time you blinked...Except entirely different. Entirely beyond words. That¡¯s what it meant to have to deal with something completely outside your wheelhouse.


    That¡¯s the kind of place I was in, for a fairly indeterminate amount of time. That''s kind of place I was inexplicably torn to. A place so far from home, that I almost forgot that homes were thing.  So I feel no shame in telling you that I almost cried because I assure you that anyone else would have felt the same.


    The meal ended, with the plate cleared, save a few remaining splotches of cheddar sauce. I sipped from the cold, frost covered glass of soda at my side, chewing on the ice. As I contemplated the worlds that were lost to me and the life that I would have lived if I hadn¡¯t suddenly been torn from my former mundane existence.


    Then I looked up and saw her, Agnes, my wife, sitting on the other side of the table. One hand folded atop the other while she stared at me. Those deep dark eyes of hers unblinking, unyielding in their scrutiny.


    ¡°Um...First of all...This was delicious. Second of all I¡¯m afraid I have to apologize.¡±


    ¡°Apologize? About what?¡±said the woman. Seeming slightly startled, when I spoke, as if she hadn¡¯t expected me to speak. As if she¡¯d forgotten that I was there, despite of how intensely she was staring.


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that I¡¯m not¡­.I¡¯m not your husband. My name is¡­*****....and I don¡¯t really know why I¡¯m here instead of him, I¡¯d didn¡¯t mean for this to happen, but that¡¯s what happened, but I didn¡¯t want to mislead you. Or make to  this whole thing worse than it already is. Anyway, I¡¯m sorry things turned out this way and I¡¯m sorry for your loss.¡±


    She froze, her look unreadable, her body language tense and tight and small. And then she sighed. A small sad smile spreading across her face.


    ¡°That¡¯s...Isn¡¯t it fine, then?¡± she said.


    (.......!?!)


    For a while neither of us said anything, and there was a lull, a silence so dead and dense that it was almost deafening. In the interests of full disclosure, let me say I¡¯ve never understood people. Whether it was their feelings, their decisions and their belief, and culture, and all the other little things they say don¡¯t matter until they inexplicably decide they do.


    I¡¯ve never gotten people. I didn¡¯t get people even when I was still able to consider myself a person. Which is probably why my relationship with my parents and relatives was as distant as it was and why, when I effectively died, by being removed from my own reality, I died friendless and with no significant others of either sex. And why I can be sure that the only ones who actually mourned my disappearance were my cactus and my digital ant farm.


    ¡°Uh...run that by me again?¡± said I.


    She took a deep breath, he expression severe but almost peaceful.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.¡°From what you¡¯re telling me, the resurrection serum, didn¡¯t work as planned, but I kind of knew that that was always a risk. The whole process of bringing someone who¡¯s very well and truly dead back to life is a tricky thing. And to that end actually, it¡¯s me who should apologize.¡± she said.


    ¡°I¡­¡±


    ¡°Please let me finish.¡± said Agnes.


    ¡°Er..sure..¡± said I.


    ¡°To bring someone from the night back into the day, you have to have someone or something from the night push them through. Unfortunately human souls are fragile. Thus there was always a forty to thirty percent that you¡¯d squish, my poor dead hubby and end up falling through instead. If it so happens that you were in one of the better afterlives, dreaming sweeter dreams, then you have my utmost apologies. And even if that wasn¡¯t the case, its still a fact that I¡¯ve inconvenienced you by inexplicably bringing you here. So once again¡­.¡±


    ¡°Uh...er¡­ no...it¡¯s-, it¡¯s fine really. But what about your husband?¡± I said.


    She smiled again and then she shrugged.


    ¡°Considering that you have all his memories, and experiences. Considering that you¡¯re sitting in his skin. Considering that everything is the same save for the core bits that are ¡®you¡¯, Mister¡­..Mister....I¡¯m sorry I couldn¡¯t quite catch your name. Anyway the point is, save for the parts of you that are still you, you¡¯re pretty much him. Which is all that I need.¡±


    ¡°But I¡¯m not him.¡± I said. Shaking my head.


    ¡°Yeah, but you probably know enough that you can imagine my feelings for him and the kind of relationship we had. I don¡¯t need him. I just need him to be alive.¡±


    I did understand, and I winced as the details entered my recollection. Did I mention that Cornelius Dacre Douglas was a bit of a bastard? Cause he was. I could remember him...me, coming home, drunk out our minds. Swearing, shouting, singing. Throwing the bottles I was still holding when I was asked to maybe keep things down to keep our kid from waking up.


    I could remember coming home stinking of smoke and smelling of other women¡¯s perfume. Indolently scowling, because we thought it¡¯d bother Agnes we¡¯d get a good row out of it, but she didn¡¯t seem to care.


    I could remember angrily demanding sex like a child, using a mixture of threats and begging, and the emptiness I felt when I got what I wanted. I could remember one day insinuating that I¡¯d do something to the kid and could recall a very long sleepless night where we lay in our bed.


    Keeping our eyes closed and feigning sleep, even though we could feel our wife sitting at our side. Staring. Staring at us in away that she¡¯d never stared at us before. Filling our usually stupidly fearless self with a wariness and unease that till then we¡¯d thought, only our mother could make us feel.


    I could remember how we met, how she¡¯d seemed so pretty walking hand in hand with some guys who¡¯s face I never bothered to actually look at. A guy who¡¯d turn out to have just been her brother, but who I¡¯d already quietly arranged to have roughed up. Asking a few of my more criminal friends to deal with him.


    A decision that would ultimately result in his death when the town we were in, was overrun by monsters. I knew that the kid that we¡¯d had together might not be mine.


    I¡¯d never bothered looking into it, because I, Cornelius thought of the girl as the one thing he¡¯d ever done right. With her mother being fiercely protective enough to ensure that a screw-up like me...him, didn¡¯t ruin her.  Thus even though she didn¡¯t look a thing like me. I told myself it was just because because she looked like the spitting image of her mother. Taking solace in the fact that she shared the same yellow eyes and that she seemed to at least be a little tan, if not quite as dark as I was.


    I¡¯d never ask because I was aware that whatever I had, I had stolen. Taking advantage of Agnes during her moment of grief, plying her with brandy and a sympathetic ear, that only lasted till the brandy had done the job. Later I took advantage of the pregnancy that followed, to pressure her into marrying me.The loss of Agnes¡¯ family and friends and the lack of any kind of financial support of foundation, being just enough to push a young woman with a baby on the way into the waiting arms of scoundrel like me.


    I felt a very convoluted mixture of yearning, rage and despair in my chest and nausea in my stomach and I didn¡¯t like feeling any of it.


    ¡°I¡­.Sorry.¡± said I. Sheepishly apologizing, because it was the only thing I could think to do.


    ¡°No...It¡¯s not like it was actually you, but  I...let¡¯s just say that I think that at least with that insight you could understand why I¡¯m not exactly mourning. It wasn¡¯t exactly a happy marriage and Cornelius and I had or differences. Some of them, of extremely irreconcilable sort...Nonetheless that has nothing to do with you.¡± said Agnes.


    ¡°But then¡­?¡± said I.


    (Why the hell was I here then, if she¡¯d hated her husband? Why had she gone to the trouble of trying to bring him back?)


    The thoughts came, and those thought became words. She smiled again, even laughing, the sound dry and somewhat musical. In a way that old Cornelius could never get enough of.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s quite simple. You see. My dear departed husband Cornelius is a class-C citizen with rights of residence in this Kingdom. I on the other hand, am just a Class-D citizen. And citizenship classification don¡¯t automatically transfer or change with marriage. At least not with the in our sort of marriage. As such without that man, whose face your wearing, I can¡¯t live here, I can¡¯t work here, I can¡¯t provide for our daughter. Should you actually die without putting the measure in your will, in the best case the state would take her, and in the worst case we¡¯d be evicted and either sent to the slums or deported to the outside.¡±


    (Yikes.)


    I blanched, realizing for the first time that not only was this was not the same life I¡¯d left behind, this wasn¡¯t even the same world. If it was. I could only imagine that things had changed drastically from what I remembered them being. For one, mine had been a world of republics not kingdoms.


    There was a pain in my chest, but I wasn¡¯t really worried about it, I knew what it was, it was just ¡®his¡¯ heart breaking. Shattering like glass, as every doubt, fear and supposition he¡¯d had about the true nature of his relationship with his wife was confirmed.


    ¡°I...er...okay then. So is there anything else, I should do?¡±


    ¡°Well, no. Not really. So long as you don¡¯t divorce me, I¡¯m pretty golden.¡± said Agnes.


    I nodded, feeling like my head was made of wood.


    ¡°Okay then...Er...I¡¯m kind of tired and I don¡¯t really know this place so do you mind if¡­¡± I said. Feeling awkward as I asked if I crash, feeling drained by the  longest conversation I¡¯d had in decades.


    ¡°No it¡¯s fine. The house is in your, his...name after all. Consider it your home, since it pretty much is.¡±


    ¡°Oh..uh...cool.¡±

 3: What a World

    I stood in the guest room of my...his...Agnes¡¯ house, staring at my reflection in a full length mirror. Okay, maybe I kind of just stared at my crotch for the most part. In my head, the act was entirely reasonable, and was a good sign of me, hopefully regaining some semblance of my humanity.


    I mean,I¡¯m pretty sure, this would be something that most normal humans would do after suddenly finding that their physical hardware ( i.e. their bodies), had been replaced.


    Seriously, man or woman, adult or child, whether it¡¯s checking that everything''s normal down there, or checking to see what¡¯s changed, either way at some point you¡¯d check.


    The good news was that things were pretty much the same down there as I remembered them being. Actually this was some ¡®extremely¡¯ good news since the two moons in the sky had convinced me, I was no longer on the planet of my birth, and therefore had no reason to believe their ¡®human¡¯ anatomy would be exactly the same as what I remembered from back home.


    Anyway, asides from my perfectly normal looking ¡®equipment¡¯,  there was a body that stood at roughly five feet, eleven inches in height. Covered in light brown skin. All of it, toned like something out of a comic book.


    I have to say, considering that I could have just as easily been pulled into the body of an invalid or a dog, I might have gotten extremely lucky here. Cornelius Douglas might have been a right bastard, but he¡¯d also been vain as hell.


    Using all manner hair gels, skin softener and muscle toning serums. As well as some bone supplements he¡¯d taken as a child because the other kids kept making fun of him for being short.


    The guy spent his days on self-care. Constantly working out when he wasn¡¯t making an ass of himself or partying with his friends. As far as I could see it, Cornelius, was ¡®that-guy¡¯, the guy in the gym, who plainly didn¡¯t need to be there, except in the interests of making everyone else feel bad about themselves.


    The feeling was kind of like suddenly, unexpectedly, inheriting your sleazy uncles muscle-car, you could tell how much love and attentional was put into it, because of all the jargon and flash that attached to the damn thing, but you knew that things were probably going to go down hill from the moment ¡®you¡¯ put the keys in the ignition.


    The very last time, I went to a gym was the very last day of my high school gym class. I never went back, I never intend to go back and no one mortal or immortal can say anything to make me change my mind on that. While I wasn¡¯t exactly obese in my original body, I liked snacking and I was highly restive(read:Lazy). So it was probably a fair bet to say that this was the best I was going to look¡­.Ever. The only marring was the network of scars, and stitching that ran across every major section of my body.


    ******


    Did I mention that I got married yesterday? Cause I did. Basically it was a day after, I¡¯d been brought back, brought through, whatever one would call what happened. I was sitting in my room, the guest room, trying not to have a panic attack, because I¡¯d just woken up from a nap to find that all this was ¡®not¡¯  some cruel and wonderful dream.


    I really was home, or at least in a reality like my home. I really had been rescued from the terrible nightmare realm that I¡¯d been languishing in. I really could keep living again. I didn¡¯t do anything to deserve it but somehow salvation and a second chance at life landed in my lap.


    I saw her, Agnes, my...his...wife going out and panicked like a small insecure child, I asked, where she was going to. She said church, so I asked if I could come along. I hadn¡¯t suddenly found religion or anything, I just hadn¡¯t wanted to be alone. In any case the faith and the doctrine wasn¡¯t quite what I learned back home.


    For one this church was called the church of the Splintered Heaven. With the four aspects of the splintered Heaven being named as the Severed Sun, the Shattered Moons, the Scattered Clouds,  the Hollowed Stars and the Saint who came down from the heavens that exist beyond the heavens and put everything back together again.


    The sermon that they gave was quite educational, conveniently made up a fair portion of the worlds history. A thing I knew because I,...Cornelius...had learned the same in school, during the few times he could be bothered to crack open a book.


    ******


    First off, no one knew what broke the sky. The broken sky event definitely happened, but it was sort of like the question of what killed the dinosaurs. Something definitely killed them, we knew that, on account of them all being dead, but know one who might have been around was saying anything.


    Second, apparently everyone was undead, or so the doctrine went. Depending on who you asked. A priest would tell you that the world was filled with ¡®redeemed¡¯ undead. People whose souls were saved and returned to their bodies by the Saint of Broken Sky¡¯s holy bell. The first of the holy bells, the one that all warding bells were based off of.


    A scientist¡¯s opinion surprisingly wouldn¡¯t differ all that much, except the word ¡®redeemed¡¯ would replaced with ¡®revenant¡¯ or sane undead. There was magic in this world and it was openly used. Thus things that others would call dreadful superstition were more or less just treated as fact, because they more or less ¡®were¡¯ facts.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.In any case. everyone, on the planet, Novem, was undead. This was a world where death had died. As to how that happened, well first, the sky broke, then something no one remembers happens,(because it was stricken from all the records), then there was a plague.


    A zombie plague, but not just any zombie plague. No, this was more like the effects of the super virus created by a certain pharmaceuticals and inclement weather accessories companies.


    Everyone got infected, but some people got infected by variants or became variants. And then the world pretty much ended. Hard. If there were any humans going through it, they all got the downer ending, without exception. Either dying from the elements, taking their own lives, or getting eaten. Mostly the latter.


    Then a few years after the last ¡®old¡¯ human was eaten, the first ¡®new¡¯ humans, the first ¡®revenants¡¯, were born. Created either as a mutation of the virus, or a final stage of the plague of undeath that struck the world. That was all a few generations ago though. After the first few generations of revenants stopped killing themselves because they couldn¡¯t handle the memories and recollections of what they¡¯d done, eating all their friends and families, society rebuilt itself.


    By now, a long enough amount of time had passed, that the world was much different from what was remembered. Long enough for any nations and countries that were there before to be long forgotten. Long enough that a lot of old tech needed to be reinvented, though fortunately they had digital copies and ragnarok-proofed computers to help speed things up.


    Novem was a world where life and death were fluid things. If you shot a man in the head and left him out on the countryside there was a very real chance that he¡¯d  maybe, be up and around to complain about it on the morrow. He¡¯d die, but then he¡¯d likely get up again.


    In fact it was kind of a problem. Which was why citizen class was such a big thing. Aside from one¡¯s rights of residency and work, it also governed one¡¯s right to life. Whether it was how much ¡®life¡¯  magic you got access to when you got hurt, or how long you could stay within the kingdoms before being exiled as potential ¡®severed¡¯.  The fact that death as man had known it, was effectively gone, things changed.


    Regenerative potions and resurrection serums, making the line between life and death even thinner. Thus my scars, the only thing that could keep a dead man ¡®dead¡¯ was dismemberment or thorough burning, or old age.


    When my...Cornelius¡¯s... buddy, killed him, he also dismembered his corpse. Chopping him up and leaving him in a heap in an alley. Leaving him for the dogs to eat. Interestingly enough that line between death, was actually even thinner than most thought.


    Technically a dismembered or burnt corpse, ¡®could¡¯ come alive again, it just generally wouldn¡¯t come back sane. Actually even normal death could turn one into a monster, which was why the regenerative potions and resurrection serum was invented.


    As a way to raise the chance for a sane recovery. The severed, the mad undead that made up the majority of the monsters that lay beyond the cities, wandering the ¡®outside¡¯. The grand wastes that the kingdoms couldn¡¯t retake.


    My...his.. Wife, couldn¡¯t let me stay dead, and she couldn¡¯t let me come back as severed, so she found me...him in the alley likely through asking/threatening/begging his friend. She sewed the pieces together with magic thread and tried to bring him back. Failing and bringing me to this world instead.


    *****


    And that is why I proposed. Popping the question after the father¡¯s long winded sermon was finished and most of the parishioners had already gone home. I went to the old priest and explain who I (Cornelus), was and that we were already married.


    Using charm and social I didn¡¯t know I¡¯d had, I managed talk the man into marrying us. Using some lines about how, I was an intrepid soul who didn¡¯t want to leave his missus in the lurch, if he died. Which was fairly true.


    In any case, it took all of thirty minutes and the state confirmed the marriage in five of those minutes. Emailing the priest a certificate that he printed out and gave to us.


    For some reason Agnes was real quiet the whole cab ride home, staring at the piece of paper that declared our marriage upgraded. Taken to the next tier, so that in return for our paying higher taxes, her citizen class and the classifications for our kid would be ensured.


    Then she cried, staining our new marriage license with silent tears. Afterwards she locked herself in her room...and I haven¡¯t seen her since. I¡¯m not sure if she¡¯s upset or not, or whether I should say anything. I mean we ¡®are¡¯ technically strangers. Still I think that I made the right call. This way, she doesn¡¯t need me any more.


    This way, whatever happens I can at least say that I at least tried to pay back what I owed her. This way I¡¯ve given her the one thing, that chicken-shit, bastard, Cornelius would never give her and can cleanly differentiate between the old him and the new me.

 4: Time Skip

    I woke up this morning and forgot where I was again...It¡¯s nothing big, it used to happen every other day, and now it happens every other, other day. I figure it¡¯ll eventually stop happening once I get more used to things. Just like with the night terrors.


    Once I remembered where I was, I realized that I needed to use the bathroom.


    I took one step outside my bedroom door  and what should I see, but a pale, dark haired, specter drifting through the gloom, heading towards my direction.


    It turned out to be Agnes. Hospitable and earnest as always, she asked if I needed anything.


    Fortunately for my dignity¡¯s sake I didn¡¯t piss myself. I don¡¯t know what to say, she made Cornelius¡¯ heart beat madly and she does the same for me I guess. Though in my case, it was  for a very different reason.


    *****


    So...it turns out that resurrections usually take a minimum of eighteen hours, but they can take up to a week, or longer. It makes sense that it¡¯d take time, after all, we¡¯re talking about reversing complete cellular death here.


    In my case it took longer, maybe it was because I was more ¡®dead¡¯, maybe it was because I¡¯d chopped up into so many pieces.


    *****


    So I went to work today, figuring that I¡¯d gotten a grasp of things, and was comfortable enough in  my new skin and my new memories to try living a new life.


    Or rather I figured it was about time for me to step back into normality, whether it was Cornelius¡¯ normality or my own didn¡¯t really matter to me. I¡¯d been ¡®elsewhere¡¯ so long that I¡¯d take any kind of normal.


    Anyway I went to work and the woman at the counter was weird, or maybe I was the weird one, I¡¯m never able to tell with these things. I went to my office and did some work and basically did work things.


    You know, six to seven hours of actual work, intercut with numerous micro-breaks that you illicitly take because of eyestrain, wrist strain, boredom. As well the fact that simply just working would result in  finishing early, which would either lead to more work, or looking like a loafer.


    Considering that this was pretty much the same stuff I used to do in my old life, before things got¡­


    ¡®you know¡¯...I figured I had a handle on things. I did some data entry, sent some emails to the guys directly above and below me and pretty much did whatever was on the todo list for the day.


    Everything was fine until the guy walked in. Lean, red hair, blue eyes, clean shaven, but with his shirt untucked. His clothes slightly loose and rakish in a style that might have seemed ¡®cool¡¯ or dandyish  if he were so old and strung out looking.


    ¡°You?!¡­.What the fuck are ¡®you¡¯ doing here?¡± he said.


    His eyes wide, a deep scowl on his face.


    I¡¯m ashamed to say it took me a while to think about that and even after I¡¯d had a good think the best I was able to do was to turn to my computer and point.


    ¡°....Working?¡±


    ¡°W-working? It¡¯s been a fucking year, Corny.¡± he said. Speaking more to himself than to me.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The guy¡¯s brow furrowed, he glared at me. My...Cornelius¡¯ murderous buddy Daquain,(Ducky to his friends), glared at me.


    Daquain, seemed like he was going to say something, like he was going to shout or laugh, or pull out the side arm I knew he always wore and kill me for a second time.


    Even though I was kind of expecting to be attacked He didn¡¯t. Instead he just pulled a hand over his face and simply pointed at me and at the door.


    ¡°Okay it¡¯s been a whole fuckin¡¯ year and she was only my bitch half-sister anyway, so I¡¯m not ¡®that¡¯ mad anymore, but ¡®you¡¯ need to get the fuck out of here. I¡¯m not going saying anything else. I¡¯m not going to call security. You get the fuck out of here and we¡¯re done. Don¡¯t show your face around here, don¡¯t show your face around our usual hangouts or at the club. If You do, then the next time I kill you, it¡¯s gonna stick. At the very least I won¡¯t be so nice, as to leave your meat and two potatoes  in the same heap as the rest of your pieces.¡±


    *****


    So Timeskip fifteen minutes and here I am, outside waiting at a bus stop, with a box full of crap and the usual stolen office materials.


    Naturally I didn¡¯t stay to argue or fight, nor did I do anything silly like threatening to go to the police. Though, ¡®that¡¯ was mainly because I knew that the police in this world were more about order, than they were about law and Corny here, was a relative nobody.


    I left the building without argument, and with only a little sulleness and grump for the sake of saving face and not inviting extra trouble by looking weak.


    If it seems I was being to compliant about the whole thing, then let¡¯s suffice it to say that I was struck by how lenient Ducky was by A)letting me keep my reproductive organs, B)not setting my corpse on fire and C)not going after my family, on top of killing me.


    He could have or he could have asked his uncle who was a senior member in the gang to do it. He didn¡¯t and for that I was grateful. Consider first that these bloodthirsty gangsters where talking about and consider the nature of my...Cornelius¡¯ transgression.


    If it seems weaksauce for me to be grateful, please bear in mind that if ¡®I¡¯ was Ducky¡¯s place and saw that the death didn¡¯t stick, I¡¯d have already killed me again, burnt the corpse and salted the earth afterwards. That was just how bad Cornelius¡¯s conduct had been.


    Though none of his friends were Saints, and all of them were guilty of similar or worse. That didn¡¯t mean the act Cornelius nearly perpetrated was any less despicable. Being one scoundrel amongst many didn¡¯t make you a better person.


    It just meant that you were bad company, ¡®in¡¯ bad company, garbage in a garbage heap¡­.but I digress. Having suddenly found myself forced to resign, and abandon my position at the office, I had two things to think about.


    One I¡¯d apparently lost a year which meant Mom and Dad...I mean Cornelius¡¯ Mom and Dad, would be freaking out. Two, I was currently unemployed. Jobless in a post-apocalyptic economy.


    ¡°...Shit.¡±

 5: Duty and Professionalism

    ¡°Yeah, ma¡­¡± said I. Pacing in my room my cellphone clutched to my ear.


    Feeling uncomfortable because the people I was talking to, both were and weren¡¯t total strangers to me. Feeling achingly, familiar, because I had all of Cornelius¡¯ memories of them.


    I could remember every skinned knee, every scolding, every bit of encouragement, every lullaby, lecture and hug. Recalling it as if it had happened to me.


    ¡°I¡¯m really sorry ma.¡±


    ¡°No...I wasn¡¯t ignoring you, ma.¡±


    ¡°No seriously. Like I said, I was hurt...uh...dead.¡± I said. Unable to think of a good lie and figuring that I might as well tell the truth.


    ¡°No, calm down, it¡¯s okay, now. I¡¯m talking to you, ain¡¯t I?¡±


    ¡° I was uh...mugged?...Yeah mugged. Some junkie, who needed money for his next fix.¡±


    ¡°Yes I¡¯m okay...Yes she ¡®is¡¯ taking good care of me, ma. I don¡¯t know why you too never got along.¡±


    Actually I did know. My wife and my mother¡¯s antipathy lay in the fact that my mother believed that Agnes had trapped me in a sham marriage.


    An unfair surmise, yes, but I suppose no mother wants to think of their little boy as a brute.


    ¡°No that¡¯s fine. I¡¯ve mooched off  of you two enough.¡±


    I really did, the truth was a fair portion of my ¡®income¡¯ came from their retirement fund. I...Corny made enough working to support himself, but good drugs and clean call girls were ¡®so¡¯ expensive.


    ¡°Yes, I¡¯m serious.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not that funny.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. I..uh ..I love you too.¡±


    I was disturbed to find I actually meant it. ¡®Mom¡¯ was a mostly pleasant woman, who was similar to Agnes in that were both nice and both very religious. ¡®Dad¡¯, was distant, but indulgent.


    And both parents lived in a mainly suburban, little city south of here, Where things were a little warmer and little safer. A small town kind of place that Corny had hated, because it was too quiet and too small for a big, loud man like him.


    Lately I found myself finding it hard to tell where Corny ended and ¡®I¡¯ began. The differences fading as I found his memories slowly becoming more real, while mine grew more vague.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    With both reaching the same blah middle ground that all old memories eventually lived in. At first I wondered if I should feel more trepidation over the issue, but that went away as the distance between Corny and I grew even smaller.


    Eventually I figure, I¡¯ll stop caring, it¡¯ll likely be around the same time that its too late to do anything.


    *****


    Rather than One World, Novem was made up of two. The first was the Inside, a honeycombed, complex of human settlements (cities, towns, etc..), that sat in a network of isolated subspaces and were all connected by interdimensional gates.


    The second was the outside, the real world, the main world. A world filled with death and magic and the undead. The two world shared an indelible connection, due to the existence of the source towers and the Dread Lords.


    The Source Towers were the anchors that allowed each individual subspace to exist and kept their dimensional walls from falling apart. The Dread Lords were...a little harder to define.


    In theory they were just especially powerful, especially intelligent severed. Apex super predators of the outside. Except sometimes that wasn¡¯t true. Sometimes they were other things.


    Sometimes they were wasteland monster, sometimes they were things that weren¡¯t around before the sky broke. Things that were ¡®other¡¯, alien and strange and fae.


    *****


    As for why any of that mattered...that was simple. I was out of a job and this was still a post-apocalyptic economy. My kingdom, Alvis, had just been through a war, and thing were tough everywhere.


    And I...Corny...had a family to take care of. Or at the very least I couldn¡¯t just lay about at home, not contributing while my wife worked to make ends meet.


    Fortunately there was one job that was always available a job that anyone could take part in and could even bring real wealth if you played your cards right.


    *****


    Hunters were a mainstay of the modern world and part of the military-industrial of any Kingdom worth its salt. They kept the severed population down and kept the Dread Lords influence from washing over the source towers that kept us all safe.


    While many who wandered the outside met their deaths their, this ¡®was¡¯ a world of undead. Even if their wasn¡¯t a fair chance that an bad end wouldn¡¯t be ¡®the¡¯ end, most people would still join the profession.


    Why? Because it pays. Paying fairly lucratively, in fact.(So long as one was suited for the job and survived long enough.) The Kingdoms and the Church had put a  bounty on the head of every monster and Dread Lord that roamed the Outside.


    ¡°Mhm¡­.Guess, I should get a hunter¡¯s license then.¡±

 6: My New Job

    Old Corny might have been an extreme extrovert, but I¡¯m not the kind that¡¯s good with strangers. A bunch of ¡®overly friendly¡¯ out-of-towners came sprinting in my direction.


    They looked positively happy to see me, their emaciated faces, pulled taut into a rictus smile.  Their tattered clothes because they were moving so fast.


    The chubby bloke in the middle lost his shirt revealing a torn torso, with some of the insides spilling out, looking a little bit like dried sausage links. Their hands were all outstretched, like they all want  to either give me the biggest hug or the best high five.


    Unfortunately touching and physical contact isn¡¯t much my thing, so I side-stepped them.


    These guys were quite the persistent lot though. All the denizens of the Outside  or Outer-world were. The skinny woman in the torn leather armor lurched after me. Her fat friend with his innards leaking, tried to tackle me. The third one with no arms was a bit slow on the pick-up but that was fine.


    I¡¯d found that in this new life avoidance wasn¡¯t always the best policy, sometimes you just have to deal with things head on. Thus I swung my cricket bat and knocked off the heads of the friendly miss and the armless one.


    As for the fat one, him I just pushed with my free hand. His rotund form suddenly accelerating at my touch. Hurtling through brick and plaster till it finally found itself airborne. Flying from a newly made hole that had been blown through the side of the building by his girth.


    My new friends were gone, but the noise I¡¯d made, running around with those out-of-towners and getting rid of that last guy, brought others, who were just as eager to meet me.


    *****


    So, I¡¯m a hunter now. It was surprisingly easy. Almost scarily so. All it took was me going up to one of the city¡¯s Hunter Adminstration Offices, saying I wanted to be a hunter, and then filling out some paperwork.


    I mean, there wasn¡¯t even a test. I know, I know, I might have made a big deal about how much harder it was for people to be killed or die. I think I might have over-exaggerated there.


    People could definitely die permanently, they died every day in fact, just like in the world I came from. It was just that it took slightly more, and that there was a fair chance that they, or something that at least looked like them, would come back.


    And even then there was a limit, to how much they could rely on that before they could be  expected to simply fall to the earth and become dust and nothingness, their spirits becoming part of the mists that covered everything in the Outside.


    Honestly the most apt description would be to imagine this as the kind of world where everyone had lovely green bars that tracked how much damage they could take before they died. And a little icon with their faces on it, that tracked how many times they could die, before it was game over.


    It wasn¡¯t really like that. At least ¡®I¡¯ hadn¡¯t noticed anything that convenient hanging around the corners of ¡®my¡¯ eyes, but that was more or less how the world worked.


    *****


    After having met and parted with, a crowd of ten to twenty, severed ¡®friends¡¯. I made my way to the hole that the fat one had fallen through. I stepped out into the empty air and let gravity pull me down to the street.


    Stolen story; please report.


    The sidewalk shook a little, and the concrete beneath my feet crumbled in a way that might have gotten me in trouble if I was inside one of the  Inner-territories but all in all, it was a pretty good landing. At least an eight out of ten. Not outstanding by any means but still very solid.


    I started walking as soon as my legs stopped tingling from the long fall. Heading deeper into the misty wastes of the Outside.


    *****


    Did I already mention that I only just recently joined the hunters? I think I did. It turns out that being a newbie in the hunters was like being a newbie in any other organization.


    Basically you kind of had to start from the bottom and make your way up the ranks. Going from G to A with the top rank being S(for star).


    *****


    I found myself in a clearing where there were either no buildings nearby or they¡¯d all been knocked down like a child¡¯s abandoned toys. A man stepped out from one of those overturned buildings.


    He was large, about ten feet or so in height and built like an SUV. Bulky, and meant to take punishment.


    He was dressed in a mixture of the typical out-of-towner rags and bits off metal scrap and he was armed with a bent stop sign, that he must have wrenched out from the ground somewhere. With a fair amount of concrete still attached to the end of it.


    I think I might be more good looking then I previously thought, because he saw me and his eyes began to glow and drool began flow from his mouth, as sticky spittle.


    I was appreciative of the attentions and very flatter, but as I already had a wife at home, I was forced to rebuff his advances.


    Lightly pushing him away with my palm, though he might have taken it a bit badly and went flying back in his dwelling. Dramatically crashing through the outer walls of what seemed to have been some kind of military fort or bank.


    Dust and rubble issuing from the hole that he¡¯d made in his home with his high speed entrance.


    *****


    As always, these awkward little tete-a-tete were made all the more awkward because hunters were required to take three things from their quarry.


    The first was a photo, taken with one¡¯s cellphone. The second was the magic core. The essence stone. All the creatures of the outside had them. Actually all creatures on the inside had them too.


    The only thing was that  essence cores of human revenants didn¡¯t calcify and magic stones until they became severed undead.


    As for the third thing, that was quite simple, the third that one needed to take was anything else. Anything else that might be of use, or worth selling that was one the creature or in its dwelling.


    Be it  skins, bones or fur, or the loot and goods of any unfortunates that happened to be present. Any that was worth money was to be collected. It wasn¡¯t so much a rule but it was expected.


    Especially since at least half of your average hunter¡¯s income was based on the worth of whatever they¡¯d managed to find while travelling the Outer-wastes.


    There were also the dog tags of other,¡¯less fortunate¡¯ hunters, which was expected to pick up as courtesy to the families of the deceased. The Guild paid for them of course but it was just a little change, given as incentive for those might not do it otherwise.


    Not that I¡¯m complaining, after all I only took this job because I have a family to support.

 7: POV

    Week Two of my time as a hunter came around and I found myself within a sewer. Like a big sewer, like one of those sewers that seems more like an underground subway system with water running through it.


    There were rats, big rats. Huge Rats. These things were the size of dogs and I¡¯m not talking about small dogs either. These rodents were the size of saint bernards and they were right ornery bastards.


    I ended up wandering into a whole nest of them. Which meant I ended up running from a whole bunch of them.


    At least until I got chased into a dead end. Then I had to fight them, using my trusty cricket bat, because assault rifles and magic swords were expensive and I¡¯d wanted to avoid wasting money before I knew if this hunter thing was going to work out.


    *****


    I leapt and tumbled over and around the massive furry bodies. Deftly avoiding their sharp teeth and thick scaly tails. Using any openings I spotted to cave some skulls in and thin their numbers.


    I¡¯d almost gotten it down to something manageable when the ratking, the head of the nest, came. If the others were as big as dogs, this one was as big as a bear. He, well she, since all ratkings are actually female, came screeching at me. Claws out.


    She tried to tackle me and I just barely managed to dance out of the way. She whipped about her tail cracking the bricks that lined the sewer as she swung it about.


    I somehow managed to get on top of her, which was just the right position for me to deliver a blow that splattered her thoughts and concerns for her kin and had it oozing out of the orifices of her head.


    With that fight done with it was time to do what hunters do. First I took pictures of my quarry, and collected their essence stones, then I headed back to the nest,(which took a while), and ransacked the nest in search of loot.


    Managing to find some bits of useful looking scrap and an axe. Which was a particularly fortuitous find since my cricket bat just broke during that last fight.


    *****


    Ah, if it seems I might be a tad used to this, or good at it, that''s not really the case. This was just a bit of serendipitous and an issue of differing standards of difficulty.


    Whether its strength or coordination, or knowing what to do when it seems that someone''s trying to eat you, its not that I¡¯m actually any good when it comes to those things.


    Rather its just that I¡¯ve come from a place that¡¯s much, much worse.


    *****


    I left the sewers and took my first deep breath in a long time. It wasn¡¯t that great, the air outside was still choked with icy mist, dust, and a certain something that burned with each inhalation.


    The outer wastes were anarchic and dangerous. It was place filled with magic mutated beasts, ravenous undead and dangerous and mysterious entities. The skylines were a motley mixture of medieval castles and modern twenty-second century towers.


    Like some mad time traveller had taken the present and the past for this world and then smashed them together. Now that I think of it, even the inner-territories, the inside, was a bit like this.


    The society was distinctly modern  in feeling, with its internet and cellphones and television and running water. Then you¡¯d blink and find that it all lay on the bones a very brutal, feudalistic way of doing things. A primaeval civilization.


    Stolen story; please report.


    A civilization that still had guilds and kings and slaves or rather indentured contractors, who were pretty much slaves. A civilization that still believed in multiple-partner marriages. Ending feuds by massacring families and bloody sacrifice.


    There were cars and tech for sure, but most traffic was horse drawn.There were guns, yes,  but the sheer durability of your average undead made it more cost effective to use swords, arrows, or magic.


    Everything was just chaotic and run down enough for one to imagine that the whole world while more or less orderly was at best, at the level of a third world country at war in terms of security.


    Gangs and factions ruled the streets. The Mayors ruled the gangs and factions. The lords ruled the Mayors and the Kings ruled the lords. Going on in an endless chain of war and death, with the threat of the Dread Lords being the only thing that kept (barely kept) humanity from turning on itself like  snake trying to eat its own tails.


    *****


    In short this world wasn¡¯t the best of worlds and compared to my original world it was fairly hellish. On the other hand compared to the world I was just drawn I¡¯d call it paradise. Mortal strife is a pale shadow of what I came from.


    If it weren¡¯t for the fact that I¡¯m at least eighty-five to ninety percent sure, that I was alive when I torn from my real world, I¡¯d say it was hell.


    The actual hell. I¡¯m not talking about a place with lava and red dudes with horns. Even that would have been better. I¡¯m talking about a conceptual hell, the one everyone fears, no matter ¡®what¡¯ they believe in.


    A place of darkness and fear.


    A place of endless suffering and horror.


    A place of endless pain and madness.


    A place of laughter and weeping.


    That place where unlucky protagonists go to when stories end with ¡®and they were never heard from again¡¯. A bad place, where only bad things happen. A place where death would be a mercy, except everything there lives forever.


    Even while its being slowly digested, broken down and defecated. A place where existence was just an endless slog of trying to move forwards and not get ground into nothing again.


    Thus I can¡¯t help laughing when I consider the ¡®terrors¡¯ of the highwayman and the ravenous beast. Even the horrors that I can sense roaming this land are nothing, compared to what I¡¯ve witnessed and been inflicted with.


    So please don¡¯t think I¡¯m taking this world lightly. I¡¯m really not. It¡¯s just that I know firsthand that things could be much, much, worse. I know just how bad things can be, I''ve experienced it, mind, body and soul, and every single aspect of my being has thus adapted accordingly.

 8: Recorded Progress Guaranteed

    As more time passes, I find that the line that I draw between Corny and ¡®Me¡¯, grows ever thin. I think it¡¯s something to do with me having his dead memories, in my living(?), head.


    Or maybe it has something to do with the way all the stuff that made him ¡®him¡¯, fills in parts of me that are missing.


    There¡¯s a quite a few ¡®those¡¯ by the way. As far as my human self goes, I¡¯m mostly holes at this point.


    Other stuff grew in, but those parts weren¡¯t very human, or very nice to deal with, so I won¡¯t even bother talking about. In fact let¡¯s put them out of mind. I¡¯ve already forgotten about most of it.


    What I haven¡¯t forgotten is that ¡®that place¡¯  was as costly as it was unpleasant, and there are things that were taken from me, things that I had leave behind and things that I had to trade away to assure my survival.


    Corny¡¯s mind, the essence and experiences of Cornelius Dacre Douglas,..it fills in all those holes quite nicely. Childhood memories, likes and dislikes, favorite colors, favorite foods.


    First loves, first enemies and all those not-so-inconsequential conversations you tend to have with people you¡¯ll never meet again. All those little things you pick up across your life slowly building them, shaping them with the ink of nostalgia, as they shape you.


    He had them and I didn¡¯t and thus I was made to change. I didn¡¯t expect everything he gave me, (thank goodness), but I was made to react to. Recoil or accept, to agree or disagree. Thus I became deformed, but in a good way, or at least I hope that it¡¯s a good way.


    Cornelius might not have been a very good person, but at least he ¡®was¡¯ a person, thanks to him I was a person too, again.


    *****


    ¡°¡­.*Sigh*....¡±


    Here¡¯s my only complaint, suddenly being human again takes getting used to. Suddenly being human again, with a whole  world¡¯s worth of bad memories takes longer.


    I stood in the shower, letting cold (it was originally hot) water, cascade over my shoulders. Letting it wash over me and hide my tears.


    I hate these episodes. I don¡¯t understand why they happen, I don¡¯t understand what sets them off, but I ¡®do¡¯ know where they come from. If this were my old world, my real world, the one I was born in, I¡¯d probably be thinking about going to see  a shrink.


    Unfortunately, ¡®here¡¯ in Novem, requiring psychiatric attention is enough to get you either picked up and put in a facility for the metaphysically unstable or put on a watch list. You know, just in case you¡¯re about to turn severed? Or turn into a monster?


    So yeah, I guess I¡¯ll have to ride this out. It¡¯s not so bad, I¡¯ve noticed that as time goes on, I¡¯ve been crying less. And the only times that it happens is when I¡¯m alone, so its manageable. All under control. (Or so I¡¯d like to believe.)


    *****


    I had my cry, the day went on, the world kept on spinning and eventually I found myself at one of the Hunter Guild''s Administration Offices.


    Waiting in line to hand in evidence of all the work I¡¯d done so I could hopefully get some money to put into my account. And maybe be able to kick in for this month¡¯s utilities, like a good hubby, roommate, whatever it was I was now.


    Hunter Admin Offices came in three different flavors, there were the raucous kind, the were more like bars, there were quiet kind, that were all gloomy and somber like morgues, then there was the one I was in. Filled with dull chatter, the clack of keys, and chirrups of machines. A proper office similar to what one would see at the bank or the dmv.


    The line was long, but I didn¡¯t mind, waiting was never a pet peeve for me, in general and I think having lived as long as I¡¯ve lived, its even less so.


    *****


    ¡°Welcome the Hunter Offices, how may I help you today?¡± said the lady at the counter.


    They were pretty much all ladies actually, unless they were men, but Hunter Office clerks were generally female, with women taking up eighty to seventy five percent of the roles.


    Thus for this office, as far as I could see there were only women present behind the counters. As to why that was, it had something do with them all being witches, innate casters. A very special portion of the population that was predominately female.


    Occasionally there were male casters, Warlocks but they were fairly uncommon, with most of ¡®those¡¯ going into the military.


    As to why I, or rather why old Corny, knew that, well, as you can imagine, the man was as much of horn dog growing up as he was as an adult and he¡¯d learned the statistics when he was a randy teen, thinking about ways to pick up women.


    By the way mages, sorcerers, and wizards, were what one called one innate casters. People who had to do a lot and a lot of rituals, and possibly make a faustian bargain or two, to get their magic to work.


    It¡¯s more glamorous then it sounds, the way magic has developed in this world, they were generally just a mixture of physicist and chemist with a dash of esotericism tossed. People who could do real hocus pocus were far and few between. But I digress¡­


    *****


    The lady at the counter repeated herself.


    ¡°May I help you, sir?¡± said clerk.


    ¡°Huh?...Uh...Yeah.¡±  said I.


    I¡¯d gotten stunned. You know that feeling where you suddenly realize that you might be attracted to person behind the counter, Like really attracted, but you lack the social skill to start up a conversation and the courage to even think asking them out. So you just have to focus on not seeming creepy, or making a fool out yourself.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°Sir?...¡± she said. Helpfully moving things along, because I¡¯d temporarily forgotten this land¡¯s language.


    ¡°Oh...y-..yeah. Er, I¡¯d like to file a report for a successful hunt and hand in some essence stones, please.¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir. Could I please see your identification and the proof your kills?¡± said the clerk.


    ¡°The essence stones also count as proof right?¡± I said. Asking just to be sure.


    ¡°Yes, sir. They do indeed.¡±


    ¡°Great.¡± I said.


    I handed over my actual id,  hunter membership card, and a thumb drive with all the quarry pics loaded on it. Then I handed over the essence stones and had a five minute wait.


    ¡°Would like that in cash, would prefer it to go to an account, sir?¡± said the clerk.


    I blanked on that for a few seconds before I realized that I¡¯d already put all the pertinent information in when I¡¯d been signing up to join. The Hunter Admins have you fill in W-2s like any other employer.


    ¡°Uh...Account?¡± I said.


    She gave me back my things, minus the essences, typed some things into the console that sat in front of her and then handed me a receipt.


    ¡°Will that be all, sir?¡± said the clerk.


    I almost said yes, but then I remember the big guy and the big rat. I¡¯d kept their stones separate because the things were comparatively huge. If the small rats and zombies had grape and marble sized essence stones, theirs had been grapefruit and orange sized.


    ¡°Uh..actually I¡¯d like to see about these too.¡±


    I handed them over and her expression jumped, the calm professionalism, replaced with subdued shock.


    ¡°An Ogre and a Ratking, sir?¡± she said.


    ¡°Uh...I guess.¡±


    I hadn¡¯t even considered that big guy might have been an ogre. In hindsight I guess the green skin and tusks should''ve tipped me off, but that ¡®ogre¡¯ was so tame compared to what I was used to that it hadn¡¯t even registered, that that was what I¡¯d run into.


    It was like someone mentioning a ship and then pointing to a row boat. Or talking about tigers and then pointing to a housecat.


    It messed with my sense of proportion and made me wonder if I really ¡®was¡¯ that lucky and had ended falling into an unexpectedly safe post-apocalyptic world.


    And are you handling this yourself, or would you like us to contact the rest of the party.


    ¡°Party.¡±


    ¡°Ogres and Ratkings are considered mid-level threats, sir. I assumed you slew them as part of a team effort.¡±


    That startled me, because the things didn¡¯t seem like they¡¯d be worth hunting as part of a team, still I gave a vague answer to the affirmative because I didn¡¯t think it¡¯d be the best to stand out. Tall trees and wind and all that.


    ¡°....I¡¯m good handling this myself?¡± I said. Answering cautiously.


    She nodded and the keys of her console clacked as she typed some things in.


    ¡°Now would you like to sell these stones to the guild or would you prefer us to refine them for you sir?¡±


    ¡°Refine?¡±


    She frowned at me, it was small thing, more curious than exasperated. I realized that this was something that a child would know. In fact I did know it, or at least Corny did.


    This world really was one of ¡®those¡¯ worlds.


    You know, the sort that shows up in novels and comics, where for no reason at all suddenly game elements worked in real life.


    Every kid who¡¯d ever watched tv or read comics in this world, grew up wanting to be a hero. One those rare individuals who¡¯d made it to a higher level. There was even a popular mouse-based crusader whose catchphrase was ¡°Moar Power!¡±


    *****


    In Novem leveling had to do with one¡¯s magical essence. It served the same function as exp in a game.


    Of course in this game besides your level, which could only checked at either medical, government, or professional facilities, (unless you have a witch on your payroll), there were no convenient stats to check.


    Essence was the thing that decided if one could use magic, so I guess you could it served the same purpose as mana or magic points. It was also the thing that decided how many times you could die and come back. The more magic or ¡®essence¡¯ you had the more risky it was you¡¯d come severed, but then again without essence you couldn¡¯t come back at all.


    Essence also served as the deciding ¡®stat¡¯ that affected, Health, Strength, and pretty much basic biological function. In short the more you had, the more you were better off and pretty much better at anything.


    So naturally when the nice lady asked if I wanted her to help me refine the essence in the stones. I of course said,


    ¡°Hell Yes!¡±

 9: Domestic Relations

    I was deep asleep having that dream again, the one where I was stuck wearing that damn headpiece again. Pointy on the outside, pointy on inside the thing was just torture to wear.


    I mean this in a very little sense, the helmet was pretty just a lopsided cube, with thick spikes driven through it. It¡¯s weight was always about one hundred pounds too heavy.


    On the first days that was enough weight to keep me pinned to the ground. Eventually I did get stronger, but it stayed heavy. It was never ¡®not¡¯ a burden. Just heavy enough that I could just barely stay upright.


    The thing had no eye-holes, so I wouldn¡¯t have been able to see even if there wasn¡¯t a huge spike running through my ocular cavities. The thick metal plates cut off all sound so I was also deaf, while I wore the thing.


    The thing was welded shut, cutting off all the air, so I was always in a state of permanent suffocation.


    If death was a thing in that place I would have and should have died, but it wasn¡¯t, so I didn¡¯t. I just had to tough it out and eventually when I ran out of blood, tears and vomit, I did. I might have lost my mind a little but I got through it.(Kind of¡­)


    In short it was a bad time all around, except not really. I¡¯d unfortunately live to find that having to wear that helmet was ¡®that¡¯ world¡¯s easy mode. It ¡°wasn¡¯t¡± the worst thing that could or would happen to me while I was in that place.


    When worse things came, rather than being a nightmare, it¡¯d become something I dreamt of. Something I desired. A simpler, less painful time that I would think of (almost) fondly when my memories of my real home started to fade.


    *****


    There was a knock on my bedroom door, which woke me almost instantly because while I wasn¡¯t a light sleeper by any means, I wasn¡¯t the sort whose lights stayed out when things started going bump in dark.


    Still sleepy, I  got up to see who it was and ended up being shocked awake. First I was startled then I felt embarrassed and then I  felt awkward.


    Fifty percent of that awkwardness was because I maybe might have yelped a little when I saw her. Her pale face hidden in shadow of her tangled, dark, lank, locks.


    If it weren¡¯t for the fact that it was still relatively bright outside, I  might have closed the door in face out of reflex.


    Instead I made myself say,


    ¡°....Hi. D-, do you need something?¡±


    To which responded,


    ¡°Oh, no. I was...uh..about to get dinner started I was just wondering if you wanted anything special.¡±


    ¡°Er...no thanks.... Thanks for asking though.¡± I said.  Finding myself playing that game again. You know, the one where I pretend to be normal person instead of a randy, lackwit?


    *****


    Heaven help me, I think I have a crush on my wife...I mean Cornelius¡¯ wife. As to how this happened, I have two going theories. The first is that it has something to do with an odd, funny, not funny moment, where I realized the clerk from the Hunter Offices.


    Its not that great a story really. I got off the bus, when I realized that the clerk was following, making her way up the walkway. I spent half a minute wondering what the hell was going on, when I suddenly realized that the pretty clerk, that I¡¯d been trying not to ogle, was Agnes.


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    Her long black hair was pulled up in a bun and her deathly pale complexion had been warmed up a bit, with a little blush and foundation. It wasn¡¯t magic, it just make up and grooming.


    Thinking about it now, I feel like a moron for not recognizing her, but somehow connecting the pretty miss at the counter and the gaunt shade that haunts Corny¡¯s house was likely always going to be a bit beyond me.


    Toss in the fact that¡¯d I¡¯d been trying to avoid her, for reasons I can¡¯t fully explain but had seemed sensible at the time and one could understand why I hadn¡¯t recognized my wife of nearly a decade''s time.


    The second cause for my crush was tied to the first and also had a lot to do with the fact that Agnes seemed to be an all-around nice person. Far nicer than a heel like Cornelius or a living oddity like me, deserved.


    Imagine it, imagine, being alone for a very long, or rather imagine being a stranger in strange land, or imagine stacking the two. Making it so you¡¯ve simultaneously not seen or talked to anyone in forever, and now suddenly find yourself a fish out of water.


    Now add to those imagines, a hypothetical person, whose of your sex of preference, and apparently has traits that could make heart beat just a little bit faster. I believe that all of that, added together amounts to fairly justified grounds for the formations of a crush.


    Whether intentionally or unintentionally I found my thoughts on her growing increasingly favorable in more ways than one.


    I don¡¯t intend to ever on these feelings of course. After all I¡¯m wearing her dead husband¡¯s face, I¡¯m wearing her ¡®abusive¡¯ dead husband¡¯s face. Thus any hopes of relationship or even a simple dinner date are out for reasons of logic and decency. But its fine, its just a crush.


    Hollywood makes romance a tad too magical, in real life crushes go away all the time. I just have to wait. Eventually I¡¯ll get over it.


    *****


    ¡°Er...Corny, do you not like mashed potatoes?¡± asked Agnes. Likely noticing that I hadn¡¯t touched my shepard¡¯s pie even once.


    ¡°Um...n-,no it¡¯s uh fine. Don¡¯t mind me.¡± I said.Shaking my head. It really was fine, the one bite I took was pretty good. I just was too preoccupied with other things to eat.


    She stared at me, her expression concerned.


    ¡°Are you sure?¡±


    ¡°Uh...yes?¡± I said.


    The concern didn¡¯t go away but eventually she did return her attention to her own meal. We sat listening to the sound of cutlery scraping across the plates. Each of us inside our own heads.


    *****


    Now that I had a fairly decent amount of money saved up, I kind of wanted to move out. Speaking frankly, living in a dead man¡¯s shadow was very stifling. It¡¯d be one thing if the dead man in mention was decent, but my guy was trash.


    Leaving scars and bad feelings in more than a few places. I kind of wanted to get away from that, maybe move to a new city and try to build a new identity for myself.


    I¡¯d discussed similar plans with Agnes and she¡¯d seemed somewhat supportive, if not a little worried. Then I ended up marrying her, which meant for the sake of not giving the state any reason to question the marriage, I¡¯d have to stick around a little longer.


    Which meant this awkwardness would last a little longer. It¡¯s fine, I can deal with it. I¡¯ve grown tolerant to a lot of things over the past few decades.

 10: Stress Testing

    I went a  little deeper into the Outer-wastes today. Deeper than last time, anyway. I stood in at the base of a canyon staring up a craggy cliff face that looked like some giant had take a city and then stuck it to their wall with glue.


    At the canyon¡¯s base there was an immense heap of bodies, trash, charred machinery and vehicles. On the actual  cliff was the city, its buildings jutting out, like cabinet shelves in the world¡¯s most desolate office.


    *****


    After bracing myself a little I jumped up, the sudden acceleration making me feel just a little light headed. The three hundred foot leap was over in about a second and I found myself hanging from the edge of one of the lowest buildings.


    I pulled myself up nearly fell through one of the windows on that side of the building.


    ¡°Oops...Careful, Corny.¡± I said. Warning myself as I walked along the side of the building. Careful of all the holes and broken windows. Sure I was undead but I didn¡¯t want to risk dying again if I could avoid it.


    *****


    I¡¯ve come to the conclusion that it''s easier to think of the Outer-Wastes and Inner-Territories as two different, mostly separate worlds. One was wild and dangerous and fantastic. The other was ordered, no less dangerous, but mundane.


    It was like one of those stories where one could go through a magic portal in between a fantasy land and the real world. And from what I was remembering from Corny¡¯s secondary school history classes, that was pretty much the intent.


    The source towers anchored the subspaces and the subspaces overlapped creating what was effectively a miniature parallel dimension. So long as the towers stood, the fantastic and the mundane need not live side by side.


    Sure there were a few areas and times where things bled through, but in general the people could enjoy relatively normal lives. Speaking as someone who¡¯d had to live through a world of endless horror and wonder, I both understand and applaud their decision.


    Occasionally wanderlust fine, and a little adventure understandable¡­if you¡¯re into that sort of thing. But day to day life should stable, safe and sane.


    *****


    I explored the sideways city with leaps and bounds. I¡¯d gotten comfortable enough I¡¯d started going inside of the buildings looking for anything of worth.


    While the Hunter Office¡¯s would only buy essence stones and materials collected from the bodies of monsters.


    Other loot could be sold at numerous salvage establishments and pawnshops throughout the city. And it¡¯d be a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity since I¡¯d bought then fiddled with a storage item, to allow me not worry about how much I was carrying.(More game-like convenience.)


    There was shriek that was quickly cut off when I sent a piece of gravel flying in the direction that the sound came from. The little piece of stone whistled through the air, before it hit its target.


    A thing that looked like a cross between a haggard old woman and a turkey buzzard, keeled over. The wall behind it was painted in blood and brain matter.


    I recognized the creature from a big book of monsters that we¡¯d had in the house for some reason. The beast was a harpy and the city was full of them. This is maybe the fifteenth harpy I¡¯d killed while making my climb.


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    For a second, I thought the harpy¡¯s body was going to fall through one of the windows.  It didn¡¯t, it just felt onto the floor.


    Which meant I¡¯d have to harvest it, which was a pain, because aside from the axe I got from my last trip into the wastes, I still needed to buy some decent hunting gear. Collecting beast materials with a kitchen knife was both messier and more difficult than I¡¯d expected.


    *****


    After quickly carving the creature apart and cutting my way through its chest, I held the harpy¡¯s essence stone in my hand. Essence stones were heavy things and the harpy¡¯s seemed to either emit or gather air.


    A light breeze blew out from my fingers as I held the stone. I stared at it, not knowing what expression to make. Harpies seemed to be some mixture of severed undead and monster. Gaining wings from the magics corruption. So it made sense that their stones were bigger than those of your average severed. (About the size of a golf ball.) More magic meant more essence¡­


    After thinking about the world and its creatures for a bit, I concentrated a little and shifted the flow of my essence, channelling it through the little glowing stone.


    *****


    Essence Stone Refinement was a trick of making stationary ¡®stored¡¯ essence  shift to a semi-active form. It was sort of like using friction and body heat to make drinkable ice water out of a chunk of ice.


    In theory anyone could do it, but only innate casters could do so effectively with little ill-effect.  I¡¯d picked up the trick when I watched the counter girl...er...Agnes, do it in the hunter offices. I wasn¡¯t that good at it myself, with more than thirty percent of the stone¡¯s stored energies escaping as I refined it.


    For bigger, more precious, stones I¡¯d probably go to the Handle offices to have a professional handle it.


    I watched the stone grow brighter as its essence was agitated. Then I watched it shrink as the essence flowed out of the stone. Now, if I were one of the Witches in the office I¡¯d be putting the semi-active essence into a jar or vial of enchanted glass.


    The customer would take it and then inhale and or drink it in, pulling the semi-active essence into their core. Circulating it through their body so it could join and increase their total amount of personal essence.


    ¡®I¡¯ wasn¡¯t a witch though, I was just doing this for me, so I simply pulled the harpy¡¯s essence inside of me, watching the stone disappear.


    *****


    There was a warmth in my chest, after refining more than a dozen harpy stones I could feel my internal essence rising in the same way it rose when I took the essences of that ogre and that Rat King. I¡¯d leveled up again.


    Going from level six to level seven. Once again, I was kind of wishing there were some convenient numbers to quantify the changes caused by my increased essence. I mean I could definitely feel myself growing stronger, but how strong was up to debate. Was I many times stronger, or just a fraction stronger.


    Was this a percentage based thing? Or was I growing in set increments? If I were a normal person perhaps the changes would have been more obvious. Unfortunately I wasn¡¯t, so I just had to guess and be content that the change was at least positive in feeling.

 11: Darkspawn

    I mostly loaf when I¡¯m not working, it¡¯s what I did in my old world, hell it¡¯s even what I did in the bad place.


    (If you count hiding, or going into healing comas as loafing).


    Here in Novem, those sort of days generally start with me sleeping in past noon,  because even though I¡¯m technically self-employed I¡¯ve learned to be strict with the hours I keep.


    On the days that I don¡¯t have to be so strict, I wake up, I look around, I use my powers to reaffirm that again this semi-mundane reality I¡¯m in, isn¡¯t someone¡¯s idea of a trick.


    Then I go back to sleep, continuing to slumber till my bladder or stomach forces me to leave the warm, womb-like comfort of my mattress and blanket. From there I bathe,(because I¡¯m lazy not an animal), and spend the rest of the day plopped in front of the television. Watching a mixture of cartoons, sitcoms and reality-tv.


    I found a marathon on hunters that seemed half-way decent and decided that would be what I took in for the day. I wasn¡¯t sure how close to reality anything I was seeing was.


    If this world was anything like my world, then the show¡¯s accuracy and relation to how things go in the real world would be next to nothing, but I thought it¡¯d be worth watching anyway. (Who knows I might actually learn something?)


    I actually got into it, this guy with what, to me, sounded like Aussie accent was rappelling down the side of a building. The camera panned up and we could see something like hulking green skinned gorilla glaring down at him, because he¡¯d just  ransacked its nest and stolen some goodies.


    He was going on and on, about what kind of canned goods seemed to gather food preserving magics and how to tell if the food was safe to eat or not.


    Then suddenly there was a creak from the couch and someone said,


    ¡°Hey¡­¡±


    Absentminded, my eyes glued to the screen I said ¡°hey¡­¡± back.


    Then I realized that I was apparently talking to someone now and gave them my full attention, or at least a little more of it.(More than no attention, anyway.)


    My eyes drifted to the other side of the couch and if I hadn¡¯t slowly grown used to and then enamored with Agnes, I might have been spooked a little.


    It took me a second to realize who I was staring at but it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out. Corny¡¯s memories were pretty spot on about the girl being  a perfect miniature of her mother. The remembered age was off  for some reason, and she was eleven turning twelve soon, instead of eight turning nine, but whatever. I did lose a year coming back to life after all. In any case, apparently my daughter was here.


    Her name was Innes Amelia Douglas, if you¡¯re wondering where she¡¯d been been all this time, the answer is boarding school. A very nice, very expensive establishment, whose tuition fees were the one responsible thing that old Corny ever spent money on.


    I frowned as I stared at her, gazing at one of the few untainted relations that poor asshole ever had. Dark hair, pale skin, a face that was cute enough to throw down a well and then have crab crawl out of your tv screen.


    She was her mother¡¯s child for sure, except her eyes which were as yellow as mine and Corny¡¯s were. Curiosity got the better of me  and I took a look, appraising her, perceiving her in her totality. Learning about her by peeking at the background data that described everything that she was.


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    What I got was a flash of old-timey film. A vision of a girl who looked just like Innes except slightly older, or like Agnes, except slightly younger. Wearing a bright blue dress, while being chased by ¡®something¡¯ through a forest. A forest that lay a few hundred miles from where we were.


    A forest in the outer-wastes. The film fast forwarded and now I was staring at a skeleton the lay curled beneath the roots of a giant tree. Its bleached white bones, wrapped in the folds of a bright blue dress.


    I got a vision of something old, something angry, and hungry and foul. A creature born of magic and chaos and fear. A creature strikingly like what I¡¯d been before I got pulled into Corny, was like. It was angry about something, looking for something, or maybe ¡®some¡¯-one, roaring in fury. Then my vision returned to the girl herself. My eyes meeting hers because I¡¯d been staring for a just a hair too long.


    ¡°Uh...hey, dad. How¡¯ve you been?¡± said Innes.


    ¡°Hey¡­¡± said I.


    I felt a pang of sympathy, and felt whatever was left of Cornelius¡¯s heart break a little as I knew. Then I felt something else, a bit of inner-questioning, a bit curious familiarity.


    ¡°So how¡¯s school been?¡± I asked.


    ¡°...Same old, same old.¡± she said. Tensing in that way kids tense when they really kind of don¡¯t want to talk about something anymore.


    It turns out Innes was not Cornelius¡¯ daughter, never mind her not sharing any of my genes, I was pretty sure we weren¡¯t even the same species. But I didn¡¯t really care about any of that, because in the end I didn¡¯t really care about Corny.


    Sure, he and I were close to being the same person, sharing the same feelings and memories to a certain extent, but in the end he was him and I was me. And most important ¡®he¡¯ was dead.


    His soul had been crushed like a mosquito against the metaphorical windshield of my inner being.


    While Corny would have been reeling over the fact that one good thing he¡¯d brought to this world wasn¡¯t his after all. I was reeling over the fact that the girl I was sitting next to, felt almost unmistakably like one of the ¡®things¡¯ I¡¯d thought I¡¯d left behind.


    One of the creatures  that called that place of madness and cold and fear, home. She wasn¡¯t, not quite, but she felt like it.


    I felt my heart beating out of my chest, cold sweat rose on my brow and on my palms. My mouth went dry, suddenly I didn¡¯t give a shit what my ¡®Aussie¡¯ friend on the tv was saying. I just faked a yawn, got up and locked myself in my room.

 12: Monsters

    I¡¯ve found that if you really want to know about a people and a culture, whether it''s their level of civilization or their outlook on life, you look at their myths and monsters.


    Generally the stories they tell, will let you know what they think of themselves and the world around them. With a generally consensus of all that one would run into, fitting into one of three main outlooks.


    Older, more agricultural civilizations, and peoples of quote-unquote bygone eras feared the dark and imagine their gods and fiends as unstoppable forces.


    Beings and entities that struck  without warning, living storms that could either destroy or create, that humans could do little else than hopefully placate and pray.


    The industrial, or enlightened ages brought monsters that could reasoned with bargained with, or outsmarted. Gods were either benevolent or apathetic or beyond the ken of man, but it was generally believed that man¡¯s fate was his own.


    The modern or rational age finally brought monsters, that could be beaten, and monsters that weren¡¯t even monster but were merely creatures that were misunderstood or yet to be studied.


    The gods, if they were acknowledged or believed in it all, were background observers, their interference or interaction with the world of the men, either non-existent or so beyond man''s scope that it wasn¡¯t really worth worrying about.


    These were the three main outlooks that would finally if one looked at a culture or people. As for the reality, what the actually truth was, I¡¯d say that it was a mixture of the three. The bad place, that world that lies within the cracks and corners of creation, had countless tendrils that ran through countless worlds.


    I¡¯ve run into things that could be called gods if you didn¡¯t have a sense of scale to compare them with, and have seen creatures that it actually causes me pain to think about for too long. I didn¡¯t hang around those too long and it was a little too dicey to swim ¡®too¡¯ deeply in the waters, of religion and the hereafter.


    What I do know is monsters, and true monsters, the big ones, the baddies that mankind quickly forgets about rationalizes out of existence, are just as unfathomable as our forefathers thought they were.


    In fact all monsters are like that. If it¡¯s a monster, there¡¯s no way to make sense of it, or to rationalize it, or try to study it, because that¡¯s not what monsters are. If you¡¯ve run into an entity of that sort, congratulations.


    You¡¯ve run into a ¡®creature¡¯, not a monster. Monsters are those strange and alien beings that transcend reason or logic, creatures are merely entities that are a little weird.


    If you beat a monster you did it by sheer dumb luck or divine providence, if you get it to leave you alone it was probably costly, if you think you¡¯ve escaped, its almost certainly knows where you are. Either that or it got bored or distracted in the middle of the chase.


    I know this, because I¡¯m one of them. I had to become one of them, because it was the only way to stop the other guys from trying to eat me. I couldn¡¯t just run for forever, and at a certain it had gotten too hard for me to find good places to hide. So I grew and became whatever it is I am.


    As for what I am, I¡¯m not entirely one hundred percent on it. By my reckoning, I could be one of two things. My first theory has me down as some kind of living mass of psychic energy.


    I¡¯m like a thought, that¡¯s alive, or some kind of self perpetuating moderately high-level, telepathic, telekinetic (terrakinetic, thermokinetic, photokinetic, chronokinetic...etc..) impression.


    If you so much as think of me, I¡¯ll know it, and it feeds me, and let''s find you, and find out all about you. If you¡¯re weak enough or you invite me, it lets me have you.  The limits of what I¡¯m capable of are exactly the same as the limits you average ghost. Please note, that histories grasp on what ghosts are capable has always had a somewhat wide variance.


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    Going from those who can only make you ill or make you hallucinate, to the types that destroy entire nations, poison rivers and knock over mountains. And generally make the entire landscape change before divine intervention becomes necessary and they have to be sealed away.


    Like an urban legend that keeps on growing. Gaining legs and a life of its own. Or like the antagonist in those horrors stories and internet blurbs  where the poster, or main character is almost definitely supposed to be writing it posthumously because they couldn¡¯t get away.


    The other theory is that I¡¯m magic. No further elaboration needed. Just like that most famous of tropes, except instead of saying ¡®a wizard did it¡¯ you can explain everything about me away with the words, ¡®cause he¡¯s a monster¡¯.


    There ¡®are¡¯ limits to what I can do, but those are seemingly flimsy things based on need, what I¡¯m willing to sacrifice and how much fuel I have to burn to achieve my goals.


    As someone who prefers to dwell within the rational myself, I honestly kind of wish that I could give a measurement in newtons, for what every unit of laughter, sadness, or  soul essence, I take in, makes me capable of. I can¡¯t but it¡¯d be damn helpful, for those few times I inexplicably find myself running dry.


    On paper its actually a very sweet setup. My time in the bad place has made it so that I¡¯m functionally immortal.


    Time doesn¡¯t really affect me and even if I¡¯m killed the most that will happen is that I¡¯ll go away for a while. Dissolving into the aether till someone remembers what I look like, or so much as thinks of my name.


    While I¡¯m not omnipotent, my powers and attributes are just vague, and flexible enough that there¡¯s very little I can¡¯t do, and I get stronger the more the people think that I¡¯m strong.


    Gaining powers and knowledge from the vast akashic ledger just because people think that it¡¯s something I know or should be able to do.


    In reality, its not that sweet...the only one¡¯s who can pull off anything near the nigh-omniscience and omnipotence, I¡¯ve just described are either gods, or entities that are on or beyond that level.


    The rest of us plebs have to keep things simple or we tend to fall apart or fade to nothing. Ditto if we burn too much or too little of whatever our fuel of choice is.


    I guess the multiverse is pretty touchy about people breaking its laws of conservation without properly paying for it.


    Meaning we have to keep things simple. Bolstering our internal logic, with the cause and effect or logic systems, of mundane realities, i.e. getting all our power-ups a relatively normal way.


    Which varies on what the normal way is, for a given universe, and whether it¡¯s  a high energy magic capable world or a low energy one, magic starved one.


    While the immortality is pretty nice, you could just as easily be brought back as a mere shadow of yourself or reduced into something warped and weak, if you rely on it too much.


    And let¡¯s not forget that any death a monster experiences will probably be painful, especially once you take sickness and old age off the table.


    Last but not least, the worst thing about being a monster, is all the other monsters. There is always someone bigger than you and they¡¯re all as hungry/horny/angry as you are.


    As if that wasn¡¯t enough I¡¯m at least ¡®sort-of¡¯ almost human now. So I kind of have to see how that¡¯s going work out and hope I get a handle on things before I run into anything nasty.

 13: Human Interaction

    I think I make a better Uncle than a father. I can¡¯t remember if I¡¯d left behind any sibling in my original word, but I¡¯m pretty sure on this.


    I¡¯m not very good with kids and I¡¯m not generally very unsociable by nature, but those aren¡¯t things you need if you want to be a decent Uncle.


    Unless you¡¯re wearing two hats and switch hitting as a substitute parent, all a good Uncle needs to do, is occasionally give the kid pocket money, occasionally be available to provide babysitting and transportation and avoid being creepy.


    That¡¯s pretty much it, at least that¡¯s what I¡¯ve found in my experience anyway. Really if you can just avoid being creepy, the rest is pretty much optional¡­


    *****


    Driving felt different, sharing the roads with animals like horse, donkeys and goats, made me feel just a tad nervous. Though that might have  just been because it had been ages since I¡¯d driven, period.


    A week had passed and Innes¡¯ spring break vacation, it just so happened, that this was one of Agnes¡¯s few days off, so I decided to help her out and drop Innes at school.


    Innes would normally go by bus,  since her ¡®Mom¡¯ Agnes usually worked and ¡®Dad¡¯ was usually sleeping off a hangover.


    Today though... I don¡¯t know...letting a kid who wasn¡¯t even twelve yet travel, far distances on their own, seemed somehow iffy to me. But that might just be me and the influence of my...Corny¡¯s parents speaking.


    Especially a little girl. Our city, Radomir was a fairly affluent place, even if we were apparently just barely recovering from a depression, as the news channels kept saying. Something to do with the war that kingdom, Alvis, had just barely won.


    Things were fairly safe here, at least we didn¡¯t have open militias roving about or anything. But like I¡¯ve said, the Inner-Territories of Novem were approximately like what you¡¯d find for a collection  modern, highly fractious, third world countries.


    So even in Radomir things could get dicey, depending on what part of the city you¡¯re in.


    The point is, my conscience and a bit of probably misplaced, parental(?), anxiety had me decide to drop the kid at school. We didn¡¯t say much during the drive. At least ¡®she¡¯ didn¡¯t say much. But that was just fine with me.


    I got to her school, a place called St.Vincent¡¯s Academy. A moderately posh institution  that looked like cross between a luxury hotel, and military prison fort.


    A sturdy stone structure with surrounded an odd mixture of sharp spires, ornate architecture, wrought-iron fences, and thick brick walls, that made it hard to tell if they were trying to keep the kids in or keep people out.(Probably both).


    I helped her get her bags out of the car. Then I slipped her a two hundred bucks because I didn¡¯t know what else to do and things had been going pretty good for me, cash-wise.


    Then we hugged, which was awkward, because by then I was pretty sure, we both knew that neither of us was who we were pretending to be.  She wasn¡¯t my daughter, and somehow, I knew that she knew that ¡®I¡¯, wasn¡¯t Corny, the guy she¡¯d grown-up calling dad.


    Still, we hugged, and it was exactly as awkward as you¡¯d imagine, but oddly enough, it wasn¡¯t quite as awful as a full on stranger-hug.


    I saw her off and then I drop back home.


    ******


    I¡¯m bleeding, bleeding badly. A pool of red, spreading out beneath me. My gut burns, and there¡¯s a numbness where one of the bullet¡¯s went through my spine. I...I think I might be dying, I can actually feel my organs shutting down. Maybe? Probably?


    My heart doesn¡¯t pump blood as it should, my breath grows thin and raspy. I¡¯m sitting in the sunshine and yet I feel I¡¯m freezing My vision, is fading, my strength is seeping out of me.


    I want to get up, but I¡¯m paralyzed from the legs down, thanks to the work of the shotgun, and someone¡¯s machete.


    ¡°Hehehe¡­Look at this boys.¡±


    I can hear them laughing at me, as they go through my things. The assholes discuss, what they think my gear is worth and how much they¡¯ll make with all the essence stones I¡¯d collected.


    ******


    Agnes, or the woman that thinks she¡¯s Agnes, despite knowing that she¡¯s really not, isn¡¯t Innes¡¯s mom. I learned this during the first dinner, where all three of us, were present at the table.


    I used my ability to perceive and appraise and found that while the two were genetically related, it was something closer to twins, or possibly even clones. It was actually quite fascinating.


    I wouldn¡¯t have realized it if I hadn¡¯t peeped at Innes¡¯ background data as a start, but neither of the two ladies in my life, were human. Or at least they weren¡¯t properly human.


    If I wanted to describe what they were it¡¯d be best to say that there were something akin to a very complex, high-tier imitation made out of either sand, or clay or twigs, or maybe even legos.


    The key to it, was that they were a very high fidelity, complex model. With everything down the very smallest model being modelled.  As for their souls or thing that made them ¡®alive¡¯, It was actually pretty ghastly.


    The two were even closer than clones, they were in fact the same person. The same exact person.The original, the original Agnes, had had her soul, mutilated and split in two.


    Cutting along some classical divide, like good and evil, or yin and yang, in a process that was probably pretty awful. While the girl herself didn¡¯t survive, her soul did, because souls were damn tough, and one of the few truly indestructible items in the known and unknown universes.


    So these two half souls were put into two fake bodies, and then the monster responsible used its own essence to supply the other half of their beings. A process, that among our lot is called parasitic seeding, or dark avatar creation.


    You put your essence, or monster-ness in a living being from proper reality and let them grow and develop for a bit, so that later you can harvest that accumulated power and the firm inner-logic that comes from having your essence exist in a stable reality.


    As to how I know all this, half it is because I¡¯m a monster and while I¡¯ve never done something profane myself, I have known other monsters that have. The other half is all down to my ability to [perceive] and [appraise].


    Knowing things I have no right to know because I just happen to be an existence of living thought and universal metadata, that can swim in similar waters. Collecting thoughts, and memories, and random details and skills from the others around me, as the consequence of something that was effectively psychic equivalent of static cling.


    The only thing I don¡¯t know is why one of the sisters ended up becoming a baby or how it got inside Agnes. Or if it was ever inside her to begin with and she just hid it somehow. All that was kind of vague and wasn¡¯t coming out clear for some reason.


    The rest could be put down to some logical leaps and guesses.  I guessed that at  some point a very confused, very scared young woman would return to relatively idyllic town with a baby in tow. Either holding it, or pregnant.


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    The monster likely didn¡¯t like that its two seed beds had escaped and Agnes''  city was destroyed because the dark whatever was looking for her. Then a few weeks later, She found herself alone.


    With no assets, and no status, citizenship or otherwise. A refugee with a child, and little options.


    Then Cornelius proposed and with a surprising amount of guilt considering, considering that she ¡®knew¡¯ about his involvement in her cousin''s death, she decided to accept. Becoming his wife, and pretending that Innes was his child.


    Messed up as it is she would have put up with worse, she would have accepted she¡¯d been ¡®that¡¯ afraid and ¡®that¡¯ desperate.


    It was either that or going to the indenture offices, which was the equivalent selling oneself as a slave. In theory you had right, in practice not so much.


    Again, the rest is a bit murky, but I didn¡¯t really care about the rest, I didn¡¯t really about any of it, actually. All that was between Corny and her, and Corny was dead.


    As far as I could remember, she¡¯d tried to be as good a wife as she could be, better then a junkie brute like Corny, had deserved at the least. He¡¯d known ¡®that¡¯ much.


    She put up with his abusive bullshit as if it were some kind of atonement.


    Taking his worst and still sticking around, toiling away with that shy, slightly mysterious, little Mona Lisa smile that she¡¯d sometimes wear.


    She sent the kid off to school, as soon as she could because separation was the best way to keep the dark whatever from finding them again.


    If it weren¡¯t for Corny¡¯s extreme attachment to the girl, Agnes would be the one paying for all of  it, as had been her intent. Instead she paid for everything else, supporting the two of them while Corny smoked and drank their savings away. And the rest, as they say,  is history.


    Considering that Innes seems to be pretty okay as a kid, and I¡¯m kind of still crushing on Agnes, despite the unsettling revelations,(if only because I have my own issues going on), I¡¯m content to let it all ¡®stay¡¯ history.


    As for what all that has to do with my current situation. Absolutely nothing. It has nothing to do with anything. This was just me ruminating on my home life and trying to keep a cool head while I waited for my healing to kick in and keep me alive. Good news is, it worked.


    *****


    I heard them pack my stuff up into their bags and heard the squeal of tires and the rev of engines as they hopped on their motorbikes and peeled.


    As my vision returned I could only sigh. My camp was ruined, my pack was torn. I had nothing, save the bullet ridden clothes on my back.


    It was my own fault really, maybe it was the decades of only being afraid of creatures with either too many or too few eyes and limbs.


    Maybe it was the fact that one long term human connection since I¡¯d come back to this world, had been fairly decent. Maybe I was just stupid and careless. (Probably because I was stupid and careless.) Whatever the case was it had resulted in me letting my guard down and letting the bandits run off with my stuff.


    Hunters weren¡¯t the only human¡¯s wandering the outer-wastes. There were salvagers who wandered through the ruins looking for useful loot. Then there were the exiles.


    People who got kicked out for political reasons or had to flee the territories to save their own lives. Exile was also a prefered form of capital punishment among the inner-territories, since unless you were high level and well trained being out here was pretty much a death sentence.


    Those who made it, usually settled down in small camps and villages. Others did what they¡¯d done inside the territories forming gangs, looting, murdering, raping. Running wild as they aimlessly wandered the outer-wastes, looking for wealth, power and a good time.


    I¡¯d kinda forgotten about all this though, Corny had known it, but since I¡¯d yet to run into one of them, it had kind of slipped my mind.(Whoops.)


    Fortunately I was A)undead as all the people of Novem were and therefore fairly hard to kill except by complete destruction of my brain or dismemberment. And B)I was monster and thus much, much sturdier than your average undead.


    The good news was that I¡¯d at least gotten to find out what my leveling up had down for me. It turns out that leveling up, incremental raises all you ¡®stats¡¯ by ten percent. Never mind that there are no actual formal stats to raise.


    Each and every person on Novem is born level zero, turning level one shortly after birth, unless they¡¯ve been cursed or crippled.


    And for each additional level they became one tenth smarter, stronger, faster more magical, until that tenth level comes around and their bodies, and base stats are changed becoming twice as capable. Their essence and beings refined into something more formidable than ever before. With the pattern repeating every ten levels.


    I should have been one-shotted, the bandit¡¯s magical shotgun should have splattered me across the walls. I or at least Corny and every other red blooded male that had access to a tv, knew what his gun was.


    It was a Jack-Cannon, the weapon of choice for the heroes and giant killers everywhere. Corny had kind of thought they were just made up.


    The kick from the cannon¡¯s discharge was enough to rattle the entire building was real enough though. The explosion of the bullets nearly brought the whole house down around our heads.


    I feel fairly secure in saying that had I been a normal person I would have been vaporized. My body transforming into a cloud of charred meat and red vapor. Instead I was merely blown away. Blasted out of sight, flying through a wall, and into a hallway.


    *****


    Still the news was more good than bad. First of all I was still alive, which was almost always good news in my book. Second, I now knew that leveling up was well worth my time and would be ardently pursuing that goal in the new future.


    Third, I¡¯d been firmly reminded that like all the schlock, sci fi-movies I¡¯d watched as a kid had taught me, ¡®humans were the real monsters¡¯ or at least they were another sort of monster.


    Which meant I would at least be keeping my guard up from now on. Maybe not to the hyper-reactive, hyper-vigilant, hyper-violent levels that I¡¯d had while I was in the bad place. But some caution and wariness was necessary.


    Fourth and finally, a few of the bandits had made the mistake of letting me, A)see their faces, B)hear their names, and C)decide to take a personal interest in their affairs. I now knew where they were and knew they were headed.


    If I wanted to, I could use this power to  learn all their secrets and fears, and all the things that made them tick. It¡¯d be like I¡¯d known them for years, knowing them better than they knew themselves. In other words, I was pretty sure I¡¯d be getting my gear back soon.

 14: Roar

    The Staccato cry of machine gun fire, echoed out through the night. Frightened men called to their fellows, while their superiors bellowed orders. Grenades and explosive jars of magic-reactive substances were tossed.


    A thunderous roar shook the outer-wastes, rattling winds and drowning out the howl of the wind.


    The Five-Dime MoonDogs were facing a threat bigger their fellows, bigger than the armies, or the cartels, or the high level heroes. A demon walks through the midsts. Or some kind of low level dread lord maybe.


    They¡¯d fire at it, and their bullets would be snatched from out of the air. Sent screaming back at them as superfast, superheated balls of molten metal. A few brave fools tried to engage with melee weapons or in hand to hand and they were torn apart.


    Even more unlucky were those who tried to run. At best it¡¯d simply catch them. The creature¡¯s fist appearing through their torso and crashing through their skulls. At worst the monster would disappear.


    Some unfortunate would suddenly stumble, their steps halting as they started to scream. Their flesh bubbling and boiling till suddenly they¡¯d burst.


    Exploding like some kind of meat grenade, sending flesh and bone shrapnel flying everywhere.


    Then he¡¯d appear, standing where they were standing, covered in their blood. Resuming his pitiless onslaught as he rapidly whittled down their numbers.


    *****


    Pro-tip, ¡®finish the job¡¯. Whether it¡¯s lawn work, or that big school project, or ending a relationship that¡¯s not really working out. I¡¯ve generally found it only bites in the butt if you leave things half done.


    The same goes for murder. Now don¡¯t get me wrong, I¡¯m a monster and even I think killing wrong, it¡¯s the third worst thing you can do to a person. Still, my statement remains the same, like evil overlord list says, if you¡¯re going to start something, ¡®finish the job¡¯.


    Don¡¯t just assumed you finished. Don¡¯t just expect that the rest will be handled for you. Or that it¡¯s all a forgone conclusion. Finish the job. Nothing gets people out for your blood, more than the fact that you nearly spilled theirs.


    Mind you, I¡¯m probably not the best person to be lecturing anyone on this, I¡¯m kind of a soft touch, plus I¡¯m generally very lazy and even just now I nearly got myself in trouble.


    I caught up to those bandits who nearly killed me and took my stuff. Me and the guy who shot me and the guy who stabbed me, all had a little sit down and by the end of it, they were feeling quite bad about the whole situation.


    So I got to leave their camp, with my things, plus a war axe that was better than the one I¡¯d had before, and some cash, some extra gear and a brand pair of boots that just happened to be in my size.


    I didn¡¯t take the gun. Mostly because I never ¡®was¡¯ able to shoot worth a damn, even with my uncanny perception that allows me to see without eyes, and look through souls and count granules of sand on the distant beaches of distant worlds.


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    And since Jack-Cannons, were pretty high-tier military tech, at least as far as Corny knew, I was kind of worried it¡¯d be too hot to try and pawn, so I just scrapped the stupid thing, and refined the tiny essence stones inside its bullets.


    Unfortunately one of the members that had been their hadn¡¯t liked my negotiation tactics and because they were young and I do loath killing children, they got to scamper off and tell one of the allied gangs what had happened.


    The bad news is that their allies didn¡¯t like what happened either. The worse news was that the bloke with expensive gun had been the cousin to some big so-so who had a position in one of local cartels. People with pull.


    Folks with influence in Radomir and several other nearby cities, in both the legitimate and criminal world. I shudder to think what would have happened if I¡¯d gone home and been spotted.


    Luckily I was keyed off by the fact that they¡¯d started looking for me. The fact that someone was concentrating on my being tipping me off.


    I used my ability to Perceive to find the one survivor I¡¯d let off and then perceived and appraised all the people he told and all the people ¡®they¡¯ were connected to. Now a week later, I was cleaning up the mess, I¡¯d almost made, sweating bullets because of how close a call this had been.


    Whether I like it or not, whether it was real or not, I had a family to protect. I couldn¡¯t be making rookie mistakes like this. Still no one¡¯s perfect, and it was no harm no foul right? I decided I¡¯d just chalk this up to a learning experience, later I¡¯d use my monstrous abilities to erode my humanity a little and don an air of permanent anonymity.


    It¡¯d probably get annoying, getting ignored all the time unless I really tried to get attention,(any attention), but it was better than having people coming after my friends and family.


    A skull, was flattened beneath my boot-heel. All sort of thoughts, and philosophies and life views splattering onto the floor.  Some guy, in soiled trousers, was yapping about something, trying to bargain I think.


    I spotted the youth from before and this time, I didn¡¯t entertain any unnecessary thoughts of mercy. I left that boss¡¯ panic room, and started wandering through the house, making sure I didn¡¯t miss anybody.


    Then when that was done, I sighed, exhausted, but well aware, that I still had a few more places to hit, before I was done, cleaning up after my little screw up. No worries though, I could be very diligent when I had to be.

 15: Request Friends

    It had been a full half-year since I¡¯d taken over Corny¡¯s life, stepping into his shoes, because he was no longer there to fill them.


    Considering that I had his face and his memories, and pretty much everything else that made him ¡®him¡¯, it felt like it was expected. I paid his bills. I sent cards to his mom and dad on their birthdays.


    I helped pay his kid¡¯s tuition. In essence I pretty much was Cornelius Dacre Douglas now. I didn¡¯t mind it, and it¡¯d been so long since I¡¯d been a somebody, rather than just a ¡®something¡¯ that I found myself just willingly falling into the role.


    I couldn¡¯t forget that the real Corny had died, but sometimes it felt like there was just so much of him left.


    So much of him  was floating inside of me, mingled within me that it  almost felt like his life and death were just question of perspective. A tiny nitpicky, detail, that was lost in broad strokes of my everyday reality.


    I¡¯m not sure when it started, but at some point I even started calling myself Corny in my head.


    *****


    I wandered into the Hunter Association Office almost by accident, it had been roughly three months since I¡¯d last been there.


    It was filled with the same ordered, disorder as last time, filled with the sound of ringing phones, and clacking keys, and calls for the next person in line.


    My dust up with the Rattler Gang and the Diamond Wolf Cartel that had been behind them was ¡®not-coincidentally¡¯ also three months ago. I almost turned to leave because in all honesty I wasn¡¯t hurting for money at the moment.


    Without even talking about the looted gear, and equipment, gangsters, (especially the high level ones), tended to have all sorts of lucrative goodies in their houses and hideouts. And before I was satisfied with my job of clearing the issue I hit quite a few house and hideouts.


    *****


    The only reason I left my house today was because I sort of felt like I had to. The first month away from the wastes had been intended to be some distance and due diligence.


    A way of staying clear just in case anyone looked into things. Then months two and three came and went, and as I stared up at my ceiling counting the dots in the tiles and listlessly wondering if I should maybe pop open my laptop or just go back to sleep I realized, oh shit, I¡¯ve become a shut in.


    I genuinely couldn¡¯t remember when was the last time I went out to do something that ¡®wasn¡¯t¡¯ groceries. I wasn¡¯t depressed or anything. At least I don¡¯t think I was, but I had a feeling that I was slowly losing motivation.


    Or maybe I was just finding myself at a stand still. Lacking direction or any connections to this world save the one¡¯s I was borrowing.


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    I found myself thinking that it might not be the worst idea to just, close my eyes and sleep for a few centuries. I decided it was probably best if I got out of the house before I did anything rash.


    *****


    I ended up accepting my first hunter request today. I think I might have already explained how the hunter association was strikingly similar to those adventurer guilds in video games.


    Besides making sure that the monsters didn¡¯t knock the source towers that kept the subspaces of the inner-territories whole, hunters also did requests.


    Mainly generic mmo stuff. Fetch quests, gathering quests, courier missions, escort missions and special subjugations, that sort of thing.


    *****


    My first ever hunter request was a fetch quest. Apparently some big time so-and-so, had died out in the wastes.


    Usually if you die out in the wastes, if you¡¯ve paid the insurance fee and you¡¯re not too far out, they¡¯ll send a retrieval team to pick you up and try to resurrect you.


    This guy was big time but he¡¯d bit it too far out for even the boys in rescue and recovery to find. Thus the Association was paying us freelancers to take a shot at it.


    *****


    ¡°Alright, Mr. Douglas. We¡¯ve got that. All set up. Just had to the location point to get the effort reward.¡± said the clerk.


    Today¡¯s clerk was a redhead. Agnes wasn¡¯t in, she had a parent teacher thing  to attend, over at St.Vincent¡¯s.


    ¡°Er¡­ Thanks.¡±


    I was lead over to a lobby, where a little girl and an old geezer, were waiting. I might be being rude here actually.


    The old man, wasn¡¯t ¡®that¡¯ old, maybe late fifties, early sixties at most. And as for the girl, she was probably between fifteen and seventeen. She was just really young faced, and skinny, I guess.


    They had a certain disreputable aire to them, which was expected for all hunters, kind of. But theirs was still very raw.


    With a single glance I spotted battered, mismatched second-hand equipment and scruffy clothes. Like the kind of gear you¡¯d wear to do yard work, mixed with a bit of what you¡¯d wear to a medieval fair.


    Don¡¯t think me a classist. I wasn¡¯t looking down on them or anything, I¡¯m no snob.


    I was merely viewing them with the eyes of an operator, like any person would in a game-like situation, like the hunter association pretty much  always was. They stank of noob, unreliable and desperate.


    The clerk made us shake hands like we were kids in kindergarten. She smiled, sounding surprisingly genuine as she said,


    ¡°Alright Mr.Douglas. Meet your new party!¡±

 16: Train Conductor

    On Novem, depending on how fringe you like your news media, you¡¯ll probably have heard about something called Molly Grindwall¡¯s Socio-Economic plan, also known as the Grindhouse theory.


    As for who Molly Grindwall is, or was, I don¡¯t know and therefore, it doesn¡¯t really matter. This particular conspiracy theory, pretty much states that it¡¯s all on purpose.  What¡¯s all on purpose? The wars, the crime, the gangs,  the bloodsport, and the monster raids.


    Everything. According to the Grindhouse theory it¡¯s all on purpose. As to why that would be the case, the idea is that, revenants, human undead, us, we¡¯re not dying enough. Death is an integral part of life and integral part of society, because civilization is just communal response to life.


    Whether its necessary changes in culture and policy, or simple resource and space allocation. Death is a part of the mechanism, out with the old, in with the new.


    That sort of thing.


    The thing is, the average person, will live for a minimum of two hundred or three hundred years. Their lifespan naturally extending itself, as their levels goes up each five years.


    While sickness can lay us low, it can¡¯t kill us, and while starvation can make us weak, we still march. What¡¯s worse is that we still reproduce just like we used to do, before undeath was a thing.


    Thus the worry that we might end up stagnating, running out of food, living space, jobs, etc¡­ starts to come up. A law mandating self-termination or exile, would end in uprising and revolt.


    We know that because history says we already tried.  And that¡¯s where the Grindhouse theory comes in. A theory that the constant strife that plagues the daily lives of your average Novemite, is on purpose.


    A double whammy that preserves the power of certain shadowy groups and individuals while lessening population pressure.


    A not-so-subtle way to thin our numbers, and make us die by violent means. I don¡¯t believe it of course, that¡¯s giving, them, whoever ¡®they¡¯ are, too much credit.


    I suspect that if they really had their shit in order we wouldn¡¯t have had a zombie plague to begin with.


    Besides, the theory presupposes a civilization that has it together enough to make up such a scheme, but can¡¯t think up anything better than slowly setting itself on fire. In my mind that¡¯s illogical or even absurd so I reject it.


    I reject the grindhouse theory,  even though I know full well that universe is made up of a vast number of illogical and absurd things. (Oh, well, at least I get to sleep better this way.)


    I know for a fact that while the average human might be much stronger than they think they are, humanity as a whole is fairly weak and fragile.


    I know this because I¡¯ve witnessed it for myself and once spent a little over a decade having this lovingly whispered to me by a friendly man with either no eyes at all or too many to count.


    Naturally, the Hunter Association is part of the theory as well. Listed as one of the main ways the nations get rid of extraneous persons, because of its lax entry requirements.


    With the Hunter Association accepting everyone, regardless of age, or health. But again the theory is crock, like I¡¯ve already decided. Thus I can only assume that today¡¯s experiences are just bad luck.


    *****


    ¡°Hey...kid, stop peeking so much. I can assure you without even looking, those things are still out there. If you give away where we are....¡± said I.


    The girl glared at me, but it quickly faded to a look of tense anxiousness. With a sigh she closed the door, of the closet that we were hiding in.


    In my mind¡¯s eye, I could see what was happening on the other side of the door. I watched a thin creatures in tattered clothing ambled up and down the hallway.


    Moving on all fours with certain fluid grace, like the great apes of the jungle. Their hide thick and leathery, their eyes flickering with undead flame.


    These creatures were ghouls. Ghouls were to your average severed, what wolves were to dogs. Bigger, smarter, stronger and much harder to handle.


    Individually a ghoul wasn¡¯t anything to make me sweat, but there were hundreds of the things. Possibly thousands. Each of them just tough enough that trying to fight them all at once could get me killed.


    As to how I¡¯ve found myself in this little situation, I do believe I¡¯ve already explained that. Bad luck. It was bad luck, for me to end up in this little party of amateurs.


    It was bad luck that my party of amateurs was assigned to cooperate with yet another, bigger party made up of mostly amateurs.


    This new group was made up of hopeful, youngster.  Heroes-to-be.  The kind whose parents could at least afford proper gear and a mentor hunter before sending their overly optimistic progeny into the waiting maw of destiny. Because college educations were no longer the guarantee of success that they¡¯d used to be.


    I won¡¯t blame the rest of what happened on luck. The fact that I¡¯m here, is due to my own incredible bad judgement in believing that it¡¯d be safe to stay with the group, because I could ¡®handle¡¯ myself. (Good one, Corny.)


    As for the fact that no one had known that this big-time so-and-so whose body we¡¯d been sent to find last known location was in the middle of a huge Ghoul nest. Well that, that was just cooperate hijinks.


    I¡¯m sure it was all just a big mistake and not because, they¡¯d needed volunteers and weren¡¯t willing to pay for the price increase that comes with sending out higher ranked requests. But I¡¯m pretty sure if I survive this I¡¯m going to be filing a complaint.


    *****


    We waited and hid, half a day¡¯s time, then when I could sense the sun going down, I made my move. Stepping outside the closet while cautiously sweeping the area with my extra sensory perceptive abilities.


    ¡°H-..hey?! Where are you going?¡± said the girl.


    ¡°For a walk?¡±


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    ¡°Are you stupid? They¡¯ll kill you!¡± said the girl.


    I couldn¡¯t help shrugging.


    ¡°Not necessarily. Besides it¡¯s not like we can stay in that closet forever. Plus I don¡¯t about you, but that closet only has one bucket, and ¡®I¡¯ kind of have to go to the bathroom.¡± I said. Leaving her with those words as I walked off.


    She frowned, biting her bottom lip as she weighed the odds in her head. Then with a nod she reluctantly followed me. Trailing behind me as I wandered through the dark halls of what might have once been a cinema.


    I¡¯m not crazy and I didn¡¯t suddenly get brave. It was just that I knew from old Corny¡¯s memories and my own wanderings through the wastes that ghouls were nocturnal.


    And Though night was the time that the creatures were the most active, it was also the time where they were the most spread out. Wandering around in search of prey instead of sleeping in mass.


    Meaning that this was the best time to try and sneak out, because I was less likely to run into and then almost immediately awaken, a pack of them.


    Once I was under the open air, it¡¯d be easier to get away. Like so easy, I was sorely tempted to blow out a wall and just immediately hoof it. The only reason I didn¡¯t try it, was that my senses were telling me, that something troublesome would pop out if I directly damaged this building like that.


    Thus the girl and I tried to make our way down to the ground floor, sneaking about and darting into whatever hiding spaces we could find, whenever something foul smelling and raspy came by.


    If your wondering why it was only the two us, the answer to that is also quite simple. The old guy, Dalton, who¡¯d been serving as the third member of our three man party ran off with the young all-stars. Likely sucking-up in hopes of getting a job as support-staff or something.


    Which I guess could respect, since being support staff was decent, steady work and was significantly less demanding and dangerous than traditional being a hunter if you had a good employer.


    We would have been fine if he hadn¡¯t come running back when everything on their end inevitably went terribly wrong. Yelling for us to save him, while a line of ravenous ghouls nipped at his heels.


    We got chased but got away. He got chased and got caught and the guy¡¯s screams drew more ghouls to our location. (Way to not take it on the chin, Dalton. So much for team spirit.)


    *****


    We made it to this old ruin, which just so happened to where ghouls¡¯ nest was, which is just a mind-boggling level of bad luck on our end. Fortunately it seemed like we were just about to escape.


    *Boom*


    There was a crash and a rumble like thunder, the whole building shook, hell the whole city shook. This had nothing to do with us, from what my senses could pick up, it was just two powerhouse, two high leveled individuals, fighting in the distance. They were nowhere near us but the shockwaves that came from their combat was effecting us all the way out here.


    It was like being on the outer edges of a massive hurricane. Sure there were no clouds over ¡®our¡¯ heads but we were getting ¡°wind and rain¡± all the same.


    *Bang*


    ¡°....Fuck.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± said girl. Turning to me as she saw me stop.


    ¡°Do you hear that?¡±


    ¡°Hear what?¡±


    First there was just the sounds of distant battle and the chirrup of evening cicadas and crickets. Then it started.


    A cry that was cross between, a wolf¡¯s howl, a banshee¡¯s cry and a train whistle.


    High and shrill and grating and loud. Getting even louder as more crys joined it. Growing louder still as all those cries began to move in our direction. Heading towards the first cryer.


    ¡°That.¡±


    She didn¡¯t answer. She just paled, growing still in a way that made me think that she might have shut down for a little bit. I chaffed her cheek a little to bring her back from wherever she went and the first thing she said was,


    ¡°What now?¡±


    I didn¡¯t really have a good answer but I did have ¡®a¡¯ answer. I swung my fist and a wall came crumbling down.(No point trying to be tactful, since the troublesome one is already awake.)


    I took the girl¡¯s hand, swung her up into my arms, because I didn¡¯t want her slowing me down, and then I started running.


    *****


    Naturally if you run from wolves(ghouls), one can expect to be chased by wolves(ghouls). I ran for quite a distance and the buggers stayed on my tail. Being chased by a few ghouls was one thing, being chased by the thing that ran behind them was another.


    It came up like freight chain, mowing its tiny peers and turning them into paste. It was a moving charnel pit, a wretched amalgam of bodies that would occasional spew out a small oil covered blob that would grow to full size and almost immediately join the chase.


    This creature was a ghoul mother. It, she, scuttled through the alleys and freeways of the wasteland city like the world¡¯s biggest cockroach. She leaped from rooftop to rooftop like the world¡¯s biggest flea.


    She was as persistent as an unwanted lover, and resistant to brute force and cutting damage, which was pretty much all I had in my wheelhouse.


    Unfortunately, I couldn¡¯t just let her keep chasing me. With her dozens of misshapen limbs she was actually quite fast. Troubling as it was to admit it, it wasn¡¯t impossible that she might catch me.  So I threw the girl I was carrying up into the air, and found a nice, decent sized skyscraper to hurl at my uncouth pursuer.

 17: Chuck Sienna

    Back when I was eleven, when Susie who lived in the apartment down the hall from mine finally invited me to her birthday party I ended up breaking my ankle on the ice on the stair stoop outside the front door.


    When I was seventeen and Tanya who I¡¯d kind of had a thing for unexpectedly fell on her head and decided to ask ¡®me¡¯ out instead of literally anybody else, I ended up getting hit by a car the next day.


    There were other instance of similar things happening, but the one that takes the cake was my twenty-third(?) year, after I¡¯d graduated college , when Rita who worked in the cubicle next to mine, left me a funny, maybe, possibly, even flirty note.


    I didn¡¯t even get to so much as fantasize about asking her out before I was suddenly thrown into the bad place.


    It never fails to go down this way, I¡¯m not sure if I¡¯m cursed, or if I was some NTR asshole in a past life and this is just how I¡¯m being made to pay for it. Me having any kind of positive entanglement with the opposite sex, whether romantic or platonic, has generally boded ill for me.


    I know enough math to understand that correlation doesn¡¯t equal causation, but excuse me if I can¡¯t help seeing some sort of connection there.


    *****


    I was lying in bed, the parts of me that didn¡¯t ache, were alarmingly numb. My undead resilience wasn¡¯t up for handling this. Not completely anyway.


    I was holding together like a badly shattered teapot. And if we were sticking with that simile, I was probably more glue than porcelain at this point.


    It was bad enough that the only reason I wasn¡¯t dead, was because I was a monster. The impossible and exaggerated portions of my being stepping in while the frail human parts of me struggled to convalesce.


    My partial humanity meant, that there were consequences whenever I did something that a normal person shouldn¡¯t be able to. I was kind of a glass cannon that way. (A real paper shotgun.)


    A full force bang, would blow me to pieces. Sure I was strong, but I could only do as much as my poor, human-revenant body would allow.


    If I did too much, I¡¯d break. Lifting the several hundred, thousand tons of a wasteland skyscraper and hurling it like a javelin, apparently counted as doing too much.


    I actually woke up paralyzed today, locked into my head, because the only thing that had been keeping my body together three days ago, was my monster-ness, and  some very optimistic thinking.


    This was actually an improvement on how I woke up on the first of my three day mend. It took three days for me to get to the point where I could so much as wiggle my big toe.


    Fortunately, I got back use of my extremities around noon.


    I was lying in bed thinking about how to keep this from happening again. Mainly coming up with a lot of common sense notions, leveling up, using essence to forcibly reinforce my body¡­(Not picking fights with giant monsters)...Obvious things.


    Then there was a knock at my door. I got, and I wasn¡¯t sure which was worse, the bed sores or the general discomfort. Either way I knew I kind of hated whoever was at the door. Then I opened the door and a little bit of that hate went away. Agnes stood there, like a gloomy ray of sunshine.


    ¡°Er...uh...sorry. I hope I wasn¡¯t interrupting you or anything.¡± she said.


    It took me second, to realize what she meant, if I weren¡¯t such a lovely shade of brown, I might have turned pink. It dawned on me, that all my groaning and moaning might have made it sound like my misery was something a little more festive.


    I hoped that this was me reading too deeply into her words because otherwise I¡¯d probably die of embarrassment. A thing that sounds like hyperbole but isn¡¯t. (Monsters ¡®are¡¯ creatures of ego afterall.)


    ¡°Um¡­.Nope?¡± said I.


    Apparently neither of us were all that good with this whole ¡®social¡¯ interaction thing, because we spent a good two minutes just staring at each other.


    Now I¡¯d always been barely passable at it. Generally speaking only enough to confirm for the people around me that I was indeed ¡®not¡¯ a mute, but Agnes worked in customer service.


    Which makes me think she probably should have been better at it. Maybe...Probably¡­I wasn¡¯t going to call her out on it or anything, but it seemed like a waste of expertise.


    Finally I coughed and she spoke, remembering what it was she¡¯d come in  here to say,


    ¡°Um, I uh...noticed that we haven¡¯t been seeing other much and a friend gave me these tickets to a place.....D-, do you have any plans for tonight, Cornelius?¡±


    *****


    Two hours later I found myself in the glam and glits of the city of Radomir¡¯s own Lambert¡¯ Kitchen. A chic little restaurant that served Southern Isle faire with a slight Alvissian twist.


    I was here, despite being so beat up  that I could literally hear parts of me that should have been moored and anchored, jangling around. But I could understand that.


    This was Agnes that we¡¯re talking about, and she¡¯d asked me out. Whether it was my crush, or the original¡¯s Corny¡¯s mixture of guilt, love and possessiveness, I¡¯m pretty sure¡¯d I¡¯d have been out here even if I was on the verge of dying.


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    The thing I didn¡¯t understand was why she¡¯d asked me out. I was just a thing riding around in her husband¡¯s skin. Correction, I was just a thing riding around in her abusive husband¡¯s skin.


    Even I kind of didn¡¯t want to have anything to do with me. Corny¡¯s head carried some fairly despicable memories. They weren¡¯t quite serial killer, birthday clown, pedophile bad, but they were bad enough, that I kind of just let them glom onto the pit of  forcefully distant, awfulness, where I stored my experiences from the bad place.


    There was no reason for us to hang out and I was planning on bringing up my moving out again by the years end. Aside from the meatsuit I was wearing we were pretty much strangers.


    *****


    Our  silverware scraped across the fine china in front of us. We ate the first course in near complete silence. When that part of the meal was down and a waiter came and took away our plates.


    I remained silent, concentrating on trying not to visibly shrink in on myself.  I don¡¯t do good in bright open places, with lots of people. It¡¯s not quite a social phobia, but it¡¯s close enough, that I wasn¡¯t really having all that good a time.


    I kept wondering what she wanted or why she¡¯d invited me here. I couldn¡¯t think of a good reason, which meant I just kept getting more and more nervous. My anxieties climbing.


    ¡°...So¡­.How¡¯s your hunter work been going?¡± said Agnes. Sipping her gingered ale.


    ¡°Uh...it¡¯s going good?¡± said I.


    ¡°Great.¡± said Agnes. Responding to my reply with a warm smile.


    ¡°Er...so I saw that your Mother sent a package for you in the mail. Did you see it?¡±


    ¡°....Y-, yeah.¡± I lied.


    The conversation only got smoother from there. Eventually we opened up to each other and explored our feelings. We hit a dozen riveting topics that spanned the breadth of who we were and what we wanted in our lives.


    After I impressed her with my ability to play the nose flute,  I worked up the nerve to ask her about her and my daughter/sister in law. Then I managed to wrap things up with a clever joke.


    Well...actually none of that of happened. (Of course it didn¡¯t.)


    Agnes carried us through things by running through a series of topics that were shallowly spoken about, before we quickly abandoned them.


    There was this moment where I thought she might have maybe wanted to say something. Like we weren¡¯t talking about what she really wanted to talk about.


    I couldn¡¯t really know, since I wasn¡¯t really reading her mind, or ¡®perceiving¡¯ her anymore. ( Since it¡¯s rude to do it to your friends.)


    I didn¡¯t know what it was she wanted to say, but I knew she wanted to say ¡®something¡¯.


    Things continued to limp on painfully, till we finished the meal. Then she picked up the check and I left the tip, dropping a few hundred bucks on the table. I wasn¡¯t trying to pretend I was a big spender.


    The inflation on Novem is just crazy high. High enough that the  two hundred bucks I left was roughly akin to leaving ten dollars on the table in a saner world.


    We got back home and I barely knew it, because Agnes was the one who¡¯d driven us and  I was still castigating myself for my crappy performance.


    We got inside and just before I was about to head to my side of the house, she stopped me. Simply putting her hand on my shoulder, though it might as well have been a thick, million pound chain that had been moored to the sea floor, considering how stuck in place I was.


    ¡°Um...Cornelius¡­¡± said Agnes.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°.....N-, nothing.¡± said Agnes.


    She frowned and then she smiled and then after a moment of hesitation, she got up on tiptoe, and gave me a real awkward (...warm...soft¡­.wonderful¡­) peck on the cheek. Like the sort you¡¯d get from an Aunt, or an older first cousin.


    ¡°Goodnight Cornelius¡­.You¡¯ve been alright. Thanks for...Anyway. Just thanks.¡± said Agnes.


    ¡°Er...It was nothing...You¡¯ve been Al-..alright, also. ¡¯.¡±  said I.


    I sort of got it then. It occurred to me, that if she was a little bit of a monster as well then she could probably feel me. She could feel me, feeling her.


    It was one of ¡®those¡¯ games. Where each player has a secret and they dance around getting the other person to spill theirs first. I think she knew I knew about her and Innes.


    In which case maybe she was trying to gauge my response. Except why would what I thought matter? Or why would I care? I wasn¡¯t the real Cornelius. And they, or at least Agnes, had been super nice to me.


    Then she went up the stairs and I went to my room. I watched her go and then I shuffled off, feeling like my face was on fire. Struggling to convince myself that ¡®she¡¯ hadn¡¯t heard how loud my heart was beating.


    And wishing that I was someone cooler who knew how to string more than half a sentence together.

 17.5: Interlude: She Appears Missing

    POV: Agnes


    I woke up in a forest naked, there was a body nearby, all covered in leaves. Spattered in red, dressed in a bright blue dress. I couldn¡¯t see their face and for some reason I didn¡¯t want to.


    I still tried to just in case they weren¡¯t really dead, or at least weren¡¯t ¡®very¡¯ dead. (Revivable). But somehow, I just really didn¡¯t want to. I didn¡¯t understand why, but somehow I felt I should stay away. The blood and the smell, was just wretched so I got away from it.


    Just as I got up I saw this little kid staring at me. I don¡¯t know where she came from, I practically tripped over her. She was just standing right behind me. Pale skin, dark hair, darker eyes. She looked familiar somehow but I can¡¯t place her. She took me by the hand and started pulling.


    I followed her because I didn¡¯t know what else to do. Besides, there was something about that forest. Somehow the trees felt anguished. I didn¡¯t want to be near them.


    There was this feeling that if I didn¡¯t leave then I¡¯d never get to leave. She led me out of the wood into a maze of buildings. The girl knew her way around so it wasn¡¯t so much a maze as it was a long winding construct. Like something someone put together on purpose except that¡¯d be crazy.


    No one can just move around buildings and no city planner would build like this. I know this because my Dad¡¯s a city planner and ¡®he¡¯ still complains about the first planners making the city¡¯s streets too narrow. The exit to the maze ran through an old clothing shop and there some no so dusty duds on the mannequin. So I wasn¡¯t naked by the time we got out.


    We¡¯d escaped, except that¡¯s just me being too dramatic, right? We¡¯d just been sort of lost for a bit. Though my heart was hammering like crazy after. The sky felt to big and Novem felt to wide. The vast immensity of the world overwhelming me. Time passed, precious time, it was probably only fifteen minutes or so, but it still felt bad to waste it.


    I saw that it was getting closer to evening and remembered that my parents would freak if I got back late. I wasn¡¯t even sure what I was doing all the way out here.


    I headed back home. It was surprisingly easy to find my way. Like super easy. A short ten minute walk was all it took to find my city, Inalkoy¡¯s main gate. I was lucky. I got inside,  before they closed things up for the night. I found my way home, to my house. Slipped inside and felt relieved.


    I don¡¯t know why but I really, really, wanted a shower. Maybe it was waking up in those leaves, or wandering through all those dusty, grimy, buildings. I wasn¡¯t like a neat freak or anything, but I guess it was just really that dirty. Or maybe it just got to me.


    I took a shower, and chucked the clothing from the store mannequin into the trash.


    Somehow I didn¡¯t think Mom would like me keep it. It was a bit risque, and she once fought me over a skirt that was just a little bit short. I don¡¯t think she¡¯d approve of me having a ¡®grown-up¡¯ nightgown.


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    ******


    I had the worst dream. It was nothing groundbreaking or worth talking about. It was just one of those dreams where something chases you. Except in mine I got caught, I don¡¯t remember what happened next but I do remember waking up in cold sweat, panting, heart hammering in my chest.


    On the verge of a full on freak-out, till I finally recognized that I was in my home. Home and safe. Somehow it helped that the little girl was there. She lay on the bed curled up next to me, but somehow seeing her, centered me.


    Dad says some people have a calming effect on others. But with her it was more like a feeling of  completeness. (Weird.)


    The door to my bedroom opened, and I saw my Mom there. Wide eyed and staring, giving me this way intense look.


    ¡°Hey...Mom. Hope I didn¡¯t wake you up?¡±


    She screamed for my dad and I heard him stomp in. I didn¡¯t get it, I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d done anything wrong. Dad came in and then he started staring, then he started crying.


    They both rushed in and grabbed me. It was scary, I almost forgot that we weren¡¯t strangers for a second. I¡¯d never seen them like this. Generally, they¡¯re calm even keeled folk.


    Dad¡¯s a city bureaucrat and like his coffee watered down. Mom¡¯s a legal aid, and complains if you move around too much, because it makes her anxious. They¡¯re not rushing and grabbing people. Pats on the head, affectionate snuggles. Those are more their speed.


    Suddenly they were Engulfing me in their arms. Hugging me, staring at me. Smelling me. Kissing.  Checking me out like they were trying to verify I was me. Asking me all these questions.


    Questions like,


    ¡°Where were you? What happened? Did someone take you?¡±


    Confusing things. What¡¯s weirdest is that they never asked about my new little sis. It¡¯s like they didn¡¯t see her.


    I said,


    ¡°Mom, what¡¯s wrong?¡±


    And she kept crying and dad was crying too and they were both squeezing me tight enough that I could feel my ribs cracking.


    I asked again.


    ¡°Did something happen, what¡¯s wrong?¡±


    They didn¡¯t answer me, they just kept holding me. Like they thought I¡¯d disappear if they let me go.


    You¡¯d have thought that they hadn¡¯t seen me in forever. It was only later when they¡¯d sort of calmed down, that I understood.


    ¡°Honey, you¡¯ve been missing for months.¡±

 18: Chili and Snowflakes

    I lay on my side, my back arching, every muscle in my body drawn taut. My teeth ground against each other, grinding away the scream that wanted to blast past my lips.


    Every nerve and neuron in my central nervous system and brain was a live wire. Every inch of my skin was on fire.


    I¡¯d never been in so much pain before.(Nah, I totally have, there¡¯s a reason why I call the bad place, the ¡®bad¡¯ place, but this is still pretty terrible.)


    *****


    There were three types of casters in Novem. The first were the witches and the warlocks, the innate casters. Men and women who were born with powers and just naturally were able to use magic.


    Then there were the non-innate casters, the magicians, and wizards and alchemists, who had to work at using magic, using theorems and formulas and materials to make magical things happen.


    Finally there were augmented, those who gained power through use of the creations of the non-innate. Using serums and parasitic weapons to gain magical powers.


    The augmented were the ones who got sent into the wastes and onto the battlefields because their powers were generally made for combat and quick practical use.


    The non-innates worked in background inventing magical technologies, creating monsters and super weapons and more or simultaneously destroying and saving civilization at the same time.


    Finally there were innate who more or less operated like the non-innate and augment, depending on the strength and nature of their inborn powers.


    As for why I¡¯m telling you all this...It¡¯s because I just became an augmented. (Or at least that was the plan.)


    *****


    I think I might have already mentioned that monsters prefered to gain their powers from ¡®mundane¡¯ means.


    While being a monster, a real monster, generally means that one could very well doing anything, that¡¯s just generally too expensive to be worth doing. I for instance, can move fairly quickly when I want to.


    And eroding my humanity a little allows me leeway when it comes dealing with the laws of force, momentum and space-time. But that¡¯s just from exaggerating the natural capabilities of a human-revenant.


    If I wanted more powers, and I didn¡¯t want to burn myself out I had to find some in-universe means of getting them.


    ******


    My willpower broke around hour nineteen, granted I¡¯d already more or less passed out by then.


    ¡°Arghahahaha¡­..Gah...Argh¡­.Aghahahaha¡­¡±


    I realized it was easier to just scream. It was fine, I was out in the waste where none but the beasties could hear me.


    So I screamed. I screamed and screamed, till my throat was raw and blood joined with the bile that was filling my throat and pouring out of my mouth.


    My bellows echoing out in the wastes, ghastly growling, snarling, cries that carried across the Novem wastes.


    ******


    So¡­.amongst the many things I found in the mansion of the one eyed boss of the Diamond Wolf Cartel, was a refrigerated case.


    A case full of syringes. They were drugs, but not the fun kind that the hedonistic former owner of my body had liked imbibing in.


    These were serums. Awakening Serums.


    It was the equivalent of finding a cache of surface to air rockets in the back of someone¡¯s  closet. Or like finding a working tank in someone¡¯s barn. Equivalent, because that was pretty much what it was.


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    Awakening Serums were sorcerous concoctions that could grant an individual powers. They were essentially full scale military weapons, that were not meant to get into the hands of civilian buyers.


    As such, they were all ¡®hot¡¯ as hell, and trying to sell them would have likely gotten through into some dungeon somewhere.


    After all even if I wasn¡¯t the idiot who stole highly sensitive military tech, I¡¯d have been the idiot trying to sell it.


    Considering my total lack of underworld connections I would have been caught and once I was caught there would have been no way explaining my way out of it.


    Thus I had a choice. I either could let them burn up with the house, because it ¡®was¡¯ on fire at the time. (Through no fault of my own¡­)


    Or I could take those syringes and maybe see if I could find some use for them. I held back on using them myself at first.


    Because ¡®duh¡¯...This was a case full syringes that were each full of scary substances that were meant to warp and contort the very nature of an individual¡¯s being till something ¡®else¡¯ came out.


    Turning soldiers into weapons. Hypothetically creating persons of Mass Destruction if I had happened to have stumbled onto a batch of the high ranking serums.


    Who knew what they would do to ¡®me¡¯? Someone who wasn¡¯t even fully human.


    Then later on my resolution started to waver. Maybe it was the fight with the ghoul mother, or maybe it was the fact that let¡¯s face it, superpowers are part of a man¡¯s romance.


    How many girls and boys grow up wishing at least once, that they had some kind of power?


    So this time when I was heading into the wastes I started thinking, maybe I should use them after all.


    ******


    I kept screaming till I could no longer scream. I realized that I was now bleeding out of every hole and pore on my body.


    My nails were torn and my skin was shredded. Through teary, blood fogged eyes I could see my veins glowing. Growing incandescent.


    The color of the light that issued out from under my skin shifting till suddenly all those blood vessels beneath my skin, burst.


    I went blind for a second and then in the next second I could see everything.


    Absolutely everything, I could see ¡®too¡¯ much. The world was horrifying its clarity.  My whole world was nausea, fear and existential despair. It was all a tad like the moment when I¡¯d first stopped being a man and finally gave into being a monster.


    The sensation was almost nostalgic. I found some calm as all the pain and ill-feeling finally stopped.


    ¡°Whew...is it finally ove-....?¡±


    My words were cut off by the sounds of terrific explosion. I went off like a bomb. Bursting. Wiping everything around me, for miles and miles.


    My only thought during before I presumed to be my death, was,


    ¡®Huh...maybe I ¡°shouldn''t¡± taken them all at once.¡¯

 19: Ghost Town

    ¡°....Ngh¡­.¡±


    Ah¡­.So Embarrassing, this whole experience reminds of my first time with alcohol. I was younger than I should have been, over-excited and having never drunk before, I didn¡¯t know how to pace myself.


    Thus my memories of that night stopped after shot number five. The rest of the evening was lost in darkness, and what few murky impressionistic recollections  I had of it,  were mainly based on what others told me had happened.


    *****


    The inside of my mouth tasted like hell, I¡¯m not being euphemistic here, or trying to be cute. It actually tasted of bile, blood,  brimstone, corpses, and suffering.


    I tried to spit a little in hopes of getting rid of the taste, but all I got was strings of goo dribbling down my chin, for my efforts. The taste was still there, and I got reminded of the fact that I¡¯d likely made myself into even more of an oddity.


    *****


    ¡°Ngh¡­¡±


    With some pain, and more than a little difficulty I got to my feet. The concrete cool against my bare soles. I looked around at the room I was in, and ignored the mild nausea I felt as I did so.


    It was more the sudden movement than the sight, that was making me feel ill, but it took me a second to get in the right headspace.


    *****


    The good news is that I didn¡¯t die...or at least I didn¡¯t stay dead, when I died.(Hooray for being undead, I guess.) The bad news is that I was in some kind of charnel pit, surrounded by bodies, covered in blood, bile and old gutter water.


    Which actually explained, the infernal taste in my mouth. My going theory for how I got their was two-fold. The first possibility was that some kind good samaritan wandered upon me and tried to save me.


    Discarding my body when they saw that I was a goner. Then there¡¯s the second theory, where whoever came across my dead(and or unconscious) body, had robbed me and then discarded the body when they were down.


    Considering that I was naked at the moment, without a stitch of clothing or gear on me, I was leaning more towards the latter than the former.


    ¡°Tch¡­.they could have at least left me my socks.¡± I grumbled. I¡¯d liked those socks. They were comfortable, just thick enough to feel like they were more than stockings, without being too thick.


    What I really wanted to know was what whoever took them was intending to do with them. There wasn¡¯t really a market for used socks. I guess they could sell it as cloth scrap but it didn¡¯t really seem worth it.


    *****


    *Clang!*


    I kicked down the door of the charnel pit, having decided that it was time for me to make my way out of there. Wherever it was, that I actually was. The door hit the wall and then just sort of stuck their.


    Twisted and bent.  I¡¯d kicked the door, because my hands were busy protectively cupping my family valuables, after all, I hadn¡¯t a clue what I¡¯d find on the other side of that door.


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    What I found was nothing, just silence and dust, and dirty laminated, floor tiling. I wandered through an empty hallway till I found an exit, then I kicked ¡®that¡¯ exit down as well.


    *Clang!*


    *****


    It occurs to me that I might have been oversimplifying when I previously discussed the sorts of people that lived out in the wastes.There¡¯s more than just bandits out here.


    There¡¯s also folk who used to be bandits who later settled down and folks who¡¯d just plain built little settlements for themselves, trading with scavengers and hunters like yours truly.


    Using magical tech and good old fashion Novemite gumption to carve out inhabitable slices of land for themselves.


    As to why I was thinking of this now, it was because it was becoming more and more clear that I was wandering through one of those settlements.


    I passed homes and, a building that might have been a simple school. Like any avid fan of adventure games and rpg games, I explored (trespassed), in hopes of finding someone or something to clarify the situation for me.


    I entered shops and storehouses and saw signs of recent inhabitance. Things like meals that were left half eaten and tvs and radios that were left still playing. Or clothes that were freshly layed out or hung up for dry cleaning.


    Some of which were ¡®borrowed¡¯ by me.) Or workshops with the tools still laid out. Sign that people had been there, just recently doing all things that people did.


    The only thing I didn¡¯t see were the people.


    *****


    I never did find out what happened to all the people but I did end up finding someone else that might have known. She was five foot seven and humpbacked. Her eyes sunken into her head. Her lips dry and receding, revealing jagged teeth.


    Her limbs were emaciated, spindly, and crawling with blackened, varicose veins. Her eyes glowed with light blue hellfire and her feet weren¡¯t quite touching the ground.


    When I ran into her she was gnawing on a piece of meat, that looked a lot like a small arm and there were two others just like her, who were tearing apart a heap of bodies.


    For such weak looking thing, she put out quite a bit of pressure. Wraiths were special kind of severed.


    They were Much more Magically talented, much more intelligent and much aggressive than your average undead.They were also largely immune to physical damage, unless it was done with some combination of blessed salt, true silver, or magic.


    It was a bit like I¡¯d walked into a pack of tigers, while they were at lunch. On the one hand, they had food right there, on the other hand, there was no guarantee they wouldn¡¯t just chase me down and kill me just ¡®cause.


    I tried to back away quietly before I was noticed. That went off as well as you¡¯d think it would.


    With me falling on my rear, while three sets glowing blue eyes turned to my position. Needless to say, I owe a big one finger salute to whichever joker put that trashcan behind me.

 20: Champagne and Bologne

    I sat in someone¡¯s living room, relaxedly committing a B and E, unconcerned about being caught because I was pretty sure the wraiths had gotten to all the former residents and any authorities who could catch me.


    I flipped through the channels and found static. I pressed the switch input button, and found a cartoon playing on the dvd player.


    I wasn¡¯t sure what I was watching at first then I looked over and saw the box for the dvd. Complete with the well-drawn, well-endowed main character on the cover.


    Cartoons here were a lot like cartoons in my old world, so I was unsurprised to find it was another tale about a student who was ¡®a little different¡¯ trying to balance the overly complex fantasy-opera that was her home life, with the travails and burdens of being a ¡®normal¡¯ teen.


    It looked kind of bad and the plot summary was convoluted, but I settled in to watch it anyway. I was kind of tired and didn¡¯t think I wanted to go anywhere just yet.


    ******


    I think I must have passed out because when I woke up, episodes four through thirteen had gone by and the show was already in its second season.


    ¡°Come on young Kumiko, You have to believe in yourself!¡± said the bearded old man on screen.


    Kumiko was dressed like some combination of circus clown, gladiator and ballerina and was facing up against anything that looked like it was made entirely out of fried-squid.


    She jumped up to fight it and was immediately caught, which was the point where I realized that I was watching a porno.


    I finished the episode though.(I was already kind of invested and had to see how she got out of it.) It turned out that the monster¡¯s semen was highly flammable. And self-confidence in that world apparently materialized as fireworks.


    *****


    The credits rolled down the screen and I turned off the tv. With a sigh, I stretched and then headed up the stairs. I was kind of hungry but I was more tired than I was hungry.


    I entered a random bedroom and flopped down onto the bed.


    Ah...if your wondering what happened to the wraiths, it should be obvious that I got away. I ''am'' still alive, right? (The POV didn''t suddenly stop or ominously change?)


    The lead wraith bore down on me, and I flailed, wildly swinging my fists because going out, screaming with my eyes closed, wasn''t my prefered way to go.


    The plain physical force I brought to bear wasn¡¯t exactly effective, but the flames that came out of my hands the very next second, were.


    Which was the point where I was reminded that I was supposed to be Magical now. An Augmented.


    *****


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Like any delicately balanced horror, the fear kind of went away once In realized that I was armed. I spent the next four hours experimenting with my new powers.


    I¡¯d idiotically injected myself with seven gene altering Awakening Serums. And instead of just dying for my stupidity I got seven new powers instead.


    I have no clue about the caliber of the serums I took because my monstrous nature was always going to exaggerate them and boost them. I guess it doesn¡¯t matter. What does matter was my powers could do.


    The first blow I landed on that first wraith, exploded, spitting flame and smoke. Making my flesh sizzle, burning me though I almost immediately healed from it. Apparently I¡¯m not entirely immune to my own powers.


    The second blow on the second wraith, was accompanied by the appearance of a sharp white spike and a explosion of quickly melting, white powder.


    One fist brought fire, the other ice. The third wraith was killed by a swarm of ravens, or considering the chitinous hide beneath their feathers, and their compound eyes, they might have been insects. Bugs.


    Either way they were somehow magical enough to sting the wraith until she was paralyzed and tear her apart. Her insides melting from the venom.


    After killing those first wraiths I wandered through town, resuming my search for survivors. I didn¡¯t find any.


    Instead I found more wraiths, which I used to explore my new powers. On top of my new ability to control fire and ice, which my anomalous nature had immediately consolidated into a wholesale if slightly limited, and very painful, ability to control energy and entropy.


    Which came with the freebie of also allowing me to control electricity as well. (Which was also painful.)


    There was also my ability to summon bugs, that could apparently be combined with either my fire, electricity or my ice. I had an ability manipulate and exude a magical force of some sort. (Telekinesis? Wind Control?).


    I¡¯d gained an ability to sort of slide sideways through space. Teleporting for short distances. Or at least teleporting as far as my essence would carry me.


    And apparently I could heal things, something I realized when I accidently brought one of the wraiths I¡¯d nearly killed, back to its feet.


    As for my sixth and seventh new powers they were just highly redundant and extraneous boosts to physical strength and regenerative ability.


    In short I¡¯d been turned into a stock wizard from any rpg, anywhere, nothing groundbreaking but all in all a very serviceable turn of events.


    I kind of wished that I¡¯d gained the ability to fly but I guess short-range teleportation was fine too. And I could always just keep using my old standby of jumping really, really high and then aiming carefully for the landing, to get around when I was traveling in the outer-wastes.


    As I drifted off to sleep dead exhausted, my only complaint was that my monster nature had boosted everything to the point that I¡¯d likely need to concentrate on power-leveling myself so I didn¡¯t nearly die of exhaustion each time I used these new powers of mine.