There and back again

“Please hold the line.”

“I'm back! Whose idea was it to take me to a haunted house? Not funny! What is this thing here even? How about some explanations?”

“Please hold the line.”

In fact I was probably more scared about what just happened than truly angry. But I was in urgent need of blowing off some steam before somebody could get hurt by my words. As I learned the last time, it didn’t do me any good if I enraged the people up there, or from wherever they had been talking to me.

“Who comes up with the ideas for these scenarios?”

“We will be at your service as soon as the next employee is ready to talk to you. Please hold the line.”

“Alright. This again…. I mean how many customers could you possibly have right at this moment?”

“Several millions.”, answered the voice that had sent me to the haunted house.

I would have jumped up on my feet in surprise, if I had something to push myself into standing position.

The voice laughed devilishly.

“I have to say I was quite entertained until you suddenly decided to just off yourself. I mean really? Come on. You could have at least tried to leave the room for some more days. But it gave the word ‘dead end’ a whole new meaning.”, she laughed again.

“You should cherish your life a little more. From this place here it looked like you had little to no hesitation to just end it.”, said a second voice that sounded a little more compassionate than the other one.

“The door was locked.”, I said like it explained it all.

“And still maybe there would have been another way. You can’t just trust that if you die, you will just return to this place. Sometimes there is no going back. And even then, there is a limit to how often you can change worlds before you finally have to settle down.”, the voice explained.

“Then explain the rules to me! Or at least what I have to do!”

“You have to find it out by yourself. It is your life after all.”, the voice said.

“Boring. Let’s finally get rid of this guy!”, interrupted the other voice.

“There is only one thing I can tell you before you leave. If nothing unexpected happens, you have five tries left.”

As the more compassionate voice said this the other voice apparently prepared the slingshot again, because as the voice ended, I immediately got shot again towards the shining light.

Shining light. Was this the light at the end of the tunnel everybody had always talked about? The light that was the synonym of the afterlife?

Regarding what had happened until this point it would kind of make sense at least. So this was the afterlife? Or was it a life after my old one? This would explain why I still could die.

As I passed the wall of shining light I closed my eyes again. As the movement stopped, I opened them again, just to immediately squeeze them shut again.

It was noon, the sun was burning and there was no wind. I tried to open my eyes and waited until they got used to the light surroundings.

The ground of the area around was slightly reddish-brown and there were almost no plants growing. I was still wearing the clothes I had worn in the mansion, just without the blood-stains I should definitely have on them by now.

Cleaning-service in another world., I thought with a grim smile.

What would it be this time? Fantasy world? Ghosts? Or something worse? For some reason I didn’t feel the wish to find out which world they had chosen for me this time.

Unlike the time in the grassland I had an indication of a direction I should walk to. There was a simple road under my feet. At least the ground looked like a lot of people had decided that this was the best way to reach the next important place. So both directions would sooner or later lead to a town or city.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”, I said to myself as I started to walk into the direction that seemed more promising to me, without being able to think of reasons why it looked more promising.

Why did it have to be a desert? And why didn’t they send me to a spot that was closer to a city? Apparently, I started off the wrong way with this first voice. Maybe it would have went differently if I would have just been a little more friendly.

Also they send me unequipped. Or maybe I could take anything with me as long as I had it on me the moment I died? Next time I would need some weapons, something to make money off, since it was likely that this world’s money would be worthless in the next one, and most importantly some water.

Right now I would have killed for even the smallest drop of water. Just a small drop of this cool liquid of life to wet my dry throat.

But now I had to keep walking. Taking a break would kill me, because I wouldn’t be able to move on anymore. I had five more tries, at best. And even if they claimed differently, I wasn’t looking forward to die. I didn’t want to die. Not at all. But back in my old life, I had already reached the point where I felt indifference toward the end of my own life. Maybe that was what the second voice wanted to tell me?

A calm wind arose. It was blowing steadily but only for a few short moments and made my hakama wave in the wind. For a moment I felt like a samurai that was transported into a cowboy movie, when the wind brought a silent rattling sound towards my ear.