I was standing next to the Reaper. He was a pretty cool person. When I said cool, I meant that he was emitting chilling air. I had assumed the Reaper was a male because of his deep voice. He wore a tattered hooded cloak of which sleeves covered his hands and legs. He was not wielding a scythe nor did he have red glowing eyes. I asked him a question because I was curious. He told me that he did not look like this. He could be both male and female. How he looked like was up to how his victims wanted him to represent.
The feeling of death was pretty strange. It was unexplainable but basically I feel nothing at all. It was also rather dull. There was no white light before this. The truth was I did not remember much. After the pain disappeared, I was standing in the middle of nowhere, next to the personification of Death himself. There was no ground, no walls, no ceilings and no things. If I were to give it a colour, it would be grey.
Out of nowhere, I was standing on the ground. It was a dirt path in the middle of a grassy field. The sky was blue with white clouds. There were a cluster of trees behind me. I looked around. The Reaper was standing next to me. The both of us were not the only people there. In front of them was a crowd and further ahead was a small white concrete building. With his hollow and hoarse voice, the Reaper told me to line up before disappearing.
I did so. There were five equal lines of people and I took a place behind one. Despite the fact that the line looked long, it went pretty quickly. Soon, I was standing in front one of the glass counters, signing my name and giving my prints. I could feel the pen in between my fingers. It was the first time I managed to feel something since I met the Reaper. I gave my signature and left. That was it. I was done, lost in this strange new world. I had no idea what to do next.
This was what death was. There was no heaven or hell; there was only this. I should be feeling something life changing. I should be scared or probably relieved but I did not. I felt indifference. In fact, I felt filled with life, despite the fact I was dead. I asked myself what I should be doing and what was there to do. There was also the question of where do I go from here. Then, I realised something. I did not feel any tears on my clothes. When I died, my clothes were like cheese filled with holes. I grabbed the bottom of my tee shirt and tugged it to remove the creases. There was nothing. I was wearing a brand new red tee shirt and a new part of the same trousers. That was strange.
"Clothes are irrelevant, if that was what you were thinking." a voice echoed. I looked up and realised that my train of thoughts had led me to a different location. I had walked into the woods subconsciously while thinking. My head tilted to the direction of the sound. A man stepped from behind the trees. His jet-black hair was unkempt and he had a rugged chin. He stood there in front of me. He had a large chest and biceps hidden under the messy blue shirt he was wearing. He had black trousers on as well. Even though he looked muscular, he was still rather thin.
"You can wear any clothes you want if you imagined it," he went on and added, "Go ahead and try."
I closed my eyes and focused on a blue tee shirt and when I opened, I noticed the hue on my clothes started to shift. The red darkened into purple and became navy blue. I tested a bit more. I imagined it to be a collared shirt of the same colour and the material around the neck folded itself into a collar. Buttons popped all the way down centre. Immediately, I turned it back into a red tee shirt and glanced back at the man standing in front of me.
"New face, eh?" he noted.
"Yea," I replied, "I'm Tam, and you are...?"
"Names are irrelevant," he stated, "But I go by Dave and sometimes David. And you so happen to stumble on my home."
"Home?" I asked confusedly, "Do people sleep in—where am I?"
"We're in the woods," he answered, "And homes are irrelevant. You can sleep at about anywhere, newcomer. I just like the woods."
"Then where else can people sleep?" I asked
"You can stay in shelters or hotels. There are places like those."
"Do you need money?"
"Money is irrelevant," he said and explained, "There's no such thing as currency around here. Everything here is free! It is heaven—or hell if you prefer—after all."
"How long have you been here?"
"Time is—"
"Irrelevant," I finished for him.
"That's it, kid," he said, "Now, you're getting it."
"So how do we know when?"
"To avoid confusion, the days are the same as when you were alive. Twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute. But we don't have years here. We just call them by days. Today is Day 245. After a thousand days, it'll restart back to Day 1."
"Feelings are irrelevant too," I guessed.
"You're pretty smart, kid," he praised and continued, "There's not much of pain and pleasure senses in this world, so don't go thinking about doing anything naughty. Unless—"
He hesitated and waited for him to continue. The way he said it caught my attention. His mouth moved while he rubbed his rugged chin.
"There's this tournament..." he started before straying off.
"Is it irrelevant?" I asked.
"No, it's not" he disagreed, "The tournament occurs once every two hundred and fifty days which is Day 250, Day 500, Day 750 and Day 1000. When submitted in the tournament, you can feel physical pain and pleasure. More pain though. Emotional pain, however—"
He sighed. He looked depressed. His eyes wandered to the skies. Then, his expression changed. He looked spirited. He was filled with energy.
"You!" he exclaimed and pointed a finger at me, "You should join the tournament. It is called—actually, I can't remember what it was called but nevertheless, you should participate!"
"Why me?" I asked.
"Because you look like you have spirit!" he bellowed.
"Why not you?" I asked again.
"I can't. It's past my time," he said as he placed his hand on the tree bark with force.
"Oh," I uttered, "So, do I just submit my name?"
"Of course not," he chuckled, "Not yet anyways. Let me help you. Let me be the one to train you. You can't go like this. All participants need a power or ability or whatever you'd like to call it."
"Oh," I uttered once more, "I don't have any powers or abilities."
"You're in luck, kid," he said with a grin, "I had a power."
"You had?" I questioned, "It's gone?"
"Now I have a few more," he said, as his cheeks extended his grin, "That is if you want to compete."
My lips came together and my mind started to think. I replied, "I'd have to think about it."
Suddenly I thought of something. I asked, "What if I win?"
"What if you win," he repeated and continued, "You'll get anything you want!"
I finally made up my mind and agreed to join the tournament. He rolled his hand into a fist and stuck his thumb up, giving me a thumb up. We continued on deeper in the woods. He told me that he would need a wider area to train and there was a clearing close by. During the walk, he explained to me more about my location. There was no appropriate name for heaven or hell. Each belief had given its own name. No one knew exactly where it was either. The majority here called it 'Second Home'.
After a while, the journey got quiet and it was longer than I thought. I was getting a bit tired. I guessed exhaustion was still part of my body. The forest was rather quiet. There was no chirping, buzzing, humming or tweeting. It was dead. There was only the howling wind which made the trees rustled.
"So—" I started, "What was the tournament for?"
"You try living here for thousands of days," he complained, "It started with boredom. Someone told me the story. When the first few people came here, it was the time where there was nothing. So, this place was just like home. However, since the only entertainment was—let's not go there."
He let out a soft cough before continuing, "Well, since there was pretty much nothing to do, they started beating each other up. It was no fun since no one could die. No one could die again for that matter and there was no physical pain."
We walked over a large root propped up from the ground. He paused to watch his footing because he almost tripped earlier. This part of the forest was much crowded than the area he was sleeping. Once he made the path, he went on, "Luck was on our side. Whoever created this land was impressed by the idea and decided to come up with this tournament. He gave a few individuals powers and he named one of them the head of the tournament. The head can grant any wish to the champion but within limits obviously. Soon, the few individuals spread their powers. Those individuals are called masters and they give their students their powers or ability or talents or whatever you'd like to call them. The students would compete and soon become masters. After a certain age—"
"I thought age was irrelevant," I interrupted.
"Oh, sorry," he apologised and corrected himself, "I meant after a certain attempt, depending on their rank, they cannot continue and they can either keep their powers or train new students. The tournament has about—"
He started using his fingers. He stared at his wriggling fingers. He stopped abruptly, almost hitting a tree in front of him. If he did not have any shoes on, he might even use his toes.
"The tournament has about one thousand participants and the ones below two-hundred-and-fiftieth rank can retake it twice."
"That's a lot," I commented.
"Numbers are irrelevant," he smiled, "Besides, you only care about your own zone. This world is big and they want everyone involved. There're about a hundred per zone. If not mistaken, we are in Zone 2."
He stopped and I almost walked into him from behind. I scuttled aside and took a look at the view. In front of me was a large clearing with trees around it perimeter. There were miles and miles of grass and the sky could be seen clearly. There were no mountains ahead, just blue and lots of it.
"T—that's..." I stammered. I was speechless. It was magnificent and that beauty stole my breath. The wind was cool but not as cool as Death—just perfect. David just nodded.
"Your training begins today," he said, "We only have five days."
He pointed at a location in the middle of the clearing in the distance and asked me to stand there.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked with uncertainty.
"Oh, it's simple," he said before taking out a folded meaty object from his pocket and tossed it to me. It was wet, and gooey with red substance. I clearly knew what it was. He tossed me a piece of raw meat covered with blood. It smelled too. Once I managed to catch it in my hands, David brought a finger from each hand into his mouth and blew. He let out a whistle which was quickly followed by a mighty roar. The roar was terrifying. My legs started shaking. Then, from behind of David, a large shadow emerged from out of the trees. The sunlight caught it and I could see a majestic lion with golden mane leapt over him. Everything seemed to slow down. I could see the beast in the air, barely missing him. Upon seeing that, I forced my body to turn around. It took some effort but I managed to spin around and dashed further into the seemingly everlasting field.
The run would have been much easier if I were not being chased by a carnivorous animal. I tried to calm myself down. If I were calmer I would be able to run much faster. However, that roar had a side effect. It caused panic in me. I even tossed the raw meat a side in hope that it would take that instead of me. I was wrong. I was doing pretty well surprisingly. Lions were supposed to be faster than humans. It seemed that I was faster. That or it was just toying with me. The latter was a better reason because all of a sudden, the creature sprung over me and blocked my path. I saw that come and turned to the side, breaking with my sneakers. I immediately pushed myself off the ground and continued running. I hoped it ended sooner. I was getting tired. My legs, even though they were not hurting, were slowly turning into jelly. Soon, I was almost back at David. He looked like a stick figure from a distance. It was too late though. The lion pounced on me, sending me to the ground and pinning me down there. I could feel its breath on my neck. The heat from it send my hair rising. Instead of chewing into my flesh, it started licking me and let out another roar. This time, I could understand what it was saying. It said it was not going to eat me. David came up to me and let out a deep laugh.
"I can understand it," I said with relief.
"Language is irrelevant," he said with laughter, "And this is Cat."
"Cat—," I repeated, "—the lion. Ironic."
"Move along now," said David to Cat and she grabbed the meat before leaping away. She roared before leaving to which he argued, "I'm not crazy at all."
I got to my feet and David was standing above me. He commented, "You ran pretty fast. I got just the power for you."
He took a few steps back and the sky turned darker. It was only dark above us. In the distance, there was still sun but only the area around us had a grey cloud. He rubbed his open hands together and took a few deep breaths.
"I haven’t done this for a while," he muttered to himself. Finally, he pointed at me with the other hand pointing the sky. There was a flash of light when the lighting struck his hand. For a moment, he body surged with electricity, emitting sparks. He released all of that with a bolt of lightning towards me. It arced from the tip of his finger and at my body. I felt the force pushed me back. My body fed with power. If I could die again, I would have been dead. I could feel the energy working my muscles. I could not breathe. My heart pounded against the chest and pounded faster than usual. I could feel my insides being shredded. My limbs were moving on their own. I had no control over anything. My brain, on the other hand, felt a mixture of ecstasy and torment. I could not smell, touch, taste or hear. Random images popped in my head, as though the electricity was picking random memories from my mind. In a while, it all just disappeared and I was left charred with trails of smoke escaping my body.
David came up and patted me and lowered his voice, "That was irrelevant but it looked cool."
I coughed out a puff of smoke. Remnants of the electricity sparked out from my body. I felt no difference after the last of the tingly sensation disappeared.
"That was weird," I stated.
"I haven't done that in a while," he told.
"So, what happens now?" I asked.
"Walk and focus your finger on something," he instructed. I shuffled my feet against the green as I walked. I could feel something charged up inside of me. I pointed my finger at the ground a few meters from me. The surge inside rushed out from my body and jumped straight to the location I aimed. I closed my eyes when the bright light flashed. It was not good; it pierced right through my eyelids. I forced them to open and when I did, I could see a bolt of lightning from my hand to the ground. Within a split-second, everything was as it was except for the small fire on the grass. David put it out with one step and patted me on the back. I could feel it but I did not see it. I was too focused on my hands which looked perfectly unscathed.
"If only I could do that before..." I wondered and drifted off.
"That is irrelevant," said David to me, "What's relevant is the future."
And so began my life after life.
It was Day 248 and there was two more days till the battle. David had submitted my name. I had been training and I had not got this much exercise when I was alive. In fact, the two and a half days of training I had was almost the amount of training I had in my entire life. I had been practising various combinations with my fighting style and my new ability to create a large amount of static by walking. I did not have much of a fighting style but just whatever I picked up along the way. David assured me that I did not need to know martial arts even though it would help if I did.
It was a pretty strange thing to happen to me. Meeting up with David and joining the tournament was the strangest. I wondered what happened if I did not meet him. My mind began to wander as I jabbed the brown body of the tree. Punching the bark was tiring and getting quite repetitive.
I looked at my knuckles. They were badly bruised but when I touch the wound, it tingled. There was no pain. I would not be feeling any pain until the tournament started. The first round of the tournament was an open match. The arena was wherever two or more competitors met. Apparently I was supposed to be able to recognise any other participants easily. I was still confused by that but time would tell.
The sound of fist against wood was getting louder. I was not the only one in the forest. I slowed my punches and the sound was more obvious. I took a glance at my wounds once more and a new layer of skin had wrapped around the bruise. I glanced back at the bark and noticed that it was shaking, even though I was not touching it. Then there was a crack. The crack raced across the bark and started splitting. That one single line turned into twos and threes. After that, it started creaking. There were rustling as the tree swayed on its own. All of a sudden, the whole tree tilted towards me. I dodged it with a jump to the side just before the tree crashed beside of me. I barely missed it.
On the ground, I could see a tall boy standing behind the stump of the fallen tree. His hand was rolled up into a fist at the air where the tree once stood. He had brown hair. His face hid behind his long brown hair. The rest of his body was engulfed in shadow. Either that or he was wearing pure black. He frowned. I saw the side of his cheeks sunk down into an upside-down smile. He moved on to the next tree and with one punch, gravity brought the tree down towards me. I rolled aside but some of the branches managed to hit me. I crawled out from under the tree and realised that he was aiming for me indirectly. He did not want to know that he saw me.
However, he realised that I knew his plan and decided to change tactics. I knew because he was looking right at my face. I could hear his bone popped as he cracked his knuckles. After aiming a fist at me, out of nowhere, dart-like spines shot at me. I managed to avoid all but one which caught me tee shirt and pinned me to the nearby tree. I tugged on my clothes but it would not budge. I managed to avoid a few more of those spines but he was coming closer. I thought I was a goner when suddenly, just as one more was about to pin my face, someone dragged me to the opposite side of the tree, ripping my tee shirt in the process.
"Hi," he greeted. He looked calmed, even uncertain of the danger we were in. He had the lost look in his face and a bit confused.
I noticed the tore in my clothes slowly repairing as the exposed threads danced on top of each other.
"Hi. Should we run?" I asked. There were more thud sounds. It was presumable the work of the other person. Both of us decided to run. The new person I met was not as fit when it came to sprinting as I was. I slowed down slightly so he could catch up.
"What's your name?" I asked during our run.
"Uh," he mumbled before drawing in a deep breath, "I think it was Andrew."
"You think?"
"Names confuse me," he explained, "Wouldn't it be better if the world everyone had no name? We'll be called in codes."
"My name's Tam," I replied, "I'd shake your hands if we weren't running."
As we continued on, I saw Andrew's hand moving vigorously as though it was shaking. It could be my imagination. Soon, we decided stopped. I turned behind to check but no one was in sight.
"What're you doing here?" I asked and added, "Are you part of the tournament as well?"
He paused to think and it took him a while but in the end, he replied, "I was running, I think, away from this tall person."
"And the tournament?"
"Tournament? Sounds familiar," he said, "I'm in some sort of battle... thingy."
"You're in the tournament too I guess," I answered.
I finally let my guard down and too some fresh breaths of air. I panted a bit. My companion was still calm.
"Let's try not to fight each other," I suggested.
"Okay," he replied.
Later, we spent the whole day at a café. Andrew was an interesting person. He might be intelligent but he seemed to have forgotten most of what he learnt. He was also partially unsure of what he was saying. We had an intriguing conversation as he twisted most of what I was trying to say or ask. That day was pretty weird but he did not stay for too long. As soon as the sun set, he left to head back to his area and I went back to my training.
Day 250 came pretty quickly. I woke up early on the bed of a small motel nearby the forest. There were individual rooms but shared bathrooms. I got up pretty early. I was anxious and did not get much rest because of that. I decided to hit the showers and the cold water woke me up even further. The gush of chilly clear water splashed on my back. It was pretty strange that the utopia we dreamt off when we died did not have hot showers in this motel but they had free flow of food and stuff to buy. My drifting thoughts made the shower felt like a trip to the North Pole in the nude. I decided to focus my thoughts to ignore the cold as I finished the rest of my shower.
While I got dressed, I realised that here was like the normal world but with peace, infinite resources, no currency, no pain, and no technology. There was still such thing as cold showers and sleep.
The motel room was quite small—just enough for one bed, a side table and walking space. I tossed my towel on the hook behind the door and headed outside. There was two ways out my room. There was the conventional way of walking out the front door, down four flights of stairs, past the reception and out the front door, or simply out the window. I chose the latter way. The latter way had a whole lot of roof. It was the roof to the reception which stuck out from the main building. I climbed out the window and slid down the roof.
Right before I reached the edge, two balls of fire flew towards me and exploded before my shoes. I used the friction on my shoes to slow me down. I could feel the heat rising and it hurt. I managed to slow down but I noticed the roof was much steeper than before. The area of impact had caused the clay tiles to melt into mud. I did not know how that happened but I could not care less. Brown sludge dripped from the edge of the roof. I stood up and got a clearer look at the commotion on the ground. There were two people around a ring of crowd; one of them had fire and the other looked dirty. The dirty looking person raised his hands and I noticed mud from the roof flowed in the air towards his hands. My feet felt heavier. I tried lifting it but I realised that I was sinking into the roof. Most of the tiles on the roof had turned to sludge. I ran across the roof and jumped off the side. There was a pole on the adjacent building to which I managed to grab on to break my fall.
Standing in the alley between both buildings, I started to wonder. The two people fighting had red aura beneath their feet. I guessed they must be participants of the tournament. I wondered where David and Andrew were. Then I glanced down and noticed I had blue aura beneath my feet. I thought it was pretty weird at the same time pretty neat. I took a detour to the woods so I would not have to bump into the crowd. I snuck out the other end of the alley and I stole a glance behind me. Through the narrow alley, I could still see the crowd and random glows of light with a splash of dirt. When I turned back, someone was standing in front of me. He was slightly taller than me wearing a nice shirt. His black trousers added the feeling that he was going to attend a formal event. He had long black hair which almost reached his shoulders. He raised his gloved hands with his palm towards me. Strapped behind his back were a few rectangular boards. He also had red aura beneath his feet like the other two people.
"My name is Lim," he announced as he unbuckled the strap, letting the boards drop to the ground. After which he added, "I'll be your opponent for today."
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