A distant sound rumbled beneath the white noise. Glaring brightness blinded the corner of William’s eye. Turning his head, he found it to be the headlights of an approaching eighteen wheeler.
Of course it’s you, truck-kun.
Before William could feel the no doubt unforgettable full body embrace of a truck bumper, a whiteness filled his vision. Sharp pain ignited all across him, tearing William’s body into empty blackness.
2
An overpowering nausea threatened to choke William. He retched. Every bone, muscle, and organ ached. His body felt like it had been pulped into dough, jerked around a thousand miles per hour, slammed into the floor from orbit, and, as a final humiliation, kneaded on by a gang of angry step dancers.
William climbed on his knees, surprised to find the pain subsiding from skull shattering throbs into barely noticeable and then nothing in a matter of moments.
Bright amber warmth flickered through his shut eyes. Between his fingers spilled tufts of a soft verdant mattress, which crumbled under touch. It smelled of earth and spring. Moss. I’m in the woods?
Standing up, William began to awaken. Memories of last night trickled in. He’d been on the road for hours, caught mom and her family red handed with a pick-up truck full of grandpa’s stuff, and almost started a surreal gaming session with estranged friends.
He’d been killed by a contorted floating cuboid.
William’s heart skipped a beat. He patted himself down in panic. No holes anywhere, no mangled limbs, and yet, something felt off.
Looking down, he didn’t see the extra love handles he’d put on since college. Instead, beneath his neck began a sculpture of chiseled perfection. Wiry muscles twitching under veiny skin. Even the scar he’d gotten from a shop-lifting kid’s pencil was gone. It was perfect. He was perfect. William touched his face to check if he was handsome too, only to realize he had absolutely no idea what his face was supposed to feel like. He pulled down his black boxers to check downstairs, only to feel deep all encompassing relief at the sight of an old friend.
With a deep breath he looked around.
The moss painted room and heaps, which might have once been furniture, were shrouded in cool-blue shades of dawn.
Beyond an arched doorway spread a ruined avenue of cracked rust-red slabs, half mummified by wiry ivy and shrubbery. Stepping into the bright warm, William was struck by a nearly disorienting view of tall layered gardens and spiraling architecture that rivaled modern sky-scrapers in height. Moss painted carvings decorated the terrace parapets and age eroded statues of both slightly alien and mythical stood atop the pillars and onion-shaped domes of the towers.
Cool.It’s like some post apocalyptic Martian version of Babylonian gardens.
Craning his neck, William squinted at the sky and his eyes widened despite the sun’s glare. Beyond the deep ultramarine sky stretched a white dotted line from one horizon to the other and on its left side loomed two crescent moons, which marked the place as neither Mars nor Babylon.
Dumbstruck, William stared at the world around him, slowly breathing in the flowering nature. A light warm breeze brought past him a chirp of wildlife.
I’m in another world.
William swallowed and licked his lips, taking a scan to see if anyone was around. It felt dumb, but he had to try it, didn’t he? He whispered, “Status.”
Nothing happened.
“Status window open.”
Nothing.
“Properties?”
Still nothing, but he wouldn’t be discouraged so easily. William shut his eyes, clenched his fists and thought about opening a status window with every fiber of his being like he was shitting a sewer clog after three days of constipation. But, in the end, nothing happened besides colors swirling at the backs of his eyelids.
No status screen popped up, but, as he focused, William felt something else: An odd warmth that swelled with every beat of his heart and diffused throughout his body. At first he thought it was his blood, but when focused on, it shifted like a veil of mist, swirling to his whim. It spread a funny tingle over his insides, making William blink.
Even with eyes open he felt it now. Its presence suffused his very being. It wasn’t cold or hot or accurately describable with any sense he had ever had. But it was there. And William was sure as hell he hadn’t had it on Earth.
So, either I’m about to have a stroke or this is my soul or mana or chi or something like that? Please don’t be a stroke.
He had a strong gut feeling that the multi angled thingamajig that had vaporized him was to blame. So, it had to be magic. Unless…
William squinted his eyes as he scrutinized the details of the sky above, trying to see the pixels and polygons, but could spot neither. If he was in some kind of alien simulation it had William’s monkey brain perfectly fooled, though if there were aliens, he doubted any of them would go through the trouble. Plus, if this had been a digital simulation of some sort, there sure as hell should’ve been some kind of status window popping open by now. No, it seemed like William was still stuck roughly somewhere in the neighbourhood of reality.
Scratching his head, William pondered on what to do.
To the left rose a crumbling thicket of towers, which shrouded the street in shadows. To the right spread a skyline of abandoned palaces, beyond which drifted into the clear sky pillars of smoke.
Smoke means people.
Or monsters.
Inspecting the myriad of sculptures William noted humans among them, tastefully clothless or draped in baggy robes and keyffiyeh. People, human people, lived here, or used to live. Well, at least I can go take a look.
Hiking up the slow incline between the ruins, William noticed when two dog sized monkeys with gold-white fur started following him. They kept yipping
