"Bro, it's been a week and you're saying you still haven't repaired it?"
"I lost my mom a week ago."
"..."
The room fell into a heavy pause as the customer's face twisted with discomfort, clearly unsure whether to curse him or offer sympathy.
Ander Skyler leaned against the glass counter of his cramped repair shop, eyes blank and tone unreadable, waiting.
"Mmm… I'm sorry… well then, I'll come back in a few… days."
The bell above the door jingled as the guy stormed out. Ander remained still for a while, then wiped his face with both hands and allowed himself a small, humorless smile.
The truth was, his mother had died years ago, but grief was a convenient excuse.
Nobody questioned sorrow. It had the power to delay rent, dodge arguments, or defuse angry customers.
Even though Ander hated lying, sometimes you had to do it for a better outcome, and it's not like lying was the only thing he hated.
He hated sleep too.
Every time he allowed his body to rest, it betrayed him. The world would spin in strange angles, his vision warping, his limbs turning to concrete.
His chest would seize up, his jaw frozen mid-scream, and his mind would watch helplessly as nightmares played on repeat.
This morning had been no different. He saw her again, his mother dying, coughing, reaching toward him. Her mouth moved like she was calling his name, but no sound ever reached him.
It was a loop with no end, the kind of dream that left him feeling hollow long after he woke. Such was the terror of sleep paralysis.
Maybe peace was something not meant for him.
His childhood hadn't been any better. School had been the epitome of humiliation and boredom. He wasn't good at math, couldn't memorize dates or formulas, and his attention span was barely long enough to finish a sentence in class.
There were no sports trophies, no top-rank certificates, no doting relatives pointing at him with pride.
The only thing he could do better than anyone else was tear things apart, anything with screws, hinges, latches, or locks.
Maybe it was frustration or just a compulsion to see what was hidden inside. It started with toys, like the bright blue JCB truck his mother had saved up to buy for his birthday.
He had dismantled it by the next morning, its pieces scattered across the floor like a plastic autopsy. The same fate awaited the fridge, the microwave, and eventually the house inverter.
That last one earned him a full slap across the face and a month of cold dinners.
He had no father. Just a ghost story about a college guy who knocked up a naïve twenty-year-old and vanished into the night like he never existed.
Maybe that was why his mother never married again. She worked long hours in shops and kitchens, always moving, always tired, never once complaining.
Ander remembered her as a figure of quiet exhaustion, someone who gave everything she had without asking for anything in return. She never had time to be soft, and in turn, neither did he.
Maybe it was those cheap, runaway genes or maybe just cosmic design that ensured he never stood out. He wasn't particularly smart or talented.
The only things he had going for him were his above-average face and a bit of natural charm that, combined with a halfway decent body, gave him luck with women once in a while.
Still, good looks didn't pay the bills. Repairs did. He learned how to crack open mobile phones, replace busted screens, clean boards, and lie with a straight face.
Over time, he saved just enough to open a shop the size of a closet and call it his.
It wasn't much, but it was survival.
Outside, the red light of dusk filtered through the torn curtain. He looked around the narrow room one last time and reached for the shutter.
"With this, it's time to close it."
The metal rolled down with a loud clatter, sealing off the shop from the noise outside.
Ander was an atheist; he didn't believe in gods.
But even that began to change when he could no longer wake up peacefully each morning.
Whether it was stress or something else, he started experiencing sleep paralysis.
His mind would wake up, but his body remained frozen.
And in those moments, he often saw things—things nightmares wouldn't do justice. Nightmares were too kind a word for what he endured.
Eventually, he pulled up in front of a corner drugstore, its half-lit sign flickering above.
Behind the counter sat an old man, shirt unbuttoned, belly spilling out, a dusty fan above him spinning like it might take off.
"You got white Candies? Strong ones. Like, knock-you-out, take-you-to-heaven kind of strong."
The old man gave him a long stare, eyes narrowing like he was about to deliver a sermon.
Then he reached under the counter.
"Hah… another youth on the path to ruin. Don't overdose, boy."
"Mm… here."
Every day, Ander took psilocybin mushroom capsules to calm his mind, to dull the fear. It was absolutely illegal here, police would drag you to hell if you got caught, but anything that brought peace was worth trying.
The old man handed over a strip of white capsules.
Silently, Ander slipped them into his pocket.
"Also, two strong beers."
He pointed at the fridge without saying more.
Two bottles clinked onto the counter. These were the kind with at least sixteen percent alcohol in them. He paid in crumpled notes and walked out.
It was time to face his worst enemy — sleep.
It didn't take long before he was back home again, wandering into the silence of his three-story building like a man retracing the steps of a familiar nightmare.
He tossed his jacket somewhere near the couch, boiled a pack of instant noodles with robotic ease, and then went to bedroom and collapsed onto his bed, where the night truly began.
A can of beer was cracked open, followed by another; he ate a handful of stale peanuts without looking, without caring.
Then came the capsule, dry on his tongue, bitter down his throat, and before he could even reach for the third drink, the effect slammed into him like a truck.
One moment, Ander was lifting the second can to his lips, and the next his head tilted sideways with unnatural slowness, the ceiling lurching above him like a canvas of wet paint peeling away from the edges of reality.
The walls distorted around him, stretched and warped like a dream unraveling at its seams.
The ceiling fan above groaned with the sound of something dying, old, rusty, and wheezing its last breath, while his fingers began to twitch, losing sensation, like they belonged to someone else now or had never belonged to anyone at all.
In short, the guy was high on drugs while asleep as well—it was the moment that everything stopped.
Ander now stood barefoot on nothing, swallowed by a void made of slow-moving black mist that stretched in every direction, shapeless and vast, with no way to escape.
But he didn't panic—not really.
Nightmares were old friends to him by now, more reliable than most people he had ever met. He had spent years waking up from sleep paralysis, trapped under the weight of shadowy things that screamed without sound and pressed against his chest like death itself, but this dream was different.
This one gave him space and unnatural silence.
Suddenly…
A shape stepped forward, from the stars—it was a man, an old man with glowing white halos spinning around him.
"Who are you."
And so the question was necessary, though Ander didn't flinch.
He had even spoken to stranger things in his sleep. He had been hunted, devoured, torn limb from limb by illusions, so talking to a shining old man wasn't exactly a new milestone.
"I'm a god."
"You got cigarettes?"
"I don't smoke."
"Alright. Not the powerful kind then."
The being didn't answer right away, but the silence that followed wasn't empty.
"You walk into the folds between life and death too often, child. Most never reach this place. You… slip through the cracks of fate."
"…Yeah, well. Guess insomnia's got perks. So what, I'm dead?"
Ander Skyler, his whole life, experienced fear of dying—as it would normally happen in sleep paralysis. Your mind would be awake, but your body wouldn't budge. In such situations, things often get scary. Worse, you could not even scream or tell anyone.
"No, you are not dead. But your soul is restless. And you've seen truths your body refuses to carry."
Ander lowered himself to the invisible ground, crossing his legs like he was sitting on a rooftop rather than in an endless dark.
He looked up at the godlike figure and sighed.
"Alright then. Since I'm stuck here, might as well talk. If you're really a god, how's my mom? Is she okay?"
The being, now glowing brighter than the sun, paused at that. Slowly, he lifted a hand, and a soft, white light glimmered in his palm, like a memory held in reverence.
"She passed as all mortals do. Her pain is over. Her heart was clean, her soul whole. She has been given peace, and walks now in her second life. You should not burden yourself with one who has already found the peace you seek."
Ander looked away. All of this was a little strange to believe. He had seen monsters before—some that looked like twisted animals, some like versions of his father he never wanted to remember—but never once in his dreams had anyone come to him claiming they were God.
"Second life?"
"Not reincarnation as you imagine it."
"So… I'll never meet her again?"
"You are still bound to the living."
Ander let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
Maybe it was the drugs keeping him from lashing out, keeping the usual anger buried deep. Maybe it was just that voice—calm and final, like a storm that had already passed.
"She deserved better. All those years, working herself hard, breaking her back just to keep me fed, and for what? So I could end up fixing phones in a city that forgets your name the second your heart stops?"
"She did not live for reward, child. She lived because she loved you. That love was her world. And to her, it was enough."
"Then why bring me here? If you're really a god, you know everything. Can you fix me? Cure the disease eating my life? Why the hell was I born in a black alley with no intelligence, no chances, no future?"
A light flickered behind the old man's eyes, and his smile—subtle, unpredictable—felt less divine and more human, like warmth from a stranger's fire on a cold night.
"You have always dreamed of escape. Of becoming more. And tonight, the veil is thin. One life ends. Another may begin. So I ask you, plainly: do you want to live a different life, in a different world?"
Ander almost laughed, but it caught in his throat like a stone that refused to come up.
"…You serious?"
"I am beyond lies."
He knew it was a dream.
Ander Skyler had long since accepted that these strange hallucinations were just his brain trying to entertain itself.
But he still shrugged.
Why not? He had three more hours until morning.
"If I say yes… I don't want some sad second chance. I want power. Real power. Strength like Captain America, swordsmanship like King Arthur.
If I'm getting dragged into some fantasy bullshit, then I want to survive it. Hell, throw in Wolverine's healing, Susan Storm's invisibility while you're at it."
"Is that your wish?"
"It's not a wish," Ander replied quietly. "It's a condition."
The god's expression didn't change. He simply closed his eyes—and for a moment, it felt like the entire universe bowed in silence.
"Amen."
That was the only word spoken.
And then Ander's body convulsed.
He fell—not downward, not upward—but somewhere else entirely, like his very soul had been unzipped and tossed into a whirlwind of light and pressure and screaming stars.
And then—nothing.
Darkness claimed him, and Ander Skyler lost consciousness.