I have always possessed this rare, almost mystical talent for never taking anything seriously in this existence. At twenty-four years old, my main skill consisted primarily of dodging responsibility with near-professional agility. While others worked, studied, or built ambitious plans for the future, I spent my time mocking and laughing. Especially at anything that deserved even the slightest amount of respect or consideration from an adult.
Gravity had long seemed to me like a slightly grotesque invention created by tired and dull people. They were probably all allergic to the simplest and most immediate joy of living. To me, seriousness was a contagious disease I protected myself from with constant, defensive sarcasm. That morning, however, seemed no different from any other ordinary morning in my routine as a high-level slacker. I was sitting alone, a glass of water in my hand, completely distracted by the emptiness of my own existence.
My phone, placed right beside me on the table, was playing absurd videos on an endless loop. The intellectual level of that content was inversely proportional to my already very limited interest in real life. I drank my water without really looking at what was happening around me, without really thinking about anything. As usual in everything I undertook, I did things halfway, without any real conviction. Even breathing felt like an optional activity in the middle of the daily lethargy I cherished so much.
It was at that precise moment that fate decided to play a joke on me, one in questionable taste. I burst out laughing at the wrong time, exactly as the liquid crossed the threshold of my careless throat. The water went down the wrong pipe with unexpected brutality, turning a moment of relaxation into a genuine disaster. My throat locked instantly, my lungs contracting violently in a desperate survival response. I tried to inhale a life-saving breath of oxygen, but the air categorically refused to enter my chest.
It was as if the surrounding air had decided to go on strike without notice, leaving me alone with my water. What should have been a harmless incident instantly became a primitive, savage, and terrifyingly silent struggle. I stood up abruptly, knocking over my chair in a crash that shattered the calm of the room. My hand struck my chest several times, as if I were trying to negotiate violently with my own body. My vision blurred within seconds, black spots invading my sight as I desperately searched for help.
I tried to cough to expel the liquid intruder, but the sound remained trapped, imprisoned in my vocal cords. The silence around me became horrifying, a heavy weight crushing me as I fought to survive. At the beginning of this absurd crisis, I naively thought it would pass like a simple, temporary choking fit. After all, I had already survived many embarrassing situations with flair over the course of my twenty-four years. Then I understood, with icy clarity, that something was truly wrong inside my body.
Panic, cold and sharp as a razor blade, settled deep in my stomach. My legs eventually gave out beneath my weight and I fell heavily to my knees on the floor. I still could not breathe, my mouth open to a void of air that burned my internal tissues. My fingers clawed uselessly at the floor, searching for any grip in this reality that was slipping away from me. I tried to scream for help, but absolutely no sound came out of my locked throat.
The world gradually drifted away from me, like a dream slowly dissolving during a difficult awakening. My final thoughts fragmented, becoming completely incoherent as my brain cruelly lacked vital oxygen. I died, quite simply, suffocated in the most ridiculous way possible by a single gulp of water. There was no bright light at the end of a tunnel, no dramatic scream worthy of an action movie. Only the sensation of an endless fall into total darkness, as if I were crossing a bottomless void.
Time no longer existed in that strange space, deprived of any sensory landmarks or biological clock. There was neither up nor down, only a silent and almost infinite drifting within that emptiness. I tried to move to regain control of the situation, but I simply no longer had a body. I had become a mere floating consciousness in a dense void that seemed to absorb every trace of my personality. No pain remained, no breathing was required, no physical limit hindered my wandering mind.
I would have made a sarcastic remark about the irony of dying because of hydration, but it was impossible. Without lungs to carry my voice or even my thoughts, irony suddenly lost much of its usual impact. For the first time in my lazy existence, I controlled absolutely nothing that was happening to me. I was the passive spectator of my own disappearance, floating in an eternity that promised to be particularly long and monotonous. In the distance, after what felt like centuries, a faint glow finally appeared in the darkness.
This light was neither warm nor comforting. It possessed a radiance that made me uneasy. It was stable, motionless, and emitted an almost severe atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the surrounding void of the afterlife. The closer I moved toward it, or the closer it came toward me, the more I felt a strange pressure on my consciousness. It was like undergoing a silent judgment, a weighing of the soul where every second of my life was analyzed. The light eventually transformed, taking on a human shape and becoming a distinct silhouette standing before me, motionless.
An old man stood there, upright like a god, possessing an elegance that seemed to belong to another time or another world. His dark suit looked as though it had been tailored directly from shadow itself, without a single visible seam. His gaze was calm, yet of an implacable force that pierced through you without any trace of pity or empathy. I detected no kindness in his pale eyes, only an analytical coldness that stripped me bare. I wanted to speak, to attempt a joke about his white beard to ease the tension, but he raised a hand with a sharp gesture.
It was a simple motion, yet it carried a natural authority that allowed no argument or discussion. The silence grew heavier still, pressing down on my nonexistent shoulders like a thick slab of lead. Then he opened his mouth, and the mere movement of his lips seemed to alter the structure of the void. His voice cut through the emptiness like a perfectly sharpened blade, resonating directly within the depths of my being. "You never took anything seriously…" he said, laying the foundation of a statement that promised nothing good.
The words fell between us with clinical precision, without any superfluous emotion to soften their real impact. "Your immaturity is constant… persistent… almost pathetic… boy," he continued, fixing my essence with his icy stare. Each pause between his sentences seemed calculated to give me time to savor the full extent of his criticism. I felt those phrases anchor themselves within me, imprinting like indelible marks on what remained of my consciousness. "While others work hard, you do nothing. You observe. You laugh. You waste," he listed, as if presenting evidence of a crime. There was no anger in his tone, only a cold assessment that made his judgment far more definitive. This lack of human emotion made the entire process significantly more unpleasant for my carefree young ego. "You think you are above consequences. You think life is a game…" he raised his voice slightly.
He paused dramatically before delivering the final truth of his speech, one that pinned me in place. "…but games have rules," he concluded, and I understood that the match had radically changed. I tried to protest, to explain that I would change, but no voice emerged from my ethereal being. I did not even know if I still had a mouth to form those desperate last-minute promises. I was nothing more than an insignificant presence before a verdict that seemed to have been written long ago.
And the verdict continued relentlessly, without me being able to do anything to interrupt this sinister old man. "We will see now… how you manage where you are going…" he said in an almost amused tone. He slightly adjusted the sleeves of his shadowed suit, as if preparing to watch an entertaining spectacle. He tilted his head to the side, and a thin, almost invisible smile briefly appeared on his lips. "Little fool," he uttered with a kind of calm condescension that made me boil from within.
It was not shouted. It was pronounced with the cold neutrality of a simple administrative truth being recorded. The void around us suddenly cracked, as if reality itself could no longer tolerate being so calm. Images burst like violent flashes of lightning: ravaged battlefields, towering flames, and shadows. Monstrous silhouettes appeared briefly, outlined against a blood-red sky that promised unspeakable suffering below. Horrific human screams blended with inhuman roars, creating a chaotic symphony of death and war.
"No, I don't want to die…" "Help me." "Graaah."
I felt a violent pull, as though an invisible magnetic force suddenly dragged me away from the old man. He did not move an inch, remaining motionless in his impeccable attire amid the emerging destruction. He simply watched my departure, unshaken, his gaze fixed on my fall with royal and almost insulting indifference. "Over there… the war never stops. The weak die quickly. The idiots even faster," he prophesied one last time. The void abruptly transformed into a real, physical, painful fall into a world that had become tangible again.
Cold bit into what now resembled my skin, an absolutely unbearable freezing burn upon contact. The crashing sound of metal weapons exploded in my ears, replacing deathly silence with chaos. The smell of blood, sweat, and iron flooded the air, causing immediate and violent nausea. Reality struck me without mercy, throwing me into the mud of a place that was anything but paradisiacal. I inhaled violently, my lungs expanding at once as if they would burst under the pressure of air.
This time, the air finally entered, but it was far from pure or pleasant for my lungs to inhale. It was brutal, filthy, heavily laden with black smoke and ash particles that made me cough immediately. I spat out a bitter liquid, feeling the metallic taste of iron spread across my tongue and clenched teeth. I was alive, or at least I had all the unpleasant physical sensations of it, from my feet to the top of my skull. Or something close enough to be mistaken for life, despite the absolute darkness of the surrounding setting.
My body was different from the one I had left behind in my kitchen, suffocated by water. It felt sturdier, denser, and I sensed that my skin was covered with numerous war scars. I wore simple armor made of dented metal plates and leather worn down by long battles. There was nothing glorious about it, nothing resembling the legendary gear of a video game or novel hero. Around me, soldiers ran in every direction, their faces twisted by fear and exhaustion.
Orders rang out from everywhere, shouted by hoarse voices I could not clearly identify. Deformed, massive, nightmarish creatures charged on the horizon, raising clouds of dark dust in their bloody wake. The ground literally trembled beneath their steps, sending terrifying vibrations through the soles of my feet, and it was at that moment that I understood that I was in hell.