Let it be known across all of heaven, hell, and whatever weird middle bit exists between them — the death of Sebastian "Sebas" Ashford was the single most pathetic thing anyone in the afterlife had ever witnessed.
And these people once watched a man lose a custody battle to a goose.
Sebas was 24. Average height. Average face. Dangerously below average survival instincts. The kind of guy who'd microwave aluminium foil "just to see, what happened"
Google "am I dead" after stubbing his toe, and once tried to pet a wasp because "it looked lonely."
He had one friend.
It was a parrot.
The parrot didn't even like him.
On the night of his tragic, embarrassing, Wikipedia-unworthy death, Sebas was doing three things:
Watching a documentary about anglerfish that he did not understand and wasn't bothered to even try to understand. Arguing — aggressively — with his roommate's parrot, Gregory, about whether grapes were a top-tier fruit.
Losing. Badly.
"You're WRONG, Gregory," Sebas said, standing up from the couch and pointing a grape at the bird like a prosecutor delivering a closing argument. "Grapes are the PINNACLE of fruit evolution. They come in bunches, Gregory. BUNCHES. Name one other fruit with that kind of squad mentality. You can't."
Gregory the parrot blinked.
"Exactly. Nothing. You've got nothing. Grapes are nature's candy and you sit there on your little wooden stick saying NOTHING because you KNOW I'm right."
Gregory said nothing because — and this is important — he was a parrot.
But Sebas was on a roll now. He was in the zone. He was one Red Bull away from writing a full TED Talk about grape supremacy. And in his moment of ultimate victory, he decided to do what every man with more confidence than brain cells eventually does.
He tossed a grape into the air to catch it in his mouth.
Cool guys did this. Movie guys did this. Athletes on Instagram did this.
Sebas was none of these things. Sebas was a man who once walked into a glass door at a shopping centre and apologised to it.
The grape went up.
The grape came down.
The grape hit the back of his throat, took one look around, and said "This is my home now."
It lodged. Perfectly. Like the grape had trained for this moment its entire life on the vine.
Sebas grabbed his throat. His eyes went wide. He stumbled left. Hit the coffee table. The coffee table hit the lamp. The lamp hit the floor. He tripped over a shoe — HIS shoe, which had been sitting in the middle of the room for three days because putting it away was "tomorrow's problem."
Tomorrow would not come for Sebas.
He crashed into the wall, slid down it like a sad cartoon, and landed on the floor face-first. With his last fading moments of consciousness, he turned his head toward Gregory.
Gregory stared at him with cold, black, judgemental eyes.
Then Gregory said —loudly, with full human pronunciation that should not have been possible — "Skill issue."
Sebas died.
Right there. On the floor. At 7:43 PM on a Tuesday. Taken out by a single green grape worth approximately 0.03 pence. No witnesses except a parrot that could apparently speak English when it felt like being disrespectful.
The paramedics arrived forty minutes later because Gregory, shockingly, did not call 999.
The official report read: "Cause of death: asphyxiation via fruit."
His mum would tell the family he died in his sleep. Peacefully. Like an angel.
He died on his face next to a shoe. Like a muppet.
Sebas opened his eyes.
This was a problem, because dead people generally don't do that.
He was standing in a room. If you could call it a room. It looked like someone had described the concept of an "office" to an alien who had never seen one, and the alien had tried its best and failed. White walls. Flickering ceiling light that buzzed like it was personally angry.
A single desk that looked like it was made of sadness and cheap wood. A motivational poster on the wall that just said "DON'T."
Behind the desk sat ROB.
Now, ROB — Random Omnipotent Being, as he insisted on being called that because "The upper brace is corporate and I'm a freelancer" — looked like a man who had been doing this job for nine billion years and had emotionally checked out roughly eight billion years ago.
His suit was so wrinkled it looked like he'd slept in it. Not once. Every single night since the dawn of creation.
His tie was loosened to the point of being decorative. He had bags under his eyes so heavy they needed their own postcode.
He was holding a mug that said "World's Okayest Deity" and there was something in it that was absolutely not coffee.
He did not look up when Sebas appeared.
Didn't even bother greeting him.
He just sighed. A long, deep, ancient sigh. The kind of sigh that carried the weight of every stupid death he'd ever had to process, and brother, there had been MANY. Too fucking many.
"Name?" ROB said, in a voice so flat it could be used as a spirit level.
"Sebastian. Sebas. Ashford."
"Cause of death?"
Sebas shifted. tilting his face away."...Medical emergency."
ROB's pen stopped moving. He slowly — painfully slowly — looked up from his paperwork. His left eye twitched.
"It says here..." ROB said, reading from a file, "...that you choked. On a grape."
"That IS a medical emergency."
"While arguing with a parrot."
"He was being unreasonable."
"The parrot said 'skill issue' as you died."
"GREGORY IS A HATER AND A LIAR—"
"The parrot can't talk, Sebastian."
"THEN EXPLAIN WHAT I HEARD—"
"MOVING ON." ROB slammed the file shut with the energy of a teacher who's five minutes from retirement. He reached into his desk, pulled open a drawer full of glowing orbs, and slid one across the desk.
"What's that?" Sebas asked.
"Your ability. Standard reincarnation package. Every soul gets one power. You take the orb, you get a power, you go live another life somewhere, and I never have to see you again. That last part is very important to me. Personally."
"What power do I get?"
"Don't know. Don't care. It's random. Touch the orb and leave."
Sebas reached out and touched the orb.
It cracked.
Which was not supposed to happen.
Then it shattered.
Which was REALLY not supposed to happen.
Then every single orb in the drawer — hundreds of them, glowing like tiny angry suns — launched themselves at Sebas like he was a magnet and they were very enthusiastic paperclips. They hit him one after another — THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK — slamming into his chest in a rapid-fire lightshow that looked absolutely spectacular and felt like being run over by a lorry made of pure sunshine.
Sebas stood there, glowing like a human lamp, smoke curling off his shoulders, hair standing straight up, one shoe somehow missing.
ROB's mug slipped out of his hand.
It hit the desk. Whatever was inside splashed across four hundred years of unsorted paperwork. He didn't notice. He didn't care. His eyes were wide. His mouth was open. For the first time in nine billion years, the Random Omnipotent Being who had processed more souls than there were stars in the sky — who had seen every possible way a human could die, live, and die again — was completely, utterly, catastrophically frozen.
The drawer was empty.
Every orb. Every power. Every ability meant for thousands — possibly millions — of souls. All of them. Inside this man. This grape-choking, parrot-arguing, shoe-tripping, documentary-watching catastrophe of a human being.
"What," ROB whispered.
His eye twitched.
"The."
His other eye twitched.
"FUCK."
He stood up so fast his chair flew back and hit the motivational poster. The poster fell off the wall. He slammed both hands on the desk. He looked at the empty drawer. He looked at Sebas. He looked at the empty drawer again. His brain was doing the math on exactly how many cosmic laws had just been broken, and the answer was all of them.
Then — like a switch had been flipped — ROB straightened his tie. Smoothed his suit. Sat back down. Picked up his mug, which was now empty, and pretended to take a sip.
Completely composed. Totally fine. Not a single problem here.
"...Was that supposed to happen?" Sebas asked, still smoking slightly.
"Yes," ROB lied, without a single ounce of hesitation. Flawless delivery. Oscar-worthy. "That was completely intentional. You now have every power in existence. All of them. Congratulations. You're welcome. Get out."
"Wait — EVERY power? Like ALL of them?"
"Flight. Super strength. Time manipulation. Reality warping. Immortality. The ability to make toast without a toaster. ALL. OF. THEM. Now leave before I change my mind."
"That last one isn't real—"
"DO YOU WANT ME TO TAKE THEM BACK?"
"No."
"THEN LEAVE."
ROB snapped his fingers. A hole opened in the floor beneath Sebas's feet — a swirling, glowing vortex of light and chaotic energy that screamed "you're going somewhere and you have zero say in where."
"WAIT — WHERE AM I GOING?!" Sebas yelled as he fell.
"SOMEWHERE THAT ISN'T HERE! GOODBYE FOREVER! I HOPE!"
Sebas plummeted into the void, screaming, glowing, and still missing one shoe.
ROB sat in silence.
The office was quiet. The flickering light buzzed. The paperwork stain from his mug was slowly spreading across a file labelled "IMPORTANT — DO NOT SPILL ON."
ROB stared at the empty drawer.
He stared at the ceiling.
He clasped his hands together.
Praying.
"I'm so fucked," he said, with the calm, quiet acceptance of a man who knows — with absolute certainty — that this is going to be a problem. A massive, multiverse-shaking, reality-bending problem. And it was wearing one shoe and had the survival instincts of a sleepy hamster.
Then Gregory the parrot appeared on his desk.
ROB looked at the parrot.
The parrot looked at ROB.
"Skill issue," said Gregory.
ROB threw his mug at the wall.