As I gazed at the city skyline from the balcony of my filthy, rundown apartment, slowly exhaling cigarette smoke, I coughed before grinning a strange smile, certain that my yellowed, dirty teeth made for a grotesque sight.
The last thing I remembered was coughing up blood before feeling a hard blow to the back of my head and being riddled with bullets.
I watched my blood drip onto the carpet, staining it red. I heard the sound of a gun being reloaded. A trigger being pulled.
Finally, my dying body was filled with bullets before I was kicked in the stomach and head.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't beg for mercy. Because this was my escape—to somewhere other than here.
My eyes grew heavy. My body turned cold. The pain was unbearable.
Until my suffering ended with one final shot.
The carpet was redder than ever.
I was erased, and I would surely be forgotten. Remembered only as another worthless fool before fading into oblivion.
No family ties, no close friends, only dubious companions with volatile trust—my life had been a unique experience.
It was like walking on a fragile rope above a deep pit, infested with venomous snakes.
In my line of work, trust had always been a fragile thing. A glass mirror that would shatter at the slightest breath.
And apparently, the higher-ups had decided I was no longer useful. So, just as I expected, I was eliminated at the first opportunity.
I didn't run from them. That would've been impossible. Besides, death was inevitable, given the things I'd done in my miserable life.
I just waited… and waited… until it finally came.
A far from glorious end for a pathetic animal like me.
The feeling was surprisingly comforting.
How long had it been since I last felt so… grateful, the way I did now?
I had no idea. But it must have been many summers ago.
My senses were unexpectedly returning. Touch was the first. I realized I was sitting on something, my back leaning against it.
Hearing came next. I heard the sound of water, birds chirping and flapping their wings, distant voices…
My sense of taste felt different. No lingering bitterness from years of smoking and drinking coffee. No taste of my own blood.
My eyes opened with some difficulty, then shut again from the sunlight.
"Is that… the sun?" I murmured. My voice sounded so young, far less hoarse and deep than I remembered.
I lost my balance and fell from where I was sitting. Before I could process everything, I was underwater, sinking.
Quickly, I pushed my body upward, moving my arms and legs in sync until I surfaced, scrambling onto the shore.
I spat out the water I'd nearly swallowed, shook my head, and then collapsed onto the sand, my chest rising and falling with labored breaths. I coughed before letting my head drop back.
"Wherever I am, there's no way this is heaven," I thought, staring at the blue sky. "It looks so… peaceful."
My body felt different. When the throbbing in my head subsided, I dragged myself across the sand toward the water and looked at my reflection.
I raised an eyebrow at what I saw.
I had strange, drooping ears. A pair of small, spiral horns sat atop my head.
My head itself was one of the biggest changes—elongated with a narrow snout.
Large, bright, expressive eyes, a pale yellow color. Positioned high on my head, giving me good peripheral vision, but my forward sight seemed limited.
I seemed nearsighted. I couldn't see clearly for meters and meters. I could only make out things close to me. My range of vision was truly limited.
My body was short and slender, covered in what looked like thick white wool, though it was actually quite dense.
My hands were no longer hands—they were hooves. My feet, too. Somehow, I could still walk upright on just my hind legs.
This body seemed to be modeled after a lamb. Yet, the fact that I could walk normally like before was curious.
I wondered how I'd hold a cigarette with these hooves. No more fingers. I missed them now.
I sighed and stepped away from the water.
I had no control in this situation. I died. I thought that was my end. But now, I'm alive again.
And doomed to live out a mediocre existence in this body until my new days come to an end.
I walked through this strange forest, which looked nothing like the ones I might've claimed to know.
Truth be told, I'd only ever watched nature documentaries at the bar I used to frequent because some guy—whose name I never bothered to learn—always had them on.
Watching lions eat antelopes in lion documentaries while drunk was quite the experience.
Crying during documentaries about antelopes is a story for another day.
The birds here were different. Colorful, somewhat familiar, yet still strange. They weren't the pigeons I used to feed scraps of my sandwich in the plaza.
"Everything is so… weird," I muttered, staring at the violet mushrooms growing on an old log.
I don't think I'm on the same Earth I knew.
There's one upside, though. I no longer have to pay weekly rent to a landlord that two-thirds of the tenants in my rundown building despised.