Adam Reed's worn out shoes scraped against the pavement as he walked down the street, his shoulders hunched against the cold bite of the November harsh wind.
Twenty-four years, eleven months, and twenty-three hours of existence, and what did he have to show for it?
Nothing.
His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his old jacket, as if that would fill up the emptiness where his paycheck should have been.
Marcellus, his boss at the convenience store, had taken it all. Everything to settle the debt Adam had accumulated three months ago when his landlord had threatened eviction.
"I've got bills too to pay, boy. Your misfortune ain't my problem." Marcellus had said with that dismissive wave of his hand even as Adam pleaded that he needed the money to buy food, as if Adam's empty stomach meant nothing.
Adam's jaw clenched at the memory.
He'd had plans for tonight. Modest- pathetic plans really, but plans nonetheless: A pack of noodles and some fried chicken from the discount section. It was his birthday at midnight, after all. Twenty-five years of breathing, suffering, and scraping by deserved at least that much celebration.
But no, the universe had other ideas.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Adam fished it out with trembling fingers. The screen was cracked, held together by a cheap screen protector that was peeling at the edges. The notification made his stomach drop.
It was about his overdue house rent.
"Of course!" Adam muttered bitterly, shoving the phone back into his pocket.
The street around him was nearly empty at this hour but somewhere in the distance, he could hear the muffled sound of laughter, music, life happening for people who weren't him.
People who had money, people who had eaten and had foodstuffs at home, People who definitely experienced sexual activities at will...
Adam's throat tightened at that last thought, shame and frustration coiling in his chest.
Twenty-five years old, and he'd never felt a woman's lips on his, never held someone close and felt wanted. Never experienced anything beyond the occasional pitying glance or, more often, the complete invisibility that came with being poor, unremarkable, and utterly forgettable.
Who would want him?
He caught his reflection in a shop window as he passed: Mousy brown hair that hadn't seen a proper cut in months. Thin frame that spoke of too many skipped meals. Clothes that were clean but worn, patched in places. A face that blended into crowds, memorable only in its complete lack of memorable features.
"I'm nothing," he whispered to his reflection, the words tasting like ash.
His feet carried him forward mechanically, while his mind spiraled deeper into the familiar pit of despair;
What was the point of all this? Waking up every day to struggle for scraps? Working jobs that paid barely enough to survive? Living in a shoe-box apartment that smelled like mold and disappointment?
Where was it all leading?
Nowhere.
The anger rose then in his chest.
"Why? What have I done to deserve this life?"
He'd been abandoned as a baby, raised in underfunded group homes where survival meant staying invisible and never causing trouble.
"I'm so tired," Adam said to the empty street.
His vision blurred, and he realized with a start that tears were threatening to fall. He blinked them back furiously remembering that crying had never changed anything.
He kept walking, lost in the toxic swirl of his thoughts.
Wealth: That was what he needed. Money to stop worrying about rent, about food, about every single small expense becoming a crisis. Wealth would solve everything.
Then Fame: recognition, being seen for once in his miserable existence. Having people know his name, respect him, acknowledge that he mattered.
And finally sex. Yes, the intimacy he'd been denied his entire life. The feeling of being wanted, desired, chosen by someone. Multiple someones. He wanted to know what it felt like to have women look at him with interest instead of looking through him like he was transparent.
"Wealth, fame, and unlimited sex. That's the dream, right? That's what everyone wants." Adam muttered bitterly.
He laughed, but it came out hollow and broken.
The sound of a horn blaring however snapped Adam out of his spiral.
He blinked, suddenly aware that he'd wandered into the middle of the street. Headlights blinded him, coming fast, His brain registered the massive shape of a delivery trailer bearing down on him, but his body was frozen, legs locked, mind still half-submerged in despair.
Time seemed to slow.
The horn blared again, desperate but Adam couldn't move.
The impact, when it came, was everything and nothing.
A wall of metal and momentum slammed into his body, lifting him off his feet like he weighed nothing. He was airborne for a moment like a rag doll thrown by an angry child.
Afterward, his body hit something hard and wet.
The drainage ditch... The gutter.
"How fitting... Born in nothing, died in a gutter!" some distant part of his mind thought.
Pain flooded through his body, but it felt distant like it was happening to someone else. He couldn't feel his legs. His chest felt crushed and something warm and metallic filled his mouth...
Blood.
Adam tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. He was lying in filthy water, staring up at the night sky between the buildings.
"Is this it?" he thought.
Twenty-five years, and this was the end. Alone in a gutter on his birthday, dying because he'd been too wrapped up in self-pity to watch where he was walking.
Even his death was pathetic.
"Maybe... maybe this is better. Maybe death is the rest I need. No more struggling. No more disappointment. No more being nobody." Adam thought, surprising himself with the calm that settled over him.
His lips moved, forming words that barely escaped as whispers, wet with blood.
"Maybe in heaven... I'll get everything I couldn't have here. Wealth... fame... unlimited sex..."
The word "sex" left his lips with his final breath, a desperate, bitter wish thrown into the void.
And then Adam Reed died.
~~~~~~~~~
In a place between existence and non-existence, something stirred.
The words echoed.
"Sex... Desire..."
A consciousness that had been dormant for five hundred years suddenly flickered to life, drawn by the desperate, dying wish of a soul.
Blood red eyes opened in the darkness.
"Mhmm, interesting," a voice purred, feminine and ancient and hungry.
~~~~~~~~~
"I have died, right?"
Adam didn't know where he was.
There was no light, no sound, no sensation. Just an endless void of gray nothingness that pressed in from all sides. He was floating, drifting from everything.
"This must be... The afterlife?" It certainly felt empty enough to be hell.
Then came the voice.
It was like honey and poison mixed together, smooth and seductive and dangerous. It wrapped around him, through him, into him, and Adam felt himself drawn toward it instinctively.
"I know what you craved badly before you died."
The words resonated through the void, through Adam's very being.
The voice continued, closer now, intimate, as if whispering directly into his ear despite having no ears in this formless place.
"Wealth, fame, and unlimited sex."
Adam's consciousness recoiled. How did this voice know? Had it heard his final words?
"I will give you all."
The words should have sounded too good to be true. They should have triggered every warning instinct Adam possessed.
But he was dead, wasn't he? What did he have to lose?
"Who... Who are you?" Adam tried to speak, tried to form words, but he had no mouth in this void.
The voice laughed then announced;
"I am your salvation, Adam Reed. Your second chance. Your benefactor."
"I am your new beginning."
Before Adam could respond, before he could question or protest or accept, something yanked at him. A force beyond description seized his consciousness and pulled, dragged, hurled him through the void toward something bright and painful and real.
"What is happening to me? Can the dead die again?" Adam panicked in confusion.