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Chapter I
🕑 Added 2025-02-27 17:37:29 +0000 UTC"Seems..."
I awoke to cold water running down my face, the soft pitter-patter of seasonal rain and a headache so bad I immediately clutched my head and keeled over with a grunt.
"Seems... those edibles were the shit after all."
Lying in some alleyway in a pool of what was presumably my own blood with the mother of all headaches was not how I had imagined my day going at all. And no edibles could be so potent they would make it seem like I had somehow managed to have two days in one.
It made no sense at all.
On the same Monday morning, I was William Hardt.
I had been idly drinking my 'tea' (yes, tea, not that swill the local starbucks called coffee) when I came across the scene of two men in cosplay whaling on each other in the snow, one dressed as Spiderman and the other as Batman. As any hale and hearty man, I stood to watch, maybe even point and laugh, until Spiderman pulled out a knife.
The next thing I knew however, was that some man dressed as Santa dropkicked Spiderman and that the same knife had been shoved into my gut.
So, on a snowy morning on the streets of New York, I lost my life.
At the same time, on that same morning, I had been Henry Smith, a Brit.
Some poor adolescent heading home after a night's shift at a library when I was cornered by a couple of wannabe roadmen looking to make a quick back. That situation had, again, ended with me stabbed, in a dirty alleyway this time.
That was where I was now.
Only, my wound was gone, even if the shabby brown coat that had seen far too much use still had a puncture from where the pointy end of a knife had made sweet love to my guts, rearranging them in the process.
As I tried to put my thoughts in order, I noted that the overlap went back farther than just the previous day. No, it went back too far.
Henry was from a poor household, and worked to support his single mother who was mostly absent, trying to make ends meet. He had spent most of his life caring for his younger sister while secretly 'admiring' a girl living one flat over.
William, on the other hand, me, I was a humble programmer with an estranged family who spent most of his time sleeping or casually dabbling in a number of inane hobbies... or watching gore videos on reddit... A benefit of being skilled enough that my workplace allowed me to work remotely, so long as I did.
The question was... Was I William? Was I Henry?
I decided I was both and neither. It came easily enough, at the expense of being stabbed to death twice.
Life was too fleeting to be mulling over such things. I was forced to have that little epiphany.
I had also died alone, on both accounts.
I had not seen anything at all past my little bubble, on both accounts.
Admittedly, poor Henry was a victim of circumstance where I was just a lazy shit.
Well... no more. Things would be different now. I had seen too much anime and read too many novels to not know what happened.
The next question was, what to do about the pair of dickheads currently losing their minds over what they presumed was my corpse.
"It's gonna be alright! We-We should just leave."
Wannabe idiots that they were, they hadn't even thought to remove the weapon. It made sense, I figured. My fingers slowly crept across the handle of the little pocket knife still slick with my own blood.
The two fellas with their puffy little jackets and their kiddie balaclavas had apparently been too busy losing their shit to even look at me... That was annoying. They'd just wasted me.
Unluckily for them, only Henry was a pacifist. I was vindictive enough to sleep with my bully's mother.
"Oi cunt!" I started, cracking one in the throat with my fist before abruptly throwing my weight against the other. I tackled him to the dirty ground, knife at the ready as his friend stumbled back with his hands on his throat. I had heard a nasty crunch, but I didn't care all that much for someone who had just killed me. I cared more about the man under me.
I pressed the knife to his neck.
"What's your fucking name?!"
"I-I'm sorry! I didn't even want to do this! I promise! His bro-! They said you'd be an easy mark!"
Oh?
I clocked him across the cheek with the blunt end of my knife.
"I ain't asking again."
"Noah! It's Noah!" He put his arms up against the ground in surrender.
"Noah, you know what I'm going to do tonight, son?"
I saw confused fear in his eyes.
A better man would have hesitated. A better man, I was not. Actions always had consequences.
I clocked him again.
"No! No!"
"I'm going to fuck your mother, Noah."
His eyes widened, then abruptly went numb when I gave him a beautification surgery with my elbow.
Actions had consequences but killing these gutter rats was more trouble than it was worth. Sure, I had no qualms and all the justification but we lived in a modern society. My wholly justified actions would have me bent over the table by Johnny Law faster than I could say, "Don't fuck me in the ass."
And besides, death was an end. They needed to suffer a bit more.
I groped along Noah's pockets till I found his flip phone and all his cash. I did the same for the other unidentified idiot. Quickly dialling 999, I shoved the knife into my jacket and speeded away.
"...What's your emergency, sir?"
"Two kids just took a nasty fall. One ain't breathing normal and the other's out cold."
They wouldn't say shit to the authorities, Henry knew. It would make them seem weak or something. The local cops didn't care enough to investigate past that.
"Can you please identify where you are, sir?"
"I don't know."
"Look around, sir. What do you see?"
I saw old cars, passers-by with their heads ducked low under umbrellas for the rain. A passing car splashed water onto my dirty jeans. Past the multistory buildings, I saw a large tower extending to the sky, with a clock on i-... Big Ben. I saw Big Ben.
"Huh."
"What, sir?"
"Big Ben."
I heard a groan from the other side. With a small chuckle, I stopped an elderly gentleman walking past and handed him the phone before promptly making my escape.
The day had left my wallet a few bills heavier, in exchange for dying twice, breaking one jaw and someone's throat.
Still, I was looking forward to what came next.
As I made my way past the unknown yet intimately familiar streets of West London, I began to notice strange things. Things not even Henry had known were there.
"There it is," I grinned to myself.
Ephemeral wisps and trails of red and blue and green and colours I could not name floated idly along the way. They phased through people, through cars, through lamps, through the very ground and through walls.
No one seemed to notice them. Or if they did, they didn't care. Henry had no such recollection of such things, so I leaned towards the former.
Some latched...no, some seemed to linger on people as though they were a part of them. I noticed that these people observed me with gazes far more detached than any other. I shoved my hands into my pockets and did my best to evade them.
A few of them even gave me knowing nods.
I let my eyes wander as I followed these curious wisps. Then at a certain point, I saw them coalesce in the distance in a sort of storm. Some gathered towards this strange phenomenon, others came off it.
I couldn't make much more of it. Except that there seemed to be another, somewhat smaller, Big Ben where they coalesced.
Tilting my head, I realised that I could see far better than ever before. In vivid detail even, for miles and kilometers. I could see the chafe and weather in brick and paint, the minute details, the crinkles and the line on the face of each and every person. This was to a point where I felt my brain hurt from the influx of information.
"What the fuck is a kilometer?" I whispered to myself with a chuckle.
Neither of us had the best vision, certainly not this good. Then, I became aware of the strange gazes of the people around me. Gazes of entranced wonder, curiosity and even jealousy.
Henry was a good enough looking kid... but nah... this was weird.
Hurriedly, I stepped to a car parked against the sidewalk, using its mirror to observe my features.
A youth with messy brown hair and a thin, if not gaunt, face stared back at me. I traced a finger along my jaw, in curiosity.
"Not as handsome. Needs more meat."
What he did have though, was the prettiest pair of eyes I had ever seen. Both on the internet, and in real life. A blue so clear it seemed to shimmer. It was as if I was staring at a clear sky.
"I'm not wearing no band over my eyes."
So far, the day had been shit. Something I would not recommend.
But this... this changed everything.
"Stop grinning at ya'self, ya bloody weirdo. We get it. You got pretty eyes, fucking faggot."
"Yep, that's London."
"Nutjob."
"Okay, you wanna throw hands?" I turned to look at the person berating me.
"Fuck you, mate. I was just giving you a compliment. Ungrateful dickhead."
I put my hands together and inhaled deeply.
This made me have another critical realisation.
"Wait a second. I don't see any cursed spirits."
Wasn't the rest of the world supposed to just not have them? But then who were the people that had been giving me those weird looks and nods?
"Huh."
I wandered around, curious and largely clueless in the city I was somehow intimately familiar with, and yet not.
-
I think this is the change of pace I need to finally put pen to paper on that ASOIAF ending. It's reached a total of 145,000 to 150,000 words (A Song of Grace & Fury, I mean). My desire to write hasn't died down one bit, hell, I've been like a crackhead on withdrawal for the last few weeks while going in and out of university.
All I've done is write, delete, and repeat to the point of mental exhaustion and am still unable to come up with a satisfactory end. I think no end is better than a badly written one.
I've been working on another project beside this one too. An ASOIAF one. It's called Ode To The Dead & Drowned. It's largely about trying to do something with the ironborn where they aren't just shitty punchbags that deserve everything bad that happens to them and make them like actual vikings. With an undying Viking thrown in.
Comments
Potato
πββοΈ
Ryan
mix of Fate and JJK?
