1 - Truck-Sama
1095 Words
* Six years ago *
Harold Leightner had been a successful salesman. He sold appliances out of the local Conn's, specializing in getting people to sign contracts that promised no money down for six months. He didn't consider himself evil; if he weren't luring in the suckers then someone else would.
And, it gave him the money to stop for a good burger at least once a week. He was walking from the restaurant to his car when the ice-cream truck made an impossible turn, not even slowing, and struck him.
Or, perhaps more to the point, didn't immediately strike him. Instead, time seemed to slow, as he was highlighted like a deer, still trying to leap forward to safety. He could see the wheels, turned to compensate, to hit him squarely anyway.
"What the hell?" he wondered. "I'll bet it's that punk kid from two days ago, still butthurt about the interest payments."
"Nope." said the truck. "I don't need a driver. Or rather, I drive myself. Hi, I'm Truck-sama, chooser of the slain. What's your name."
"Dafuq?" Harold said, "I must be suffering a seizure."
"Huh? No, no, Harold. I've slowed time to make you the standard offer. I can take your soul to another world, where magic is used by mortal and immortal alike. You'll be born to noble family and..."
"Pass." Harold said. "A world with dysentry and rotted teeth? Hard pass. I'll keep the life I have."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Harold. That's really not an option, any more." And before Harold could realize that he'd never given Truck-sama his name, time returned to normal. There was an instant of pain, and no screaming, and his broken corpse was flung into the decorative bushes at the side of his favorite burger joint.
Without slowing, Truck-sama turned left twice, and then right to get on the road again. "Team of four in New Orleans." came across the radio. While he was getting details, Truck-sama vanished from that road, and re-appeared in New Orleans.
He never gave any consideration to Harold's soul, looking in dawning horror at his shattered body.
Mostly because it wasn't lying there bleeding the way bodies were supposed to. If anything, the blood was going back into the body, and its bones re-aligning with audible cracking noises.
"What the literal f**k?" he asked.
A lightly glowing hand gently rested on the left shoulder of his soul. "Come along, Harold Leightner. The afterlife awaits."
Harold turned to see an elderly, balding man. He looked like the sort of guy who mowed their lawn at eight in the morning every Saturday, rain or shine. "Who the f**k are you?" he asked.
"Harold. You know me. I'm the guardian angel your mother had assigned to you."
"Guardian angel? Where were you just a minute ago?"
The angel looked sincerely apologetic, which was a sure indicator to Harold that he was nothing of the sort. "You haven't been feeding me a lot of faith, son. I've done what I can, but there was no way I'd be strong enough to stop that. Now come on, we can still get you into heaven. Maybe. But we have to go right now."
Harold slapped the hand off his shoulder. "f**k, no! That's not even remotely fair! Get me back THERE, in my body, right now."
"Harold, I think you know that's among the things that isn't going to happen here. Come on, I'm not allowed to ask again."
"Hell, no. f**k you, and f**k my mom, and f**k GOD!"
The angel recoiled as though struck. "I'm really sorry, then Harold." the angel sighed, sprouted a pair of white-feathered wings, and flapped off into the night.
Before one of the devils or demons could find him, a hungry Fenris, the size of a subcompact car, found and ate him. It looked curiously at the body, around which normal mortal people were gathering. They mistook the Fenris for a large black dog. Large, certainly, but not unusually so.
The body was no longer twitching. And it had a soul inside it, so the Fenris just moved on. Whatever was going on certainly wasn't its business.
The body that was once Harold Leightner was rushed to the nearest emergency room. He was unconscious, or so the doctors evaluated his condition.
They didn't have the tools to determine that the soul inside was that of a female. Specifically, Narma of House Sun-Scale, who was destined to become the Dragon Princess of her generation. Her generation in another world.
The tiny baby became the host to a soul from a third world, one that doesn't matter to the world Harold was born into. But that child's soul, innocent and unknowing, was reborn into the adult body the doctors called Harold Leightner.
The professional doctors, who tried to explain amnesia and reversion to childhood to his wife and son. A wife and son who, due to Harold's poor budgeting skills, had to move in with her parents.
Harold, or rather his incontinent body, was relegated to nursing home. Yet even then, the skeins of fate began to re-weave, to keep the dream of reality more or less intact.
* Five years ago *
Harold was clearly not going to recover, at least not entirely. He could say simple words, and recognized his own name. But it was as though he had forgotten most of his grammar, like a newborn child. At least he could tell his orderlies when he needed to go to the bathroom.
* Three years ago *
Harold was in that curious stage of his second childhood. He liked exploring, but didn't always remember all the details, such as pants. Harold's now ex-wife refused to pay his rent any more, not understanding that he lacked the skills to support himself. Harold became a ward of the state, who enrolled him in a training program to be a clerk of some kind.
* Close enough to now *
Harold had a job at the DMV. It was a boring job, but it was one Harold seemed unnaturally good at. He knew how to pronounce people's names, and always followed the rules to the letter. He never followed the rules once away from work, as numerous speeding tickets could attest.
But Harold had been warned what could happen if he didn't perform his job, didn't save his money for later in life. And so Harold worked diligently at the DMV, at least until the day the woman with rainbows for eyes came in to renew her vehicle registration sticker.
- Writer
