Tragedy ✔️

Chapter 7

I can breathe again.

I suck in a lungful of oxygen from the earth I so long forgot about. It's beautiful. I am standing in a green meadow, growing abundantly with wild flowers and full of chirping birds. Spring is just starting to bloom, a new generation is beginning to develop.

I had forgotten about the seasons. The hot, sticky, summer days. The leaves turning many different shades of red, yellow, and orange in autumn, then falling from the branches in spirals. Cold, chilly snow falling from the sky in winter. And the fresh new cycle of nature restarting in spring.

I close my eyes and let it all sink in. I can feel water filling behind my closed eyelids, but it's not because of sadness, or fear. I feel something I have forgotten about when I died, something I never felt down there. I feel happy. Then I start feeling many more things, I had no idea I craved so dearly for. I feel safe, soothed, and tranquil.

I take in another breath of the nature surrounding me. I notice something I didn't notice before because my mind was clouded with the thoughts of being alive again. I open my eyes and take a deeper breath this time, holding it in. I keep holding, fifteen seconds have passed and I should be feeling woozy by now, but I don't. I dare myself to hold on longer and thirty seconds pass, one minute, two, three. Finally, I let go of the oxygen kidnapped in my body and put my hands on my knees as I pant, breathing heavily. I wasn't actually holding oxygen. It's all an illusion.

I should have known from the beginning that I wasn't going to be alive again. I'm dead and I always will be. The Sender transports your soul to the living world, and it imitates the experience of being alive, but I can sense the knock offs.

For instance, when you breathe, you can feel your lungs getting filled with oxygen, but the longer you hold it, the more the feeling goes away. Also, the sun is shining brightly this spring morning, but even though I feel the sun glaring, I'm not sweating. I'm sure there are many more let downs in this "coming back to the living world" thing, but I snap back to reality when I feel the envelopes crumbling in my back pocket.

I take the he envelopes out and cut through the king's seal with my finger, revealing the beige parchment paper folded neatly inside. I take the paper out, drop the other envelope on the meadow floor, and unfold the paper that shows my first victim's name.

Liam Thompson

Age 17

West Ridge City

West Ridge High School

Lives with grandparents

Weakness: Heights

West Ridge... the name sounds familiar, but I don't know why. I pick up the other envelope from the ground and stuff it in my pocket. I'll open the other envelope after I get this first task done. Sorry Liam Thompson, today you get to move into my world.

I am standing in a meadow in the middle of nowhere with no sense of direction. I may not even be in the same country that my victim is in. I start stressing out, but then I remember that I have a supernatural key to this world that was designed to help me. Magic.

I look at the name of the city on the paper again: West Ridge.

I've been able to teleport with my magic before, and the way I did it was by just simply closing my eyes and imagining the place I wanted to transport myself to. How am I supposed to send myself to a place I don't even know how it looks? I close my eyes anyway to see if there is a sign that can guide me to West Ridge. And there is.

I can see a lake and a court building. There is a sign on the side of the road that says "Entering West Ridge". More pictures of West Ridge appear in my head, that all seem eerily familiar. I then see a big building with lots of people with back packs. The words "West Ridge High School" are in the front of the building.

"There!" I shout, opening my eyes.

I feel heat rising from my feet and then ascend to the rest of my upper body, just like the first time. Flames surround me, but they don't harm me in any way. When the flames finally clear, I am standing in a bathroom stall. I look down and see there is human fluids all over the toilet seat. Disgusting.

I'm pretty sure this is a high school bathroom, and I'm right. There is a piece of paper on the stall door that says "West Ridge High School Stall News". I feel like I've been here before but that's ridiculous. I didn't go to this school when I was alive. The school I went to was...

Not again... Why can't I remember?

I shrug off the scary thought and focus on the good news. I made it to West Ridge High School. This means Liam Thompson is here around this building somewhere. His hours are ticking down, and mine are too.

Just then, someone opens the stall door.

"Hey!" I shout, "Get out of here!"

It's as if I never said anything because the guy closes the door and starts doing his business.

Oh god.

I turn away as he is whistling, but then I start to freak out when I notice that he is passing through my body. I understand now. I am a soul, so he can't see me, or hear me. I can't touch anything living because I notice he passes right through me as he steps out the stall and goes to the sink to wash his hands.

I feel something in my back pocket, something in it is burning me. I take out the paper in my pocket and see that the name "Liam Thompson" is growing bright red on the paper.

I step out of the stall and walk toward the sink. The text on the paper starts glowing even brighter and the heat increases. Could this mean...

Liam Thompson is in front of me. Wow, that was easy. I didn't have to do a single thing, he just found me. I was told by Ms. Pudge that my magic works in the living world and on living things, so I decide to end this quickly by choking Liam Thompson to death with my magic, since I can't do it physically with my hands.

I lift my right hand toward Liam who is a foot away from me and he instantly starts choking. His hands go up to his neck, trying to understand what is happening to him.

Just a few seconds more...

Suddenly, I feel an agonizing pain in my chest. It feels like I'm having a heart attack. I can't stand the fire burning in my chest, so I drop my hand, and as soon as Liam regains his breath, the pain in my body halts.

I can't compute what just happened. Why was I being hurt for killing him. I'm supposed to kill him, right? Oh, I remember now, feeling stupid for not remembering the first thing I was given when I started working at 6x3 Inc. I'm in the Automobile Going position. I can't just go around getting rid of my victims in random ways. They have to leave in a car accident. And I thought this would be easy.

This just got a million times more difficult because Liam Thompson is no longer in front of me.