Rouge Soul

1. The River

The afterlife is the most boring place a soul can go, as to how I ended up here, I haven't the slightest clue. Nor do I know how long I've been here, after a while you sort of forget things. A constant flow of souls makes up what the reapers call the river, from how I understand every now and then a reaper comes by and tears a soul away from the river, after that nobody knows what happens. There are theories that they turn them into reapers, others say they do experiments on them. As for what I think, I think they are remade into new humans or destroyed. But again, nobody knows, we don't even know what the reapers really are, but I don't really care to find out, what would be the point? Just on schedule a reaper comes to check on the flow, just to make sure the souls didn't form a dam stopping the flow on accident. But something was off, there were two reapers, usually there's only one at a time. I could hear them talking, a more confident dark sounding voice spoke. "This is the river of souls, this is where you'll be stationed for your first time. You'll be taking a soul and bringing it back to the processor's". He seemed to explain. But the second had a shaky unconfident voice, completely opposite of the first reaper as he spoke.

"But what if I drop it? You should do it this time.."

"Do it now, stop being a wuss" the first reaper barked. Without hesitation or rather with much fear, the second reaper approached the river. As I was coming closer the other souls began to panic, not wanting to be picked. The sigh of relief coming from the river as I was lifted from the river, my very soul was being held in the palms of this nervous shaky reaper now, I could see what really happens when a soul was picked. It should be noted that plans such as these should never be expected to work out, as he turned to the other reaper I suppose his grip wasn't good enough, making me slip from his grasps. Something I never imagined happened, I fell through the floor and began falling straight to the world of the living called earth.

I could feel the air rushing past me as I made my fall of fear, before my eyes opened, actual human eyes. I jolted up feeling the body I was in, I was free from that river! A smile crept onto my face as I got up with a stumble, getting used to legs again. Walking to the mirror in the room I would guess to be mine, I could see my black semi-long hair, a shaven clean face that was decently shaped to be skinny. On closer inspection my eyes were different, somewhat unsettling. As it was I had to accept one eye being an extremely light blue, just like the color of the souls back in the river. The other one was the most unsettling, it was as if it was a blood red.

Everything else about me seemed fairly average to say the least. It occurs to me that I haven't taken time to take in the surrounding environment, but upon inspection I find a wallet on a nightstand. When I open it I find what appears to be my own license with my information. My name is apparently Zeke Slander, eighteen years old, born on April second.

"So an Aries baby huh?" I questioned to myself, not sure what made me say it aloud, or why it was so important to begin with. My mind and voice went blank as I read the year. 3632. I couldn't understand why it was such a shock to me, since when you're a soul you forget nearly everything and cannot tell the passing of time. My only guess would be I died many years before this and my subconscious picked up on it. It was good I woke up fully dressed in a red flannel with a grey shirt underneath and regular skinny jeans with a hole in the knee seemed pretty punkish but I kinda liked it.

As I put the wallet in the back pocket, A little more inspection a pair of sunglasses rested on a desk across the room by a backpack. I guess they could be good to hide the whole eye situation. I go to put them on as a cell phone started ringing on the bed. I decided to pick it up but instantly was greeted with a ear destroying "Where the hell are you!"

After a few seconds of trying to clear my ears of the damaging noise I reply confused "um what? What do you mean?"

The voice spoke calmer now so I could hear the feminine tone, "How much of an idiot are you? You pick me up to go to school everyday why aren't you here"