Contract KLA
[WP] You are kidnapped by a dark cult, who sacrifice you to their eldritch god. When your soul arrives in the being’s domain, the deity profusely apologizes and offers to send you back if you get rid of the psychopaths who are slandering his good name with bloodshed.
*****
The expectations of any man on woman upon dying might be to see or hear something life-changing, or at least something that would’ve changed their lives if they had still been living. Perhaps proof that God exists, maybe even a shining light at the end of a tunnel, or perhaps something so threatening to our static views of our unchanging and boring lives that a conscious mind could fathom it not. And maybe this is what someone would see, if they died a normal death. But I did not die a normal death.
The group had uttered their first chants, and they cast what they referred to as “The Almighty All-knowing Pen” into the fire. The exact moment it made contact with the flames, the lapping orange flares shapeshifted into a dark, green luminescent color. The cult then gathered over me, laying on the table of sacrifice.
Right before I was kidnapped, the last thing I even remembered was getting fit into a fancy, pompous black tuxedo with a price tag so exorbitant, its value orbited the Earth. I was going to attend a wedding- my very own wedding, to be wed to my lovely fiancé. But instead of fashionably walking out of the dressing room and to the altar, I was now strapped down to a bloody bed, made the subject of cruel torture (or what the cult called “necessary steps”), and they hadn’t even bothered to take my suit off. And now here I lie, dressed up for nothing, to be made a dapper cadaver.
“A sacrifice in its prime. All-seeing Alkesia loves them unmarried,” one member said, talking to another, “but he especially loves it when they’re about to get married, but don’t. Like a medium well steak- not fully cooked, but on the brink of leather.”
And they all nodded, chanting “All hail Alkesia, the Lord of all we know- ‘flict men with aphrodisia, and marry newt with snow.”
I felt a sharp, localized pain immediately wash over my upper shoulder. They had injected me with some mysterious things, though I had subtle inklings of what it may have been, as at that moment I became sleepier.
The last thing I saw was what seemed to be a dismembered newt body and a batch of fresh snow being hastily thrown together, as they gathered over me holding the sharpest knife I may have seen in my life.
And that is how I died. And the moment I stepped through the door of tranquility I expected some sort of light, or considering the nature of my perishing, a darkness, at the end of a descending hallway. But instead I was met with darkness.
At first I thought that that was it- nothing. That it was just death with nothing else to it. I was once living, and now I was living no more. But then how was I able to consciously think?
I soon had my answer. I was not in complete nothingness, nor was I even alone. Instead, a blinding light switched on to reveal a dinky decrepit apartment with a middle aged man sitting and reading a magazine, occasionally scratching his hairy forearms.
It took a while for him to notice me, and when he finally put his magazine down, he seemed agitated at the mere sight of me.
“Goddamnit, another one? How can I get those klutz fucking schizo’s to stop this shit?”
“Uh, what?”
He just stared at me, with an annoyed look on his face. I was still extremely confused, and I was waiting for him to say nothing. But no, it was pure silence for a while except maybe the incandescent hum of the single lightbulb in the room.
Finally, he cracked open the beer can of silence, and our poured a drunken explanation.
“Every time I have to fucking explain it, I want to take a fucking newt’s dick and choke those fuckers with it- look, okay, kid, do you remember how you died?”
“Yes. I was kidnapped and sacrificed against my own will to some sort of deity, and now somehow I’m here…”
He just stared at me, as if expecting me to know something I clearly didn’t. But, finally, like all kindergarten teachers when their students won’t stop yelling, it snapped.
“No- you’re not saying- you’re All-seeing Alkesia?”
“That’s what they call me, yeah…”
“A God? And you live,” I looked around the room, seeming almost ancient with how rundown it was, “here? In this crammed ass apartment?”
“I prefer to call it my ‘domain’…”
“What a load of…” But suddenly, I remembered who I was talking to. He looked like a middle-aged man 2 economic recessions short of a midlife crisis, yes, but he is a god. He doesn’t appear how we expect a god to appear like. but maybe that’s our fault. Maybe we over-idealized them. And maybe it was best to keep the potentially offensive comments to a minimum in the presence of an all-powerful being, even with the absence of some sort of glowing aura.
It was silent for even longer this time, and at last he said, “Look, I’ll be frank with you. You’re just gonna have to like, live here now. I know it’s inconvenient, but I can’t send you back."
I stared at him in horror as my life began to flash before my eyes post-mortem. I realized the severity of my situation- my fiancé, expecting to be married to the love of her life, can now only expect nothing but shattered dreams and a hollow soul. This is truly happening. I’m seriously dead, and though my current setting may not reflect that, I am. Is this hell? Is this heaven? Maybe neither, or both? All I know is that it’s an afterlife- an unwelcome one, to be sure.
The dad-bod deity persisted, discussing potential plans for my eternal sojourn. “If you can see the door to the left- I mean, your right, it should lead to my living room. There’s a couch you can crash on, though you’re gonna have to share it with Jerry. He’s my dog.”
“And I’ll just… stay there forever?” I began to talk with little restraint, my self-control impaired by the somehow joking morbidity of even just being in this shithole afterlife. “Doomed to crash eternally on a couch? Forced to share it with a dog, with the least doglike name I’ve ever even encountered?”
“Don’t talk about Jerry like that.” he snapped back.
“It can’t be… this is it… forever.”
“Well, not forever.” the deity delved into explanation. “I’m gonna try to explain it, but it is complicated. You humans were right- there is heaven and hell. This is sorta like a waiting room.”
“Limbo?” I responded.
“Well, no. Because the way you would define limbo is a single dimension between heaven and hell,” he was eager to correct me, “but there are multiple waiting rooms. And however you die determines which waiting room you go to. Whenever anyone dies, a random image of a deity is put into their head, and whoever it was, they go to that deity’s waiting room before being sent to heaven or hell. Since you got sacrificed, my image was forced into your head.”
“But I didn’t see anyone when I died.”
“Yeah, I forgot to turn on the lights. But look, all you need to know is that recently, because of that stupid cult, the influx of people showing up in my domain has increased twofold! It’s not fair! They’re breaking this delicate system, where the overwhelming amount of dead people is split up into manageable shares handled by many deities abroad! I’m sick and tired of it, and I just wanna-“
He stood up from his chair, and ripped his magazine in two. He then continued to stand, breathing pure rage, as idle physically as if he were restrained, but as idle mentally as a red seeing bull. Finally, he sat down again, calming himself, coming to terms with it. “And I just have to deal with it. Forever- or as long as I’m conscious, which is forever."
But then a look appeared in his eye, a look that combined mischief and ingenuity into a single glint reflected off of his glasses. “Unless, that is…”
I instantly jumped at this. Maybe I could be put back to life. “Unless? Unless what?”
“You know, both Satan and God aren’t too happy about this cult either. Not only are these nuts defying their wills and hailing me over true holiness, but they’re also causing tons of people to die in ways that don’t align with God’s plan.”
“He has a plan?”
“I know, I was surprised too.”
He scooted his chair to his desk with ease, as it was one of those work chairs with wheels fixed onto the bottom. He logged into his Windows 98 computer and searched something. “Aha! Just as I thought!”
“What?” I almost shriveled up in excitement.
“You weren’t supposed to die until decades later, and of old age! Since this cult caused you premature death, I could send you back!”
I was ecstatic! “Oh my god- I mean, All-seeing Alkesia! Thank you, thank you! I can’t express how much-“
“Don’t start praising yet,” he shushed me instantly. “I don’t have to send you back. I just have the grounds to.”
“Why wouldn’t you send me back?” My feelings of anxiety and worry returned and worsened as I realized he may deny me reentry to the Overworld.
“Tell you what. I’ll send you back, on one condition.”
I nodded in anticipation.
In response, he handed me a pen. It appeared to be the very same one that the cult members had tossed into the fire mere moments prior to my death. “Take this with you, and…”
“And?”
He was thinking. I did not know about what.
“Take it, and kill them.”
I nodded. And with that, he opened the console on his computer, the pixels still visible on his screen. He typed in the command: “-revive user classification: Earth-dweller Terra id:7,134,533,091”
I felt the same feeling that I felt when I died, but it was strangely euphoric. The light turned off, but this time I was comforted, not only knowing that I’d be returning, but that I would be able to dish out some sweet, sweet revenge.
*****
THE END
