Chapter 1: Chapter 1 - Got a Smoke?

Death and boredom had become twins and it was difficult to tell which waited for the subway that morning.

White bread. Oatmeal. Drying paint. Daniel.

He tapped a tennis shoe against the concrete ground, a rush of air blasting his face as a subway train that wasn’t his screeched into the underground station. A pile of people approximating a line shuffled in unison to board the train.

Paperwork. Taxes. Chores. Stale food. Empty days. Boredom. Death.

Daniel.

He frowned and the train doors slid shut, the vehicle speeding off and leaving the boarding platform emptier, but still populated. An older couple leaned together to peer at the same newspaper. A woman tied her daughter’s shoe.

Thirty and single. No friends that knew his middle name, or his mom’s name, or his birthday. Not a failure, because a failure would mean he had tried something enough to fail, and he wasn’t the sort of person who could do that either.

He paid his bills, ate his oatmeal, and existed, through no real intent on his part.

The screech of an approaching train made his head lull in its direction. Being a train would be ideal, he figured. If you were moving, then you had a destination. If your engine had the roar of life, you had a goal.

That was the difficult part, he had discovered. He wanted to be something, but how was he supposed to pick something out of anything?

The screech of the new train echoed down the subway tunnel, and the little girl, her shoe freshly tied, chirped in response. She mimicked with a squeal of delight pairing the sound with a happy hop and flap of her arms.

Her mother cooed warnings that grew in urgency a hop too late. The girl’s ankle rolled beneath her, a step closer to the edge of the platform than she should have been. Her smile fell from her face just as she did.

She hit the tracks like a sack of flour.

The screaming started in an instant, but her mother was moving as fast as her voice, and she was over the edge of the platform as the lights of the train appeared in the tunnel.

He wanted to be something. Could he be a hero? He knew by thinking that he already wasn’t. Hero’s didn’t think, they acted.

But the mother wasn’t reappearing. The tiny fingers of the girl weren’t poking up over the edge of the tall platform. Something was wrong and the screaming grew and Daniel was closer than anyone else in the station.

A hero wouldn’t hesitate.

A hero wouldn’t feel the burn of social pressure on his ears from onlookers wondering why he wasn’t acting.

A hero wouldn’t panic.

A hero wouldn’t wince from the creak of his knees when he dropped onto the tracks.

The girl’s arm was twisted wrong, pinned under her body and causing howls of pain with every movement. Straps from her baby blue backpack were caught and tangled on the coarse metal of the tracks, but the way the girl’s broken body lay prevented her from simply being pulled away. Her mother ripped the fabric with ferocity, but threads resisted, stretching and unspooling but holding strong until Daniel’s pocket knife severed the resistant straps.

In the unspoken union of human adrenaline, Daniel and the woman heaved the girl up and over the edge of the platform while approaching onlookers pulled her to safety.

He dropped to a knee, bracing against the rush of air to give the woman a step to climb out on. She didn’t hesitate when she used him to climb out, but when she whirled around to throw her hand back down to help him, the gleaming lights of the train froze her in place.

He didn’t blame her, he had hesitated too. If he had jumped in with her, he would be on the platform with them, safe from his now impending doom.

The screech of the train’s breaks was deafening. Its horn was a desperate cry, a manifestation of the horror the train operator was feeling.

Daniel closed his eyes and everything stopped.

The screaming train. The blasting horn. The movement of air. The cries for help.

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The only thing that moved was the sweat dripping from his forehead to his cheeks. He pried open his eyes.

The mother’s face was frozen agape, her mouth baring stained teeth, tongue lifted in the middle of a scream. Behind her was a chain as wide as a person, anchored to concrete above and below.

His eyes widened. It wasn’t just one chain, but dozens, maybe hundreds, stretching far beyond what he could see. They cut across the stairs down to the station, blocked the path of the trains on the opposite side of the platform, pierced through people in a way that omitted any gore but instead blended into them like they had always been that way.

But most of all, they covered the train a mere six inches from him. They didn’t curve around the mechanical beast, but punctured it over and over again, holding it in perfect stillness.

“You died here,” a woman informed him, her voice textured like gravel. She was behind him on the tracks, but all Daniel could do was fall back, staring up at the platform and the mother’s half-curled hand.

Talons attached to cold fingers snaked through his hair, gripping his skull and tilting his head back.

It had been a mistake to call it a woman. It wore the skin of one, but he could feel the thinness of the facade through the grip on his bones. Its face was beautiful, smooth ashy skin, plump black lips and high cheekbones, but it wore the features like a wolf would a dress. The only truth in its appearance was its shaggy white mane, long strands entangled with chains that dangled over his face.

The creature peered down at him, passive interest oozing out of its yellow eyes. He was being judged, and when he failed that judgement, boredom curled the beast’s lips into a disgusted expression. It cast his head forward, releasing its grip. He could relate to the feeling.

Daniel watched as it leapt from its position behind him to the platform. It wore ragged black robes, more chains covering parts of its limbs and weaving in and out of the clothes. The way the chains snaked over its body, he imagined they didn’t stop on the outside but instead had come from inside the flesh.

The beast was searching the clothes of the frozen onlookers, patting them down with its long fingers until it found a pack of cigarettes, then a lighter.

It returned to the edge of the platform and sat down, dropping its legs over the side and kicking its bare feet like a child on a swing. It lit a cigarette.

“You died here,” it reiterated between its first and second drag. “You have two options.”

It paused and looked down at the pack of cigarettes, then tapped another one out and offered it to Daniel. He hadn’t smoked before. Hadn’t been offered a cigarette, either.

He took it, let the creature light it, then choked on the burning assault on his lungs while it continued speaking.

“You can stay dead, released from these mortal chains,” it explained, peering at him through a cloud of exhaled smoke. His eyes were watering, throat aflame with his mistake, but the pain made the situation easier, in a way — anchored him to reality, like those chains. It was hard to overthink while choking. He nodded and it continued.

“Or you can accept me as your patron and be born again, somewhere else in existence.”

His body yearned for water, but all he could do was swallow his spit before trying to speak. The time spent calming his throat let him consider the question. Begging for his life felt like a waste of his limited air. “What does it mean for you to be my patron?”

The whites of its eyes shown just a little more, the crinkles on its face smoothing out, diminishing its passive glare. Its lips twitched, the curve of a smile brief. It liked the question. “It means I will grant you a gift, and you will complete a mission.”

He didn’t dare for another taste of the cigarette. It was terrible. “Is this always what happens when we die?”

No smile for that question. “No.”

Daniel sat with that for a moment, not looking directly at the creature but listening to its rhythmic inhales and exhales. “Why me, then?”

The creature huffed, annoyance hot in its breath just like the smoke. It dropped from the platform, postured in front of him with repulsion on its face again. “You have two options,” it hissed, dropping the cigarette and crushing it out with a frustrated step. He imagined how the sizzle would have felt against his own skin, but it didn’t react to the burn.

Daniel didn’t want to die. He wasn’t sure he wanted to live, but he knew he didn’t want to die yet. For all the curses of life, death was a pretty sweet deal. If you changed your mind, you could always die later.

“I want to live,” he answered.

“Atta boy,” it cooed, not like the mother had to its child but exactly as the mother had, stealing her voice and dunking it in a vat of sing-songy sweetness. “A gift then, for you. Anything you want, you need only ask and it will be yours to use in your new world.”

Daniel’s gaze jerked from knee to elbow to strip of cloth, struggling to settle on a place safe to look. The fine line between curiosity and irritation made him wary, but the open ended nature of ‘anything’ was exactly what had made life so impossible for him the first time.

“C-Can—“ his voice cracked, saving him from a request that would surely have been a waste. He needed more information. He tried again. “What’s the mission I need to complete for you?”

The creature twisted a fresh cigarette between its fingers. He stole a glance at its face to see lowered eyebrows. It was considering how to answer. A feeling of distrust settled in his gut.

“You must kill a creature beyond your understanding. Something more powerful than you can imagine now.”

Daniel’s stomach churned and the pain in his throat was lessened. The adrenaline from the train was leaking out of him. Logic and confidence loosened their hold on him.

“How am I supposed to choose a gift based on that? A magic something-killing sword? A gun that kills scary things? Enough money to buy an army?” he asked, each question growing in agitation, like a flood gate had been opened in the face of such an impossible decision to make.

He stared at the tracks beneath the creature, hand clenching and unclenching. This was absurd. He had lost his mind. He had died — it was better to die, he realized. Easier. He hadn’t enjoyed his first life, no reason to try a second.

Before he could tell it just that, a foot crashed against his chest, pressing him down to the floor with all encompassing pressure. He couldn’t fathom what was on the other side of the leg to create such a weight. His head cracked against the tracks and his vision blurred, filled suddenly with swirling images of the devil standing over him, on him, in him.

It leaned down, spit and bile dribbling down its lips. “A gift. A new world. Take it or die, Daniel Moore,” it spat, its saliva hotter than fire on his cheeks.

“A gift,” he whispered, voice becoming a strangled choke as a hand of ice clutched his throat. Nails dug into his jaw, finding the bone within. “I want a gift. A wish. Whenever I want, in the next world.”

Tears blurred his vision more until the grip on his throat released. The hand moved, the curved nail on the creature's thumb pressing into his lip with the intimacy of a lover. It opened his mouth, gently tugging his bottom lip up and down.

His vision cleared enough to see that it was smiling, pristine teeth gleaming at him. He had expected them to be savage points, shark-like, but they weren’t. They were human.

She perched on his chest, an owl peering down at him with round eyes. Despite the nauseating pressure that had pushed him to the ground, she weighed near nothing when actually sitting on him. Her disgust and boredom no longer reflected his own. She seemed intrigued.

“Good gift,” she declared, stepping off of him and into a long stretch, her arms twisting behind her back, hands high above her head. “Gives you options. This’ll be fun.”

She rounded to face him again, extending a hand down towards him. He flinched, stared at the outreached paw for too long before realizing it wasn’t a threat but the completion of the offer. Her smile was lopsided, her head tilted to the side. She was almost charming.

He looked back at the train, then the threads left on the tracks from the girl’s dress. He lifted his hand to reach her’s, and when their fingers met the world disappeared.