Floating a few feet off the ground was an old man wearing a large red robe. He had a long white beard and mustache that connected together and flowed over his chest. Peregrine couldn’t put his finger on who the man reminded him of, but he looked so familiar.

  “It’s dangerous to go alone,” the old man said. “Take this System for guidance.” He waved his hand across his body and brought it up centered on the bridge of his nose.

  Peregrine stopped trying to scamper away. The Legend of Zelda? he wondered. That’s really similar to what the old wizard guy at the beginning of the game says.

  A blast of blue waves erupted from the old man’s hand and struck Peregrine in the forehead, searing pain immediately overwhelming him.

  “AAAHHHH!” Peregrine screamed. He covered his face with his hands, digging his fingertips into his temples while rolling across the ground, unable to fight against the unbearable agony.

  After what felt like an eternity, the pain finally subsided. Peregrine struggled to his knees, breathing heavily. He slid his hands from his face and opened his eyes. What he saw confused the ever-living shit out of him.

  His vision had been clear moments earlier, but now it was different. It seemed … fuzzy? But fuzzy wasn’t the right word—more like screen. That was closer. His viewpoint looked like he was trapped inside an old TV screen, seeing the outside world through it. There were jumbled words hovering in front of him. He slapped at the undecipherable words, and was astonished that his hand had no effect. The words were all in his head … or in his eyes, and didn’t exist in the real world.

  Peregrine turned his attention to the wizard-man. His blood boiled and he was fully prepared to strangle the guy, but a massive amount of fear, and self preservation, kept him frozen in place. He had no clue what was happening, or where he was, or how much danger he was in. So, he did the next most aggressive thing—he asked. “What did you do to my head? Are you the one who buried me?”

  The wizard-man stared at Peregrine a few moments before responding. “The answer to your second question is complex. Am I the one who physically buried you in the ground on Earth? No. Am I the one who facilitated your revival in this section of the Astral Plane? Yes.”

  “H-huh?” What was this creepazoid talking about? Earth? Astral Plane? Peregrine had just been at his apartment, writing. That is, until he had suddenly found himself digging out of his own grave. He had no recollection of how the transition happened. And now he was listening to some guy in robes mention woo-woo stuff? But he didn’t get time to ponder the situation any longer.

  “As for your first question,” the man began. “I simply expanded your consciousness to adhere to the higher existence you now find yourself in. It is standard for all those entering the Irenic Realm, and any realm of the Astral Plane, for that matter.”

  “Listen to me, you loon,” Peregrine said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re spouting nonsense. I’m going to find the cops and bring them back here to arrest you. You better pray you weren’t the one who put me in the ground because you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life.” He backed away from the man, afraid to take his eyes off him.

  “I understand your confusion,” the man said. “All will be answered in time. But first, we must witness how you passed on.”

  “Passed on?” Peregrine asked. “As in … died?”

  A large, rectangular patch of the sky frizzled, and scenes played out inside of it, like a projector of sorts. The videos were of Peregrine. They began on the morning of the last day he remembered partaking in, right before he found himself six feet under. He watched a segmented movie of himself going through the day, highlighting the mundane portions instead of the exciting parts. Though, he had to admit that he’d never lived an adventurous life. It was hard to argue otherwise, catching a glimpse from a third-person point of view of how boring he actually was.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Peregrine studied himself toiling away at his desk job. The way he hunched over the keyboard, and craned his neck, was awkward —but explained his constant back pain. He stole a quick glance at the old man, who was also surveying the floating movie, before returning to see himself grabbing supper and strolling through the park.

  For a second, he considered making a run for it. With the old man distracted, it was an option. But with all the bizarreness happening, he found he couldn’t walk away from experiencing an outside view of a day of his normal life. After a few minutes, the climax finally arrived. Sitting on his balcony, Peregrine wrote an outline for his future “read by nobody” story. The trees swayed as the wind picked up. Then he was falling.

  Peregrine gasped as he watched his body drop from the balcony and plummet four stories, smacking against the concrete below. Blood pooled from the back of his head, saturating the pencil and notebook that had landed beside him.

  The screen faded from the sky. Peregrine took a few steps back, in utter disbelief of having witnessed his own death. He stared at his hands like he’d never seen them before, his mind blank. Had he seen them before? He was unsure of how to be. Was this real? How could he exist right now after becoming a broken jar of spaghetti sauce on the concrete?

  “An unfortunate death,” the wizard-man said, softly. “You had more to offer the world, but you weren’t given enough time to show it.”

  Peregrine snapped out of his stupor, wiping his hands against his trousers like he was smearing the filth of death from them. “Are you telling me that was real? It doesn’t explain why I was buried in the ground and came out in this place, though. Or why I’m alive now.”

  “Yes. I understand your confusion,” the man said. “Here is your funeral. This will help you see the truth.”

  The purple sky once again frazzled and turned into a screen. This time the video opened on a shot of a cemetery, different from the one he currently found himself in. There was an open casket with Peregrine resting inside, arms folded over his chest and holding a white tulip. It looked like the same dead flower that he’d been holding before clawing his way out of the grave, but it was fresh and alive in the video. Even the suit was the same, he realized after checking out his dirt-covered attire with a bit more attention.

  Wet grass glistened, and dark clouds rolled across the sky. It must’ve stopped raining minutes before the funeral had started. One thing, however, stood out above the rest. No one had shown up. There was a pastor, of course. And off in the distance, a pair of caretakers, wearing stained and tattered overalls, sat in lawn chairs, playing a game of cards and puffing on cigars. But that was it. He had no siblings, and his parents had both died young. None of his distant relatives had ever spoken to him, so he wouldn’t expect any of them to come. Friends? He had never made any close friends. After his parents died, he had turned to writing to fill the empty void. Between work, writing, and being somewhat of a cynical asshole, he’d never found the time to socialize.

  The old man must’ve sensed Peregrine’s embarrassment because when he made eye contact with him, the man’s wrinkly face softened, and he said, “It was a quaint setting. Or cozy. Yes. A cozy funeral sounds quite lovely.”

  They both watched quietly as the casket was lowered into the ground and the two caretakers flicked their half-finished cigars into the six-foot hole and started shoveling dirt back in. Short of dumping him in a ditch, It was about as unceremonious as could be.

  “I’m really dead, then,” Peregrine said, taking a seat on the ground and folding his arms across his knees. All the events had compounded and left him overwhelmed with this reality. He looked up at the old man and motioned his hand at him in exasperation. “And why the hell do you look like a video game character?”

  “I modeled myself after this form to be more comforting to you,” the old man said. “Traversing your memories, I found this image to be soothing to you. It appears to be from a time in your life when you were most happy. This is also why you find yourself in your earthly body. I find it to be less jarring, helping to ease others into the next life.”

  OK, Peregrine thought. It’s creepy that he can browse through my memories. But resembling a video game character to put me at ease—that doesn’t seem like a villainous thing to do. He apparently has some pop culture knowledge. And I was the happiest as a child because I had no responsibilities, had access to countless games, and my parents were still alive. I’ve heard the term “isekai” before, and that seems to be what’s happening to me.

  After spending a few minutes processing old memories, and the current situation—while the old man stood idly by, giving him time to cope—Peregrine climbed to his feet and straightened his suit. “So, I died and got reincarnated to some afterlife world. What happens now?”