AFT: chptr 1, narration

She used to look just like her mother. She had long, flowing dark hair, deep mysterious eyes and the kind of creamy skin that would make a man's knees weak. She was gorgeous, the type of woman that men often hounded after, pining and hoping. The kind of girl that a man would offer to pay her bills just to be able to tell his friends that he knew her name…

Then again maybe not! But she did look like her mother at one point, had the dark hair and everything. Her eyes were more bitter than mysterious, but beautiful nonetheless, whether she knew it or not. (This leads me to believe that her mom was a fox.) That's what happens with this job though; things need to change and by 'things' I mean everything. Name, looks and sometimes even your race, that's what comes with this type of work.

Like her changes, take mine for example; I used to have red hair - and now I have this unoriginal dark brown hair. At least I didn't have to change my gender, but then again I don't know how angry about that I would be - there are some perks, right? (Then again maybe not…) My name isn't the same anymore either, but I'm not really supposed to mention what it was when I was born to this world. That's one of His rules and honestly, it's the one I have the worst time following. 'Owen Naylor' just doesn't fit me the way that my real name does. Now I would tell you my name, folks, but whoever's reading this thing would never believe me anyway. The news reports would be shoved at my face and I think that my parents would kick my own ass for impersonating their son. Besides, like I said, I don't look like myself anymore at all.

But that's not the only thing that you have to change with this job. Not just your outer self, I mean. So not only do you have to change appearance and names, you have to become a liar.

I was never a liar, not willingly. But when I took this job, it became something that was necessary. Admittedly, when this all happened to me I thought that it was some wonky coma dream or something and part of me is still hoping that it is. Of course, I'm a bit wiser than I was back then, I know that it's not just going to go away when I 'wake up', because I'm not going to be waking from any sort of slumber anytime soon, at least not any that has to do with exhaustion. If I go to sleep, it happens to be for the familiarity of it and nothing more, what I am now - well, let's just say that I don't really need to rest from any working out I do ever again and just leave it at that.

For now.

To get back on track, the last thing that I remember happening was talking to a woman - Sharon Beauchamp - on a bus going to Colorado back to school to pick up some stuff. There was an accident and the only thing I can remember from it was telling her to go see her father. After that, everything went pretty black and now I'm here. 'Here' specifically being Port Mouton in Nova Scotia, Canada. No, I'm serious - Canada. Of all the places to be, hanging out with fishermen and farmers, not that I think there's a problem with them but - well, I'm more of a city boy myself.

But going back to that blackness? I was certain that I was going to die when I spent that last moment with Sharon, die and find Saint Peter at the pearly gates waiting to let me in. But that's not what happened. There were no gates and no really old dude with keys telling me that I was a good boy and all that nonsense so that I'd get into the kingdom of Heaven. Instead, there was just blackness and nothing. I'm not even kidding (and trust me, I would like to be!) just darkness all over the place. Everywhere that I looked it was just black, black and more black. But that didn't last forever because in this vast distance of nothingness there was a single, very small streak of white that seemed, for a while, unattainable to me. The closer that I got to it the bigger it became, which is pretty normal a thing to happen if you ask me.

Eventually, I was standing right in front of it. The 'it' wasn't just any 'it' - it was a huge podium, and I mean giant. You know, it took me a moment to get used to the white from it after having been in the dark for a while and it also took me a while to realize there was this smoking hot blond standing in front of it, too. Now as pretty as this girl was, there was something slightly creepy about her (like the fact that she didn't say a word to me.) And while I stood there, looking at her, wondering what the heck was going on the contrast swapped on me, by that I mean the podium turned back and the dark nothingness around me swapped to a nice, bright white (which was horrible on the eyes, just so you know.) And that's when I noticed that the podium had gotten a bit taller, only it was more that a bloke in black got behind an already black podium (and people think that white after Labor Day is a bad idea; you try looking at a bloke in black behind a black podium. Can't barely see a bugger like that.)

Actually, there was nothing to see of Him. Apart from a cloak, I mean. In fact, the only reason that I knew He was a guy was because of His voice. The cloak covered everything and I mean every bit of Him. Really it was kind of creepy, more so with that girl just staring at me like it was horrible that I'd found her and whatever He was to begin with. But I'll never forget the first words that He ever spoke to me, because it was how my mission began.

"Would you like death?"

That's what He said - hand to God.

Or whatever God-like being there is in His weird void.

And for a while, I wondered if Death was haunting my wonky coma dreams and was hoping that saying 'no' would make me wake up, but instead of saying 'no' or 'yes', I just kind of stood there and did nothing - and I'm not really sure to this day if that was the right thing or not. I just remember that He asked me the same thing again. That time, I told him 'yes'. Weird, maybe, but there wasn't any reason for me to lie to myself anymore. By the second time I already knew -

I was already dead.