'At least it's better than dying in a bed.' Jack thought as a final smirk formed on his face while he tipped backwards into the lake.
He felt himself roll a couple of times and ended up with his body in the shallows, and head stuck in the cold mud. After that, he felt no more.
The being formerly known as Jack Nash found out that nothingness and darkness represented two completely different concepts. Darkness was just the absence of light, you knew deep down that things existed somewhere out there in the dark, but you just couldn't see them. Nothingness, on the other hand, was just that. No things, no light, no darkness, no it, no anything.
It couldn't figure out how long it remained in that state of nothingness. It only knew that it somehow existed, although it couldn't figure out just who, or what, it was.
After millions of years or just a second, as far as the being understood, a spark of remembrance flashed in its memory.
It could see a small… thing? A baby, it somehow remembered that the thing was called a baby, being held by a larger thing, while another larger one stood next to it and produced strange noises.
'Mom and dad.' Something in the back of its mind told it and a flood of memories slammed into the being. No, into Jack.
Jack started remembering his life.
He grew up in a typical Midwestern family in southern Indiana. Fell in love with a girl in high school who he intended to marry after college. In college, he studied Information Technology with a focus on Cyber Security.
Everything in his life seemed right on track, but then from a few small incidents a war most people didn't believe possible broke out. One that would change the fate of the world forever, the third big one. Even though Jack tried to get into the Cyber Security department of the Armed Forces, they deemed him too inexperienced and he ended up getting drafted into the regular army.
The war lasted for over eight long, bloody years and left Sergeant Major Jack Nash, and the world, with too many scars to ever heal right.
In the beginning, he tried to keep his high school relationship going long distance, but a year into the war he received a Dear John letter from her and never heard from her again.
After the war ended he stayed in the Army for a couple more years doing cleanup operations, after which the government decided to start retiring the old broken down veterans. And he certainly qualified.
At almost thirty years old he became a retired veteran with nothing to do.
For the next few years, he drifted in a drunken haze all across the States. In one of his wild nights out he met a barmaid with who, after some sloppy lovemaking, he made a child.
That sobered him up real quick and he decided to make an honest woman out of her.
They got married as fast as possible, and soon after a boy named Kevin came into the world.
In the meantime, Jack decided to restart his interest in Cyber Security so he could earn more money to support his family. With the help of the VA, he managed to find a job and even got promoted a few times in the next five years.
Things finally seemed to get back on track for him when his wife decided that she didn't feel happy and served him with divorce papers.
A snowflake in Hell stood a better chance at survival, than Jack did on winning the court case for custody of his son with his past, so he decided not to fight it. For his effort in becoming the primary breadwinner in the family, the court awarded him with alimony and child support payments he had to make to his wife.
After all that he could only afford to buy himself a mobile home from which he could work and live out of.
Jack decided that even though his marriage ended in disaster, he would stay in his son's life as much as he could. So after another long legal battle that almost ended him, he got allowed visitation rights only twice a month, under supervision.
During the next few years, his ex-wife moved a couple of times, and Jack followed along in his mobile home.
As his son hit his teens, his ex-wife remarried and he got freed from the alimony payments. This left him with some extra cash, so he sold his breaking down mobile home and rented an apartment. Around this time a friend of his also sparked an interest in fishing with Jack.
When he went fishing he could leave all of his troubles behind and just relax. It was his own personal secluded meditation location.
As his son turned eighteen and went to college, Jack got released from paying child support to his wife. The only thing he changed in the next few years was the person to who the checks were addressed to, from his wife to his son.
When his son finished College and got a job, Jack decided to retire from his Cyber Security work. He decided to focus more on fishing and learning about things that interested him from the internet that he never had the time to learn in the past.
Years seemed to fly and his son got married and had a son of his own, named Jacob.
It was one of the happiest moments of Jack's life. He tried to spend as much time as his son allowed with Jacob.
But, as time flies and children grow up, his grandson had less and less time for him.
That was why when Kevin and Jacob agreed to go fishing with him this time; he felt as happy as he hadn't felt in years. When Jacob was younger they went fishing often, but less and less with the ruthless march of years, and not for over a couple of them since the last time.
When Jack finished processing his memories he could only feel a sense of helplessness, tinged with a bit of bitterness.
'I can't believe I died fighting a fish.' he thought with chagrin. 'Well, at least I went down fighting.' he laughed at himself. Then it dawned on him 'Wait, I died… How am I still thinking then? What happened? Where am I?'
For the first time in what seemed like eons Jack's focus turned from introspection towards the world outside, and quickly fled back to the inside.
'What the Hell?' he thought in bewilderment, and peeked back out. Jack couldn't tell how he did this, but he did do it.
'Yep, Hell.' he concluded from what he could see.
All around him flew some kinds of balls of grey gas, a giant river of them. They all had different shades; some even close to the brightness of the sun, or the darkness of space. He couldn't see anything else from the mass of gas balls flowing past him.
From time to time Jack saw a gas ball with a translucent face on it, but those rarely appeared in his 'line of sight'.
'Wait, am I like that?' he thought and tried to 'look' at himself. After a few tries, he somehow got the hang of it and set his 'sight' at his new body.
A dark gray ball of gas greeted him, the shade of asphalt during rain.
'Figures.' he muttered. From what he could deduce these balls represented something akin to souls, and the color should denote the purity of one.
Just as he tried to figure out what to do next, or even how to move, a commotion broke out on what he perceived as his left side.
From the river of small gas balls, one akin to a four-story building broke out, dark as sin.
The only thing Jack could do is stare at it as it moved around his field of vision.
From time to time it would move to a darker gas ball and somehow swallow it. It just looked like it bulldozed over the thing, and the smaller one disappeared.
Right as he wondered what the hell the large ball represented, Jack heard a cheerful gravelly voice in his consciousness.
"Oh, another corrupted one that's aware. What great luck!" right then the large ball started moving towards Jack with something seeming like a hop in its glide.
'F*ck, f*ck, f*ck!' Jack thought as he tried to move his 'body' with all the strength that he could muster.
'I never thought that I'd find out what a small fish thinks when it sees a shark coming towards it.' Jack thought as he engaged his entire willpower into thinking about moving.
Just as the building-sized ball of gas neared him, Jack somehow managed to move his ball for what seemed like a millimeter. He didn't know how he did it; he only knew that he felt extremely drained after doing it. But that didn't mean that he stopped trying.
"Oh, you can even move a little. I sure am lucky this time." came the voice again.
Just as Jack started to feel the 'breath' of the large ball on his figurative neck he sensed another, even larger, thing come out of the river of gas balls somewhere in front of him.
It shone as bright as burning magnesium, it even made Jack feel slightly uncomfortable.
He felt the attention the large evil thing had on him slip away, and could faintly hear "Damnation, looks like I ran out of time." from it.
Jack almost let out a 'sigh' in relief, but then he heard "Still, I just have time for this one."
The pressure from the attention came back stronger than ever as the building-sized ball of gas ran over Jack's little grey smudge like a truck over a rat, making him lose consciousness once more.