Jay sidestepped almost out of instinct as a pot crash at his previous location.
Phew! How lucky! He thought.
"Sorry!" A boy said from the balcony above. He had been waving around his bat and had accidentally hit the pot off of the ledge.
"No problem. Just stop playing near pots, okay?" Jay gently cautioned the child.
He wasn't the sort to pick unnecessary fights.
After all, what was the point in rattling off at a kid who had made an honest mistake?
But there was still something bothering him.
Jay was having a weird day. He had nearly died, over 30 times just today!
Avoiding an oncoming bus, catching himself when the safety bar on the notoriously overstuffed suburban train broke, almost slipping and hitting his head in the bath, the gas leak in his lab this morning. It was almost as if death itself had it out for him this day.
And Jay wasn't about to just lie down and submit to an unknown fate without a struggle.
And avoid he did. Accident after accident, misfortune after misfortune. And he was proud of it.
That night he slept victorius having avoided death the whole day!
Only, he died of a brain aneurysm in his sleep.
and thus begins his journey into a world of war, tyranny and misery wrapped in the all consuming grim darkness of a world devoid of gods.
Jay awoke to a muddled conscious, the faint thumping and gentle warmth of his surroundings soothing him as he drifted back into the unconcious like a raft adrift at sea.
Then as suddenlybas it had been there, the warmth disappeared, reaplaced by the cold reality of life.
Next came pain. Searing, burning pain. So hot yet so cold at the same time.
He tried to breath but his lungs gave way. His arms and legs attempting to fail in a pathetic display of suffering. They didn't move to his commands. They didn't move at all. Not in any meanigful way at least. He cried out, screaming at the top of his lungs as giants loomed over him, watching his every move.
Fear, despair and anger shuffled within him violently, like a storm brewing.
Then it hit him. Just as he was about to fall asleep. He'd been reborn!