Silence and darkness engulfed everything. An emptiness smothered my mind, finally letting me be free, if only for a moment.
"You idiot! Why would you completely waste a perfectly good life that I had set out for you?"
I awoke from the darkness to a bright white surrounding, with a sharp pain in my head. Looking up, I saw before me a tall and proud lady, standing gracefully, minus the massive bat she was holding and a shard scowl on her face.
"Well? Any response?" She asked, waiting. "No, well maybe I'll just have to hit you again."
She raised the bat, seemingly intent to follow through with what she had just said.
"Wait!" I screamed. "Who even are you? And why are you hitting me with a baseball bat?"
She paused, not expecting an actual response from me.
"I'm the goddess of hope, Anophynos." She slowly said. "I brought you here after… what happened on Earth. And I'm hitting you because you completely destroyed the life I had set up for you!"
I… didn't even know what to say. After all my years of rejecting the very thought that a deity could actually exist, one stands before me. And it's the deity of the one thing I never seemed to have. I thought over her words, and formulated a cohesive sentence to respond to her with.
"Hello Goddess," I started, "thank you for introducing yourself. I'm… well, I'm dead, but why are you saying you set up a life for me? Living in a false body that can only survive by eating flesh doesn't seem to be a good life at all, plus I'm sure that you, out of anyone here, should know how much hope I actually have."
Anophynos took a couple steps back, seemingly hurt by the words I had said. Was I too abrupt with how I felt? Hopefully not, I was just telling her the truth.
"You really don't mince words, do you?" Anophynos said. "Didn't really expect much else from you, but I had hoped that since you died, maybe things could have changed."
And with that, she started to explain what she had planned. If I had accepted the agent's offer to let me live, I would have been cryogenically frozen, and they would have found a solution to my issue within a few years, giving me a new lease on life, no longer tied down to the constraints of the society I had lived in previously.
"Excuse me," I interrupted her, needing some explanation. "You planned a new life for me, where you expected me to be happy, but did you account for the fact that I saw my entire family die at the hands of the very body I inhabited?"
The goddess paused, completely unsure how to respond. "Yes?"
I had no words. How could anyone believe that seeing something like that isn't too impactful to completely change someone's life?
When Anophynos didn't receive any response, she realized where she went wrong.
"I see," She stated. "I knew that when humans saw others of their kind die, they could have a traumatic experience, but I expected it to be different with you. After all, you were always wishing for death, yet never truly seeking it."
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. She was right. For years, all I wished was for it all to end, so I could finally be free of it all. Living was just painful for me, and death was just the best escape I saw. Especially after all that happened when I woke up.
"I wasn't a psychopath." I told her. "I can still feel sadness, pain, confusion, anguish, and a ton of other random emotions. When I saw… all of that, it just intensified everything when I realized what had happened. Why would anyone want to live a life where no one they cared for was still alive, all because of what they did?"
"You did nothing wrong though," Anophynos countered. "It was the vampires that killed them, they just made you think you killed them. However, I understand your point of view now. With all that you went through, it isn't surprising that you chose what you viewed as the easier option."
She stopped for a moment, thinking, before she looked at me and smiled.
"How about this, human. Let's make a bet."
I looked at her in confusion, which prompted her to continue.
"I'll give you a new life, with a new family, in a new world. Something completely different from your previous life and world. I know how rough that world was for you, so I'll give you something that can inspire you and give you exactly what you're lacking. Hope."
"And what about that is the bet?" I questioned. "All it seems to be so far is just sending me somewhere new expecting something different."
"Precisely," She laughed. "The bet is whether you'll become attached to the new world, and finally be happy, or if you'll stay the way you are, unable to move forward. What do you think?"
Thinking it over, it didn't seem so bad. A new start was something I had wished for, but forgot due to its impossibility. There was only one question.
"What are we betting?"
That only got Anophynos to smile even wider.
"Naturally, nothing that serious. If you win, and you can't find happiness, I'll personally erase your memories, and send your soul back into the cycle of reincarnation. And if I win, you'll have hope, and become a faithful believer of mine. Simple, right?"
The deal was surprising. Basically a win-win situation for me. It almost seemed to be too good to be true.
"What's the catch?" I questioned. "We both know both options would only benefit me."
"No catch," the goddess responded. "The point of this bet is solely to see how you respond in a world that will fit you more. When you accept, I'll send you to a world that worships the gods and goddesses, and where the beings wield powers far stronger than the vampires that caused your demise in your old world."
The shock was most definitely apparent on my face, as the goddess smiled and laughed even more. Thinking it over, I had no issues at all with the bet that she had offered, and so i only had one thing left to say.
"When do we start?"