“Can you send me to a game-like fantasy-style world? It can’t be too unrealistic, but also, it would be nice if I was immortal to some degree. Oh yea, no rape or slavery either, cause then I’ll have to spend the whole time trying to build a perfect society, and I’d rather not have to deal with all that nonsense. No other players, ’cause that always creates a ton of annoying drama; I just want to have a fun, relaxing, and enjoyable time.” Everything started from a ‘simple’ request. Four sentences that were casually spoken from the mouth of a twenty year-old man, living in a basement that reeked of decaying mouse carcasses.

Three years after that, Michael had completely forgotten about ever asking for something so ridiculous. He literally spent every day reading and writing webnovels, without even having time to play video-games anymore.

In fact, it had been months since the last time he left the house, and half a decade since the last and only relationship he had ever experienced. However, while his life might have seemed unbearably lonely, depressing, or pathetic to some people, he felt as if things were starting to get better.

Although it wasn’t exactly a ‘job’, he was beginning to earn a small profit from writing his stories and he was enjoying a sense of satisfaction from his ‘work’. Of course, it’s always when a person least expects it, that tragedy decides to strike.

 

Michael woke up in his creaking bed, unable to breathe out of his nose and on the brink of suffocation. His left arm was completely numb, along with his right leg, so he nearly fell onto the tile-floor when he rolled off the side of his mattress.

“Ugh, fuck my life… Damn it, why do people need to shit and piss? If I die, I hope I get reincarnated into a world with magic and definitely not as a human…” Perhaps he ‘was’ expecting something. He just had a haircut a few days before and his beard was trimmed down pretty well, but it was still fairly thick.

Even though he was just waking up, it was actually nearly midnight and thunder was occasionally crackling outside. Although, compared to the sound of his parents practicing music in the living-room during the day, lightning wasn’t very loud or annoying.

It took him a while to hobble up the stairs to the kitchen, then into the living room, up another staircase and finally into the only bathroom that had a shower in the house. First he needed to defecate, which gave him the inspiration to come up with the idea for an incredibly disturbing story.

He muttered “It’d be hilarious if someone was taking a shit and suddenly discovered they had the ability to go into some sort of ‘Slime Form’. Ew, they’d probably end up getting stuck in the toilet bowl and be forced to eat their own feces, before eventually being flushed down the drain by someone. Nope, not gonna do it, too gross…”

After a few minutes, he finished that up and got into the shower, though he was still constantly thinking about possible plot developments that he could write about in his ‘current’ story. As he was washing his hair with fragrant shampoo, he sneezed and felt as if every muscle, vein and artery in his body was being torn apart at the same time.

His eyes were wide open, as the soap poured into them, but even before that, he could no longer see anything. Michael fell and smacked the back of his head against the edge of the porcelain bathtub.

The naked man’s heart continued beating, yet the majority of his brain was no longer functioning. High-pressured water was crashing down upon his chest and blood was leaking from his left nostril; his skull was also fractured from the impact, though the external damage was negligible compared to the burst capillaries in his brain.

 

There were typically only two method for a ‘soul’ to be pulled into a specific universe. The first was extremely rare and nearly impossible. It required an extraordinarily powerful being on the other side, to connect with a similarly steadfast willpower and the two of them would have to work together. The second way was much more sinister and cruel, but it was also the most common and effective.

Michael had been transported to ‘Arcana’ via the first method. Before he even technically died, his consciousness was long-gone.

However, while his soul may have been gone for weeks in that other world, only a few minutes had passed in his original one. Assuming that he wasn’t lying in a tub that was slowly filling with hot water, his body still wouldn’t have been cold by the time he suddenly took a deep breath.

“Ow~! Fucking kitten-nipples! Goddamn it! Ugh~, my eyes~, my testicles~, my everything hurts so much~!” He shouted loudly as he somehow managed to stand; the gash on the back of his head started swiftly healing itself and his nose stopped bleeding as well. The twenty-three year old man was incredibly groggy and confused about what had just happened, but considering that he was in the shower, he quickly began washing his hair again.

Staring at crimson water in the tub, Michael grumbled “The hell just happened? Wait, was all of that just a dream? Did I seriously just pass-out and crack my skull open? That’s weird, the wound must have closed while I was unconscious… Holy shit, I think that was the first time I was ever ‘knocked-out’ by blunt-force trauma in my entire life. Oh well, I can’t afford to go to the hospital, so hopefully my parents didn’t hear that…”

After he wrapped a towel around his waist, he felt a throbbing pain shooting through his head. However, he just grumbled “Ugh, my fucking sinuses… I feel like, the most unrealistic part of that weird-ass fantasy-world, was that I could breathe out of my nose. Hmmm, anyway, I need to start writing chapter three-hundred and seventy-nine… I think Rachael was trying to kill the MC, I just can’t remember why. Whatever, I’ll find out in a few seconds.”

Once he left the bathroom, the bloody water was very slowly draining from the tub. Just when it was fairly low, a baby cockroach fell from the ceiling and landed inside.

It struggled to swim to the side and escape from the lethal soapy liquid that surrounded it, but the damage was already done. Within moments, the tiny insect had drowned…

Ten seconds later, it started squirming around again and even drinking bathwater, voraciously devouring that strange crimson fluid. The tiny insect’s brown shell cracked open, and a slightly larger, glowing-red roach crawled up out of the tub.

That vicious creature was merely a nymph, yet it was already the size of an adult. It saw a small mouse running by and crawling into a hole in the wall and hissed loudly, chasing after it.

 

“Fuck my life~, why won’t these goddamn ibuprofen work?! Feels like my brainbox is gonna explode…” After Michael put on some boxers, a blood-stained white t-shirt, and made a big mug of iced tea, he sat down in his office chair, like usual.

His room was essentially just a basement, where his parents stored all of the junk that they didn’t want to throw away, but never used anymore. However, there was a small area near the western wall of the basement, where his bed, computer-desk and a few electric guitars were located: That was his ‘real’ room.

As he sat there in his broken chair and stared at his relatively large monitor, the bearded man grumbled “Ugh, nope, can’t do it! I can’t stop thinking about that weird dream… Besides, there’s no way I could write anything with a headache this bad. I think I’ll just make a post that says ‘I cracked my head open in a bathtub and almost died, so I’m gonna take a day off.’ and watch some of the T.V. shows I’ve missed lately…”

Aside from the irritating thunderstorm, and the noise from his computer’s fan, he heard something else. It wasn’t particularly strange, but he was still annoyed by the incessant squeaking and squealing, along with the sound of something scampering around above his ceiling tiles. They seemed a bit more agitated than usual, though he just yelled “Shut the fuck up, you stupid cunts!”

Usually, mice would be terrified of human voices and immediately be silent and stay still, but they didn’t even seem to care. Then he noticed that the parrots two floors above him started squawking randomly. It was the middle of the night, so they should have been sleeping, but he assumed that someone was probably just using the upstairs bathroom.

Michael sighed, complaining “Shitballs… I’m getting that feeling again. Maybe I’m just being paranoid because I almost died less than an hour ago, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure that something pretty fucked up is about to happen.”

To take his mind off of the nervous unease, he decided to watch the new episode of one of his favorite shows. ‘Catgirl’: A television adaptation of an anime adaptation of a cartoon adaptation of a comic book, based off of a manga. It was about a thirty year old woman, who lives alone with her five magical shapeshifting cats.

After watching the last five seconds of the season finale, he glared at the monitor with an infuriated expression on his face. Eventually, he grumbled “Goddamn it! So fucking cliche! Grah~! Fluffy and the MC were finally about to go on a date together, but the dumbass bastard had ta get killed off! Don’t be such a literal and metaphorical pussy! You have like four more lives left! You’ve died at least five times already! But of course, the bad-guy had ta use ‘Catonite’ laced bullets and completely negated his regenerative abilities! Who the hell writes this shit?! Why didn’t he just wear some body-armor?! Why didn’t he just let the stupid bitch get shot?! He gave her the invincibility shield for this exact purpose! Then the suicidal douchebag tells the woman he supposedly loves, that she should just let him die, rather than use her tears of OP resurrection to ‘easily’ bring him back to life! She’s got like ten of them left, ya twat! The first one was wasted on a ‘normal’ mouse you killed! Nope, I can’t do it! I can’t watch this ridiculous, horrible, evil show, any longer!”

He let out a long sigh and then took three more ibuprofen for the headache that was only getting worse by the minute. A few seconds passed, and he read a review about the episode he just watched. When he got to the end of it, he yelled “What the fucking cuntsauce! Why the hell are they cancelling ‘Catgirl’?! That was one of my favorite shows!”