Being dead, Mochi concluded, was much more frustrating the second time around.
Not because of the dying itself—she'd already done that once (technically twice, if one counted The Swan Incident, which she most definitely did). No, death wasn't the issue.
It was the waiting.
She opened her eyes to a meringue-colored sky and immediately found herself standing—barefoot, bewildered, and very much alive-feeling—on a velvet rope line.
Yes. A literal queue.
Before her stood a line of souls in various stages of grumpiness, confusion, or rumpled afterlife attire. A man in a toga clutched a massive rubber duck. A goblin knitted something ominous with ghostly yarn. And behind her, a cranky knight was muttering about "honor points" and "unfinished quests."
"Is this… the after-afterlife?" Mochi muttered, scanning her surreal surroundings. "Or a very elaborate post-death theme park?"
A sign above the pearlescent kiosk ahead flickered to life:
✦ Department of Reincarnation – Line B ✦Please have your Life Summary available. No cutting in line. All pastries must be declared.
And underneath, in smaller, blinking text:Estimated Wait Time: 36 Eternities. Give or take.
Mochi blinked. "This is outrageous. Where's my fast pass? I died heroically, thank you very much."
A flustered ghost in a powdered wig turned toward her. "So did we, darling. Welcome to the club. I was blown up saving an opera house and still had to wait twenty-two eternities just to be reborn as a worm farmer."
Mochi gaped. "They reborned you as a worm farmer?"
"Worm. Farmer. On a dust world. You haven't known pain until you've watered soul soil with ghost tears."
She opted not to inquire further about "soul soil."
The line inched forward. A cheerful, floating cupcake zipped by, sprouting mechanical wings as it handed out pamphlets titled:
"So You've Died (Again): A Quick Guide to Not Freaking Out in the Queue of Cosmic Administration."
She skimmed Chapter One: "Step One: Don't Panic (Too Late)."
Time passed. Or didn't. Hard to tell. At some point, she befriended a reincarnated jellyfish named Wobbles, who had died tragically via blender-launch miscalculation. Now, with a monocle and exquisite taste in scones, he critiqued afterlife snacks with the flair of a ghostly gourmand.
Then—finally—her name was called.
A puff of rose-colored smoke. A fanciful trumpet fanfare. A hovering nameplate spiraled from the heavens:
"Mochi—Ex-Swan, Cat, and Mild Public Pest. Step Forward."
She shuffled to the counter, where a sleepy celestial bureaucrat presided over a mountainous stack of glowing paperwork. He sipped tea that refilled itself with a calm, glurping sound every few seconds.
"Name?" he asked, barely glancing up. He had six eyes and a bowtie made of starlight.
"Mochi."
"Prior incarnations?"
"Cat. Swan. Temporarily human. Winged. Mostly dramatic."
"Reason for latest death?"
"Fate. Also possibly cosmic interference."
The clerk sighed, stamped a form labeled Heroic, Complicated, Mildly Illegal with flair—KER-CHUNK—and nodded.
"You have seven more lives left," declared the heavenly clerk, as if he were selling raffle tickets. "Mister Slowskater will escort you to the Pool of Reincarnation. Try to keep the commotion to a minimum if you ever hope to see the world of the living again."
Before I could utter, "Hold on—", something crawled up beside me with all the haste of a fairy tale.
It was a snail.
Yes. A snail.
With a top hat.
Mister Slowskater blinked at me with tremendous seriousness—if seriousness could be expressed by eyes the size of sequins—and spoke, in a voice that dripped like molasses into a violin, "This way, young soul. Single file, no reincarnating out of turn."
I opened my mouth to object, likely something along the lines of "Are you serious?" but he was already moving away at an aggressively leisurely pace.
I followed behind, clinging to whatever was left of my sanity.
We crept—okay, he crept; I stumbled—down a mile-long hallway lined with whirring clocks and wallpaper that mewled like kittens. And then, miraculously, we arrived at the Reincarnation Center. It was… not as pretty as the name suggested. I'd been imagining rainbows, maybe some ethereal glow, perhaps a harp playing in the background.
Instead, there was screaming.
A lot of screaming.
Souls—foggy, see-through, some of them inexplicably dressed in tuxedos for no apparent reason—were trying to flee. From something. And what that something was quickly became clear: giant, dark forms, bleeding ink with dozens of red eyes, were yanking souls across the ground and tossing them into a pit.
A pool of fire.
And it was crying.
Not crackling. Not roaring. Wailing—a ghostly chorus, a cacophony of every bad decision ever made, all screaming back at you in despair.
I blinked. "That's… not the pool I signed up for."
One of the black masses turned its attention to me.
Its eyes blinked in unison.
Slowly.
I turned to Mister Slowskater, who was still moving forward as though we had all the eternities in the universe to spare.
"Hi, Mister Slowskater," I remarked, very calmly. "There are soul-devouring monsters over there."
"Oh, yeah," he said nonchalantly. "That's the Rejection Fire. Incinerates incompetently submitted souls. Someone probably checked the wrong box on Form W-Afterlife-3."
"I knew I shouldn't have let the ghost jellyfish fill that out for me!" I groaned.
The black masses charged.
I did what any rational person would do in that situation: I yelled, stomped on Mister Slowskater's hat (sorry, snail dude), and jumped in the opposite direction.
I almost succeeded.
Almost.
But one of the black masses grabbed me midair with slimy tendrils—icy, wet, like shame and black licorice—and flung me straight into the flames.
And it hurt.
It wasn't just fire—it was memories burning. All the losses. All the errors. All the deceptions. It hurt in ways fire had no right to.
Then, everything fractured into gold light, splintered apart like an eggshell, and I fell through.