In the hospital emergency room, the heart monitor gave up on me first.
Beep... beep... beep... beeeeeeeeeep.
Flatline.
Well, that couldn't be good...
"He died before completing his mission as a mosquito and now, his soul can't return to his body," said a panicked voice somewhere above… or maybe inside… or possibly behind me. Direction didn't make much sense anymore.
The voice sounded weirdly familiar, It hovered at the edge of recognition, teasing me.
"Wait a minute…" I muttered, or thought, or maybe my soul-whispered. Where have I heard that voice before?
Then it hit me. Not a memory, an actual memory-fairy hybrid.
"Ohhh nooo," he recognized me! The voice groaned, as if realizing a very inconvenient plot twist. I forgot to tell you... if you die before the 24 hours are up, you'll die both as a mosquito and in your original human body. Small print stuff. Very technical, sometimes show error.
"Wait...what?" I said, alarmed. You mean I really am dead? Like, human-dead? Not just mosquito-dead?
A pause. I don't know what kind of expression should I showcase on my face, anger...or shocked?
"Ahem," the voice said, shifting into a far-too-serious tone for someone wearing glitter. "Yes. You have died. And your soul can no longer return to your original self. Big oops."
That's when I remembered her... The drunk fairy who showed up last night after I drunkenly wished if I could bite my cheating ex. One thing led to another, and bam! Mosquito form, tiny wings, bloodlust and pure drama.
Now here I'm, dead because some guy slapped me mid-flight. And apparently, that one slap punched my soul straight out of the reincarnation queue.
So, this is how my revenge plan ended. I blinked...or tried to. Hard to say what body parts I had anymore. "So… what now? Am I just… floating? Forever?" I asked.
Oh, don't worry! The fairy chirped, instantly chipper again. I've found a workaround. I'll transfer your soul to a new body. Can't say where or when, but hey, second chances, right? Buckle up!
"Wait, wait, hold on..."
But she didn't. I didn't even a get a second to protest before she started proceeding. The air cracked like someone ripping open a portal made of static.
Everything around me spun. There was wind, water, fire, or at least something spicy. My whole being was flung across some invisible highway of the cosmos like a drunk intern hitting send on the wrong email. At one point I even started doubting if I'm going to hell...
And just like that...all I felt is only motion and uncertainty.
Through wind, water, and flame, my soul sets forth on a voyage I never signed up for, all because a fairy got tipsy and thought it'd be funny to turn me into an aedes mosquito.
Who knows where I'll land?
But one thing's for sure; I am never making drunken wishes again.
---
At this point, most of you are probably scratching your heads...'Wait, where did the mosquito and the fairy even come from?' And how did I end up in that chaos, Well, to figure that out, let's rewind a few hours earlier and dive into the backstory.
---
A few hours earlier, Inside my tiny room:
I was on Instagram. Just a casual scroll, five-minute break from rejection letters and microwaved noodles. When... I saw her!
My girlfriend, Tina. Her arms wrapped around another woman.
Their foreheads pressed together, their lips caught in an intimate kiss that didn't belong to strangers or friends. No room for confusion.
Then I saw the caption: "Withmybabyboo. #foreverus #lovedoesntseegender #blessed"
My thumb froze mid-scroll, chest hollowed in pain.
I zoomed in. Not because I doubted what I saw, but because part of me desperately hoped I was wrong. That the photo was may be a prank...
But the mole on her chin was there and that crooked smile was hers. This wasn't just some random misunderstanding.
She was dating someone else. To be precise a woman.
And me? I wasn't the main character. I was the side quest, the emotional filler episode in her coming-out arc, the disposable character in her origin story.
"I stared at the screen. Minutes? Hours? I couldn't tell. My blood boiled too loudly to think."
After holding back for so long, I finally called her. She picked up on the third ring. Casual...
"Hey," she said.
"I saw the post," I replied, my voice heavy with sadness.
A long silence followed. Then she exhaled, a soft sigh that somehow sounded like relief.
"Yeah," she said.
"That's all you have to say? A simple 'Yeah'? Don't you want to explain?"
She didn't answer immediately. I heard her shifting, maybe sitting down, as if adjusting under the weight of her guilt.
"I didn't know how to tell you," she said finally, after a long pause. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Lucien. I just… needed to figure things out."
"And I was what?" I asked sharply. "A placeholder? A soft launch? Your… practical subject?"
She winced. I could hear it. "No. You were important to me. A good friend… I cared about you."
"You cared about me… while kissing someone else?"
"Tina," I said, my voice low. "You could've told me the truth, that you were confused, or questioning, or whatever this is. But you let me believe in something that wasn't real."
"I was scared," she admitted. "And I didn't want to be alone… lonely… left out."
I laughed, bitter and short. "So you used me so you wouldn't feel alone? That's… generous."
"Lucien-"
"No. Don't call me that anymore. You don't deserve it. At least you could've told me you wanted to break up and been honest. Instead, you chose to cheat. You really broke my heart, Tina..."
With a sharp clang, I hung up.
I screamed. It wasn't elegant or poetic. It just hurt so much. The pain of betrayal...
---
I lay back on the bed. The ceiling looked grey, blank and judgemental of my pathetic soul.
I've graduated in 2023, thinking I'd write the next bestselling novel.
I imagined myself in a hip café, typing away on a rose-gold laptop, sipping overpriced coffee brewed with the tears of indie baristas. But reality had other plans.
Reality gave me bad Wi-Fi signal, a desk with one wobbly leg, and an income so low even mosquitoes wouldn't bite me out of pity.
My diet consists of instant noodles, my sleep schedule is sponsored by anxiety, and my writing career is currently marinating in a broth of rejection emails.
And now officially a clown in a one-man circus of heartbreak.
In all chaos of my life, I met Tina online, A socially anxious, financially unstable writer doesn't exactly stumble into love in a café or bookstore
For people like me, love arrives quietly, hidden behind profile pictures and curated bios.
She messaged me first. Just a simple line: "Your bio made me smile." That smile, even through text, felt like sunlight breaking into a room I didn't realize had gone dark.
Looking back, maybe I should've read more into how casually she said it... but I didn't. And truthfully… I wanted to believe someone could find something in me worth smiling about.
Our messages turned into voice notes, her laughter soft and unguarded, like something she didn't know I was already memorizing.
The voice notes became phone calls, phone calls turned into video calls.
The first time I saw her... she was in her kitchen, hair pulled up, eyes tired but kind. And still, she smiled.
One evening, trying to make her laugh, I wore a Spider-Man suit on our call. She laughed so hard she snorted, then said, "You're my knight in shining Spandex."
I smiled and called her my favorite kind of chaos, because that's what she was. Beautiful, warm, unpredictable. The kind of person who made the world feel a little less cruel.
It was sweet. It was real. And in a quiet, unfamiliar way, it felt like home.
Maybe that's how it happens sometimes. Love doesn't always crash in like a storm. Sometimes it arrives like a whisper. And stays, or I believed so.
I gave her everything I had. Every piece I had left after the last person broke me. I told my parents. My mom started asking what kind of wedding she'd like. My dad smiled.
And all the while, I was just a detour on her road to self-discovery.
You know what the worst part is?
I'm not even angry that she's with a woman.
I'm angry she lied to me. She dragged me into something she didn't have the guts to be honest about. And when she was finally ready to be real... it wasn't with me. It was with someone else.
And somewhere in that spiral of betrayal, my broken brain whispered the dumbest, most unhinged wish I've ever made:
"I wish I was a mosquito. Just for one day. So I could bite her with dengue."
Not exactly the high road. But I didn't want justice. I wanted revenge. Small, stupid, satisfying revenge. Just enough pain to match the betrayal she left me with.
I said it out loud. That ridiculous, cursed sentence.
And the air shifted. A sharp sparkle burst above my bed like someone microwaved glitter.
Then a tiny woman appeared? Or something like one!
Tulle skirt over ripped jeans. Glittered Crocs. Wings like crumpled cellophane. Her wand looked like a chopstick from a takeout place that had seen better days.
I sat up, stunned. "What the hell?"
"You wished," she said, tilting her head. "I deliver."
"You... what? Who are you?"
---