The Other Side- Is Wet
'Oh boy, I am still thinking' the serial killer opened his eyes once more, everything in sight was wavy, trembling, distorted light sources could be made out somewhere- Like bright halos.
Opening his mouth, and it was bubbles that came out, with an understanding nod, Edrick smiled reaching for the edges, rising his torso, breaking through the surface of water, slicking his hair back, standing up from this innocuous bathtub placed in what looked like an oversized footbath, the kind that could sometimes be found before getting to an indoors pool.
"Well, where are my good friends, the demons of hell? Why am I not burning?" Anoteros shook his head with a scowl, he had really been lied to there, all spoke of lakes of lava or at least of some fire, but instead, he found himself in some sort of underground, watery maze, the kind that open one summer and then close because an idiotic, overgrown mistake managed to drown in a centimeter of water.
'Mmh, they even gave me back my arm' indeed, one of them had definitely fallen off after he was shot by approximately thousands of bullets, would have been more if the authorities actually knew how to aim, three quarters slaughtered the courthouse instead, talk about a blunder.
Drenched from head to toe, he looked back at the bathtub, it was gone.
He just raised his brows a bit, first few seconds into the afterlife, and all it had to offer was a poor magic trick, despicable.
The man shrugged, after living a life of slaughter, enjoying every second of it, and then getting the death he wanted, Edrick Lucien Anoteros just decided to go with the flow, perhaps that place would manage to match the humidity of the judge's granddaughter, and so he walked, and walked, stopping to mumble about whatever he saw, which were all footbath or weirdly shaped pools, he tried to drown himself a few times, but his lungs refused to be submerged.
'Well… is this the so-called purgatory? That was also something that was spoken of, sometimes…' arriving before a winding staircase standing in the middle of a circular pool, which itself was in a suspiciously dark room, he rubbed his hands, with some luck something would grab him by the ankles and drag him to somewhere more fun.
So, he slowly sank into the water, really dangling his feet as much as was possible, but no abominable beast showed up, not even a two-dimensional one, not even a regular, sort of scary animal, this place clearly did not have any sense of humour.
Swimming up to the staircase, he decided to move down instead of up, since Edrick had been given the extraordinary ability of not suffocating when inhaling water, he might as well use it, everything got darker and darker, until eventually, nothing was to be perceived via sight anymore.
This reminded him of the mines, the old mines, where he used to take the girls he liked on dates in his youth, well, one date for each, that place had always been scrumptiously creepy and probably haunted, if not at the start, probably at the end.
He had even made himself a room in there, he collected the forgotten tools left behind, discovered that his grandpa had, in fact, not run away with another woman, the old geezer had apparently held a similar past time to Edrick, the expertise truly ran deep in the family.
'Aah, great memories-' and just like that, he fell, the water stopped and he instead fell into solid ground, a flat space of solid rock.
"Alright Anoteros! You are the first scum of humanity to truly not give a damn about getting lost in a neverending labyrinth for weeks!"
"It's been weeks?" responding to the unknown voice nonchalantly, he turned to its source, the scene illuminated by what seemed like moonlight, said scene being a small table accompanied by candlelight and food, with company of course.
Without bothering to question any of the odd details, he took a seat, still absolutely dripping with water.
"Indeed, you are just so lost in your own mind that you didn't even notice" his interlocutor leaned over the table, with her eight elbows, six of those extra arms having blood red forearms with claws instead of fingers.
"Well, the landscape was just too captivating, I suppose" chuckling to himself as he picked up a meatball.
"Mmh, that is not very well cooked, what are all those extra arms good for then?"
The many-armed lady across from him appeared amused by his antics, as pale as a corpse where she was not crimson, dressed in tattered loincloths, which allowed for him to see that she had no belly buttons, which was a good sign in his books, it meant that she had no parents.
He would qualify her face as very much enjoyable to look at, and probably even more enjoyable to utilise, though, he did not know what purpose the goat and crow head could serve, it just seemed like a good way to accumulate sweat in between.
Rubbing his chin in thought, she spoke up again.
"I can read your mind, you know?"
"So you already know that I don't give a damn about this fact?"
Once again, amused she was.
"Mister Anoteros, I am Irandelle, Goddess Of Strife, one goddess of strife actually, and you are exactly who I had been waiting for! I have been watching your career with great interest for a little while now, and your poise, your charisma, your brutality, your utter lack of care in the face of possible consequences, your many, many horrific crimes against every single type of person, you just do whatever you want, in the way you want, when you want it-"
"-I find you quite endearing"
"If you want to show your liking of me, that's not the proper way to use your mouth, you know?"
"Aah, and this disrespect even as you clearly understand the situation, chef's kiss, you are the worst human I have ever come across, possibly to have ever lived"
"Why thank you"
"And that's why I would like you to reincarnate"
Anoteros made an exaggerated face.
"Can I be a chimpanzee in the first ever study where they raise one into a human home? I would love to completely skew their view of those monkeys for generations to come"
"No, ever heard of cultivation Edrick?" the goddess replied.
"I am quite green-handed, my pumpkins are always as fat as my mother" he said, thinking back, it was probably because he had buried her right underneath the pumpkins…
"I mean, like in the books, the novels"
"Aah, those were quite popular when I was a young man, I never read any though…"
"...I was too busy rearranging guts, with a knife I mean, always loved fishing in poultry guts, so I tried humans, but decided to just stay with my man-knife for them-"
"What I am getting at, is that I want you, to reincarnate into another world, or take over someone there, we'll check those details laters- And thanks to a little 'implement', just do your thing, whilst also helping me do some cleaning up, what do you think?" she smiled at him, Edrick slowly bringing up another meatball to his mouth, chewing it slowly.
Swallowing as loudly as humanly possible, answering only then.
"Well, I am already dead and I am quite disappointed, so might as well go for it… Though I really don't have a clue what this cultivation thing is about"
"No worries, I'll explain it to you-"
The scenery changed entirely, transporting the both of them to what looked very much like the vacuum of space.
"-But first, let me explain to you other things, usually it takes some more convincing because people are not agreeable at all, so we have time… Over there, that's everyone's father-"