My socks were fricking soaked.

I was crouched over, walking into the darkness of the sewer pipe, clutching my chest, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. I had no idea where the long cement tunnel was going to take me, but I was firmly in a "anywhere is better than here" situation. I wished I had put on my shoes before Carl made me climb out my window. I could feel the gunk and slime between my toes.

"You don't want to go down there!" Carl was shouting into the entrance of the sewer pipe, and his voice reverberated off the cement walls and echoed down the entire tunnel.

Of course he's gonna say that. What's he supposed to say? Pretty please will you come back and let me kill you? I ignored his pleas and tried to pretend I didn't hear him splashing through the water behind me. I was hoping he wouldn't fit through the entrance. Seems like I was out of luck in that regard.

As I kept sploshing through the sewer pipe, wandering aimlessly through the dark, I finally spotted light ahead of me. My gamble had paid off, just a little further and I would find an exit. I'd run to the nearest house and pound on the door, scream, anything to get help and save myself from the psychopath running after me.

"You're not going to get away from me, Vincent!" Carl didn't even have to shout for me to hear him now, he was clearly gaining on me bit by bit every second.

"I got you beat, Fat Boy!" I yelled, or at least I wanted to, but what came out was more of a scrambled whimper. "Got your bees fat toy."

I had finally made it to the end of the tunnel. It opened up into a small rectangular room and-oh god no.

It was a dead end.

There were two small tunnels to my left and right, but they were so small I could never squeeze through them. The light that was shining in came from a slit at the top of the room, and I looked out and saw that I was standing underneath the side of the road.

When it rains, and all the water drains down those slits they put in the curb, and that's where I was now. There was no way I could squeeze out through that narrow slit.

But wait, above me! There was a manhole, and maybe if I jumped I could reach it or knock it off. I could climb out and pull myself to safety!

"I told you not to come down here," Carl said.

It was too late. Carl had caught me.

"Like I'd listen to you," I said, slurring my words. I turned to face Carl and put up my fists, but I was surprised to see that he was crying.

"Why do you have to make this so difficult? I thought it'd be easier the second time, especially since your Billy now, and I fucking hate Billy!"

"Carl," I said, "you're not going to get away with this. Billy's Mom is a psycho. She will hunt you to the ends of the earth if you do this."

Carl held up the knife and started waving it back and forth.

"Whose knife do you think this is? Did you know his Mom was passed out in the kitchen? When she wakes up she'll probably think she did this. Besides, nobody will care if the world has one less bully."

That's it. That's FRICKING it! I have had it with this kid. First he crushed my skull, then he stabbed me repeatedly, now he's saying the world would be better off without me? I've had it! I don't care if he's got a knife. I don't care if he's bigger than me or stronger than me. I am going to teach Carl a lesson by kicking his big, fat ass.

I took a deep slow breath OUCH! It hurt to breathe in, but I think it helped. My mind is clearing now, I'm focused. I'm going to go for his knees, they've got to be buckling under all that weight. No, I'm going to go for his balls again. Yeah, that was pretty effective the first time. Okay, body, we've got a plan of action, now we just need to jump into action!

Jump.

Jump into action!

Sploosh.

Huh? My ass is wet, and now Carl is standing over me. Oh, I get it, my legs gave out. I peer down and see that my shirt is almost completely red. Might as well be a Chiefs t-shirt now. Had I been bleeding that much this whole time? In all the action I failed to notice that I was already dead, I just didn't know it yet.

I could see the blood pumping out of my chest with every beat of my heart. The second stab, the one in my chest, I think Carl pierced my heart. It's funny though, I actually feel pretty good right now. I don't feel the pain at all. I just feel sleepy. When was the last time I went to sleep? I died, then I woke up in Billy's body, and now I was going to die again. Can't a guy get a good night's sleep? What am I even saying?

Carl kneeled down into the murky water below, and put one hand on my shoulder. I think he could see that I wasn't going to last very long, but he couldn't take any chances.

"Vince, please," Carl said, wiping away his tears, "this time stay dead."

Carl raised up the knife, but I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see this next part. Maybe Carl was right. I had already died before and I didn't expect to come back. In fact, coming back was probably the worst thing to ever happen to me. I was really hoping this time I could die for real, maybe get some rest or peace or whatever happens when you die.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

When I opened my eyes I was back in the Dark Place, with floating flames surrounding me in every direction.

I screamed every profanity I knew, and then started making up some more profanities so I could scream even longer.

When I got tired of that, I sat down and tried to stay as far away from the flames as I could. I knew what happened the last time I touched one of those flames and I was not eager to go back to the land of the living. Dying once was hard enough, but at least that death was over in an instant. Dying the second time was pure misery. Painful, wet, cruel and alone. I could only imagine what Billy's Mom would think when they found his body down there in the sewer pipe poked full of holes.

I sat for as long as I could, then I lied down for a bit, but eventually I got bored. So, I stood up, and started walking, doing my best to avoid the flames floating in every direction.

I walked for what felt like an hour, but it was hard to tell. There's no light except for the flames in this place, so it's difficult to tell how quickly or slowly time is passing. I ended my walk when I got to an area where the flames didn't go. Eventually they all stopped, in an almost perfectly straight line, and beyond them there was nothing but darkness.

I walked along the edge until I came to another dead end, then turned right again, and after running into four dead ends I realized that I was trapped in a square of floating flames.

Thank God it wasn't a circle I thought, or I might have just walked endlessly not realizing there was an end.

After figuring out the shape of the flames, I started noting the colors and patterns of the flames. I had nothing better to do, so I figured I would try and examine my surroundings and figure out where the hell I was. I wondered if death was like this for everyone, or maybe I'm special somehow?

There were six different colors to the flames: blue, green, yellow, red, white, and purple. What the hell did that mean? I had no fricking clue, but I knew that the last time I touched a blue flame I started burning and I woke up in Billy's Body. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

As I walked through the sea of burning embers I noticed something odd. Some of the flames were bigger and brighter than the others. What could that mean? Again, I had no damn idea, but then I found the brightest flame in the place. Perfectly white and burning up a storm, bigger than all the other flames around it. Something about the flame was almost inviting? I don't know, but I decided I would risk getting close to it if it meant I could figure out more about my surroundings.

I got as close as I could to the flame without touching it, and stared right into the base of the flame, where it was burning the hottest. That's when I realized I could see something. When I looked deeper, I saw that I was through somebody's eyes.

The flames were people.

I guess that made sense, when I grabbed the blue flame it must have been Billy's flame, right? Maybe I was standing in the middle of some weird soul playground, and these were all the people who were near me when I died. But if that was true, then whose flame was I looking at now?

I watched the white flame for a while, and I couldn't really tell who they were at first. It's hard to know when you're looking out their eyes, but when this person looked into a mirror I dropped to my knees.

It was my Mother. I was looking out her eyes.

She was looking into a mirror, wiping away her tears and putting on some makeup. Someone called out to her through the bathroom door, and she acted like she heard them. I couldn't hear through the flames, but I felt like I could still understand what was happening.

My Mom was going on a date with a new boyfriend. She met him at the Surgical Hospital she worked at. What's more I could feel what she was going through, how sad she was about my death, but how she knew she had to be strong and move on with her life.

That was my Mom, she was honestly the greatest person I knew. I kept watching but made sure not to touch her flame. Nothing would be weirder than waking up in my Mom's body! Besides, I still didn't know where the people I kicked out went (poor Billy).

Her date with her new boyfriend went well, and they agreed to meet up again. He seemed like a really nice guy, exactly what my Mom needed to be honest. I stayed there and watched her for ages, but for me it didn't feel very long at all. The two of them fell in love, got married, and eventually got my Mom pregnant. I was thrilled! After nine months she went to the hospital and gave birth to a beautiful, baby boy.

I had a little brother. I never had a brother before!

What was crazy is when my brother was born, a small yellow flame appeared right next to my Mother's. That must have been my little brother's soul or something, and that's when I got a crazy idea.

What if I became my own little brother? That would be perfect, right? I would get to be raised by my own Mom, I could start over fresh from zero, and the chances of Carl murdering me again were practically zero (who kills a baby for crying out loud).

It was a spur of the moment idea, but I figured I didn't have anything else to lose, so I reached out and grabbed for the yellow flame! Diapers here I come!

Nothing happened.

"What the hell!"

I reached out again, tried smacking the little yellow flame around, but nothing happened. It simply would not start burning me up. Wait a second, do the colors matter? So the colors actually mean something?

Reluctantly I reached out and grabbed for my Mother's white flame, but nothing happened.

Whew! Thank god! That could have been really weird. I wasn't ready to be a mother yet.

Honestly, I thought maybe I had used up all my extra lives and that maybe I was just stuck here, so I decided I was content to watch my little brother grow up. I had to avert my eyes a lot for the awkward parts. I didn't realize how gross it was raising a baby. If I could, I would have apologized to my Mom for ever having to change my nasty diapers.

I watched my brother learn to crawl, watched him say his first word (Mama, thank heavens), and he even got potty trained (I ignored that part), but as he got older I slowly realized something was happening around me.

The flames were starting to go out.

I tried walking to the end of the flames, only it didn't take even a fraction as long as it did the first time. What's worse is that it seemed to be progressing. The flames around me were starting to pop out of existence all around me. How long had I been here? To be honest, the longer I stayed here the more numb I felt, or maybe I just got used to being out of a human body. I got used to feeling nothing at all and I even kind of enjoyed it. But for the first time in a long time I started to feel anxious.

At first I thought, well, maybe the people are just dying. Maybe the flu is going around and everybody is getting sick and dying. So I tried to watch some of the flames at the edge of the darkness, only nobody seemed to be sick. They were living regular lives, perfectly healthy, but the flames went out anyway.

Now I was starting to get worried. What if the flames were going out, not because of the people they were related to, but because I was slowly becoming unable to see them. What if they all went out and soon I'd be stuck here completely in the dark?

I didn't like the sound of that.

I stayed and watched my Mom as long as I could, until my brother was just about to hit his birthday, but soon there were almost no flames around me. I could see the remaining ones starting to flicker, like they were just about to pop out of existence. When almost all the flames had vanished, I knew I had to do something. I was going to get stuck here, and if my Mom's flame went out I didn't know what I was going to do.

In that moment I knew I had to grab a flame, and fortunately there was one blue flame left. I didn't have time to look into the blue flame, it was already flickering, I just had to grab it and hope for the best. Sure enough, it started burning up my arm and across my whole body. The pain was intense, I forgot what it was like to feel anything while trapped in the darkness. I screamed and closed my eyes, and then opened them.

I was on the five yard line, with my hands underneath somebody's junk. I looked up at the scoreboard, and the play clock was ticking down, nine, eight, seven. We were down by six points and the game was about to end.

Eleven huge players were staring me down with murderous intent, wearing bright green jerseys and helmets.

I was playing a game of football. Even worse, I was the quarterback.

"Huh!" I yelled, shocked by my current predicament, and the center must have misheard me.

He hiked the ball.