The Diary of a Quirky Family

[The Diary of a Quirky Family]

[Day -2]

I’m dying.

Those were the first words that came to my mind after closing my eyes when I went to sleep as every night. I opened them and, in the middle of the pain I was feeling, I saw myself in a different room.

I didn’t pay too much attention to it since the pain was unbearable in my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I moved my hands to it and touched rope. Then I felt my feet hanging in the air.

I was hanging from a noose!

I tried desperately to remove the rope from my neck, but I couldn’t. I moved my feet trying to touch anything but didn’t find anything. While I was losing consciousness, feeling that my neck was going to snap, almost dead, my right foot touched something. I focused on it and put the other foot in the object and pulled towards me.

It felt like a chair… and it was a chair… and my savior. I stabilized my body and then I started to breathe while coughing hard. Once I relaxed, could breathe normally and my vision stopped having black dots and being blurry, I focused on removing my head from the noose slowly.

After achieving it, I fell on the chair and hid my face in my hands for a couple of minutes. I let the adrenaline wear off. Once my body was calm, I removed my hands and looked at my surroundings. There was a noose hanging in a chandelier in the ceiling.

But I didn’t have one in my bedroom, I had a normal electric lamp. I also didn’t have a noose, nor I was planning to commit suicide. Then I glanced around and saw that I really wasn’t in my bedroom.

The room was entirely different. I wasn’t at my home nor any place I knew. I stood up and looked around, wondering if it was a dream. The last thing I remembered was that I went to run like every other evening, went home, took a shower, had dinner and went to sleep. After some time resting in bed, Morpheus took me by the hand and I lost consciousness… and then I woke up here in the process of dying.

I touched my neck. The remnants of the pain were there. I wasn’t in a dream, since I had never felt pain in them. That, or while sleeping someone had entered my bedroom and started strangling me and then for some reason they stopped, but I doubted it.

“Where the hell am I? What happened?” I said with a sore voice while looking at the room.

There was a simple bed, a wooden slab on the wall that served as a shelf with a couple books, a wooden bedtable, desktop, chair, wardrobe… and a floor full of empty bottles. There was a smell of alcohol in the air. The walls were empty beside the shelf and a window.

The window…

I approached it and looked outside. It was dawn, instead of night. I saw a sterile and arid land, not the garden of my neighbor.

An endless desert of red sand where my eyes could see. And nothing else.

“What?!” I said pressing my hand to the window.

Then I looked at that hand. There were several scars in it.

This is not my hand.

Looking around the room, I found no mirror. I went for the second best option. I went back to the window. I hesitantly positioned myself in front of it and narrowed my eyes to see better. Effectively, there wasn’t me in the reflection. I touched ‘my face’.

Somehow, I was a different person, a bit uglier than my average looking me.

Oh no, tell me this can still be a dream.

I started inspecting the drawers and little furniture of the room. They seemed to be from medieval age. In the first of the drawers of the bedside table I found a diary. I read it from the beginning to the last entry. Then, with wide eyes and shaking hands at what the diary contained, I looked around for some help. I saw the little shelf with two books.

They were a history and geography books. I took them and did a quick read. After checking them, I went to the chair under the noose and sat there, hiding again my face in my hands.

This can’t be happening. Tell me this is not real.

From the diary and two books, I obtained the next info. I wasn’t at home, that was clear. The problem was that I wasn’t even on Earth. It seemed like a generic fantasy world from an anime based light novel or a game.

This planet was called Blurgo. ‘We’, that is, humans, were on the verge of extinction. Right now I was in a room inside a big tower-kingdom, a bit like the Babel Tower, and it was, apparently, the last bastion of humanity in this world.

It was apparently also the only safe place. The rest of the planet was an endless arid desert, no other biomes, and it was supposed to be full of demons. Demons that were at war with humans for the scarce resources, like the alien plants (aliens for me) that grew here with magic light and so.

Yes, it seemed like there was magic here, and it was used for war and heal only: the fireballs, the lightning bolts, you name it. In addition to magic, there was apparently a goddess, excuse me, a ‘Goddess’, named Eluria, that like at home, there was no real evidence of it being real or not. She provided people with ‘the magic’. They had no electricity, plumbing nor any modern quality of life.

‘This guy’, or me now, was a soldier, and somehow, the worst person living in this place. This guy was lazy, violent and a criminal. In his diary he basically told me he was actually a serial killer. I have read in his diary how he had got plenty of soldier mates killed, when one did something or said something he didn’t like. He pushed them to demons, aimed badly a fireball, an accident inside the tower-kingdom when going down some stairs… He had a count of his kills in the last pages of the diary. And this is not even all. What is more, he had sexually harassed several women in here too.

I didn’t even want to remember his name, much less so after seeing what the second drawer of the bedside table had. He deserved to be removed from history.

Inside the second drawer of the bedside table there were several women’s underwear wrapping the tongues of his victims. I pulled from my pants, to check, just in case, what I was wearing at the moment and it was male underwear. I didn’t exactly feel better, but it was at least something.

I want to go back home. I thought, almost crying.

Since crying wouldn’t help me, I decided to see the place and go from there while thinking about my situation.

Perhaps I still have some chances for this being a dream after all.

I stood up and went to the little bathroom attached to the room to clean myself, since I peed myself while hanging, or This guy did before I came. I put on some clothes and then decided what to do. I had found myself wearing a plain white shirt and plain black trousers. I simply adjusted the shirt and took the black jacket that was on the bed after changing my trousers and underwear for ones that were clean. It seemed the uniform people used this world for fighting was just that, with an armor on top. I put on a pair of black boots and left the room, closing it behind me.

He had battled the day before, killing again one his fellow soldiers and supposedly he had to rest today. So he didn’t have to go for physical training, going to battle or anything else for today. I was ‘free’ to do whatever I wanted.

Feeling sick at the moment, I decided to skip breakfast. I was feeling nauseous from the shock, from almost dying, from my throat that hurt a lot and from the things I saw that were in that drawer. What I decided was to go out of the room and see the place and think what my situation was. Thankfully for me, there was a map in the corridor when I left the room. I had not received his memories or knowledge when I got his body, I had nothing. I checked it for a while and decided to find the supposed magic training area that the map indicated was a thing.

I got lost on the way.

Minutes later, I was walking corridor up, corridor down. All floors and everything seemed the same. Long, narrow corridors with a high ceiling. Zero windows, only torches for illumination and a few candles. I understood why there were maps. Even native people could get easily lost in here.

While trying to reach that magic arena I passed constantly other people, doing their work. There were other soldiers, people carrying uniforms, boxes with food… I noticed that, in general, they were all more or less young. Life expectancy might not be very high in this world.

Other than that, I also noticed how everybody avoided looking at me or being near me like I had the plague. This guy seemed to have no friends.

So he doesn’t fake or act like a normal person, he shows his criminal traits publicly and doesn’t care the least bit.

I paid no attention to the people, since they weren’t insulting me or doing anything. And if they did, it was to This guy, not the me inside his body. I wasn’t going to be sad about it. I decided to make a test. I leaned on a wall and stood there for a while. From the corner of my eyes I saw angry faces directed at me.

How evil is This guy? I know a couple things, horrible things from the diary. It didn’t seem to me like his deeds were known, since he would have been executed or be put in jail in the act. But to be hated as much for everyone... To actually commit suicide? Perhaps he has been killed by someone instead. Mmm…

I saw people doing push-ups, squats and running around for a while in a balcony near me. They wore the same military uniforms and were doing their matinal training. I turned as if I was looking at them. While doing so I started thinking.

Ok. Let’s see. I’m in a fantasy magical world, probably not a dream, and surely not a game. I’m in the body of what is probably the most hated person here. And with good reason. I’m a soldier and must kill demons so humanity can survive. There is magic, but no electricity. I want to go home, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if the magic here could help me. There was no info about the magic in the diary or the books. This imbecile had already finished his training and was a normal front-line soldier, so if those books exist, he didn’t need them anymore and got rid of them. Since I have no more clues, I will try to slip in the training area and at least look. I could probably gather some useful info there. I can’t ask for help because, for starters, nobody would believe me, and secondly, they would think it’s an excuse to approach them since This guy is an evil stupid idiot that had burned down every relationship he could have ever had in the tower.

I’m here. But what exactly? My mind? My soul? My being? The only thing I know is that my body is not here. Is it still in my bed? Sleeping? If my mind is not there… my body is dead? Dying?

If it’s only resting… How much time would I have to go back before my body dies? I drank water and had dinner before sleeping, and in that state, my body won’t consume my resources quickly, right? I think a person can last about a week without food and what? Three days without water?

Let’s assume this is true. My body is where I left it and is not moving. And I really hope This guy mind is not there using it, that he actually died when he committed suicide by hanging himself. His ‘flawless’ performance, evilness and stupidness made him consider and actually commit suicide after being depressed and drunk for too much time. He could have tried being a normal, respectful being instead of giving up on life or at least not killing people or trying to take advantage of women. Whatever. I don’t care about This guy, he brought me here, accidentally perhaps, but he did. And he is a murderer, so fuck him. Hope he suffers in this world version of hell.

So, I must find a way to go back home in… let’s say three days. This is gonna be fun. No intel, nobody to ask, no knowledge… I don’t even know if I can do magic or not, being a different person from a non-magic world and so. The only thing I have with me is some good genes, it seems. I’m in good shape actually. If This guy really committed to exercising instead of harassing women or drinking he would have had astounding abilities.

“Great. See that trash witnessing us, looking for his next victim.”

That was what one of the training soldiers growled after seeing me looking, perhaps arrogantly. I didn’t pay attention to her words. She actually was the one nearest me, glancing, waiting for me to do anything and attack me or escape, but I didn’t notice that. I was still lost in my thoughts.

First of all, the magic. Let’s see how magic works and if I can do it. Then, check if there are hopes for me, either by existing teleport magic or similar, which I doubt, or by having chances to cheat the system somehow to escape this place. Depending on that, I can focus all my limited time on investigating it, so I can go back to my body before it dies from dehydration. In addition, I could actually check if there is info here about how much my body could last. I don’t expect people here knowing about cells, but they live in a desert, a battle of contrition has to be normal, right? Someone has to have investigated how much time a person can live without drinking.

I really need the universe to lend me a hand or something. I don’t want to live here, much less so being This guy. At worst, I will probably go back to my date with the noose or face one of those demons if I can’t go back. And I’m happily assuming that time hasn’t passed since I left my body for this one, if time has passed, well… It’s better if I focus on trying what I can and hope for the best.

An hour passed quickly while having some insults as background music, being only a noise for my fevered and depressed thoughts. Finally, I saw that everyone had stopped training and they were all looking at me. I left my thoughts and focused on my new real world, only to hear.

“Let’s get out of here before he can follow us. I’m sure he is the one that has stolen my undergarments.”

He probably is the culprit indeed. And he might have used it as a gift wrapping for the tongue of your father, for what I know.

I sighed inwardly, dark humor wasn’t going to help me. I moved and left that corridor, trying not to bother anyone with this body’s presence.

His sins couldn’t get redeemed, but at least I would try to not aggravate their distress of having to live with this monster.