At first, you couldn’t comprehend what you were looking at. It was a mass of tentacles—some squid-like and others far more alien—that much you could tell. They writhed around a central mass, keeping you from witnessing the truth that lay within. Not that you were sure your mind could handle it.

The knocking on the door couldn’t have come at a worse time. Who in their right mind would disrupt a mother during birth? Everyone, including the doctor and nurses, couldn’t help but stare at the door, wondering who had decided to intrude.

The children were playing in the streets, screaming and shouting excitedly, when they heard it. It was a gentle, lilting melody carrying far on the wind. They all stopped what they were doing and searched for its source.

Twenty-three. That was how many he could sustain in his own little group; how many he could protect from the harsh realities of the god forsaken world. It hurt his heart every time he found another survivor, only to have to turn them away, to leave them injured in the dust, exposed to the elements and beasts. Even worse when they were children. He’d grown used to ignoring their cries for help.

He eased his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and focused upon the energy deep within his body. It began as a fluttering in his stomach, before gradually feeding outward. It culminated in his hands, where a gentle glow formed.

You were the best in your line of work. No one killed quite like you did. With hundreds of jobs under your belt, you were always sought after to take out even the highest of priorities in targets. Time and again, you succeeded where countless others failed.

He didn’t know what had happened. One second, he was floating peacefully in dreamland, and the next, the sensation of weight and warmth and life returned to him. It was almost like being born, if he could even remember how that felt.

You paced back and forth in your friend’s room, wringing your hands. You kept your gaze on the ground, trembling as alternating waves of fear and frustration washed over you. None of it made sense. There had to have been a lie somewhere in there. You just had to find it.

It looked like a simple game of capture the flag between grade-school children, two teams running through the forest behind a house, shouting and laughing and having the time of their lives. They had their bases, treehouses which had been built years prior by parents on the block, and they had their flags and water balloons. They played all through the day, until the sun began to set.

The chicken didn’t know what would happen. There was no way it could have. All it saw was a mushroom, sprouting from the grass, looking as delicious as anything else around. In its natural drive to find sustenance, it instinctively found the mushroom.

“Damn it.”

Of all the places to be stranded, this had to have been one of the worst. Greece, 8th century BCE, the peak of Mount Olympus. That was what the screen said moments before the time machine stopped functioning

The reaper stood before the person within the void, staring at him with a mixture of bewilderment and mirth. He was a young man, with much to live for still, and many people who loved him. His life as well was good, and there were no particular negative thoughts within his mind. That was why the reaper had been confused by the request.