He was staring up at the stars as if waking from a dream. He had been dead, he was sure of that. For him, being dead was no new experience, but the act of dying was not what he considered a good time. Being dead was not awful. It was not cold, it was not dark. There was no bright light, at least not for him. There was simply nothing, and nothing was not so bad.
Then just like that, with a blink, he was back. He never understood why or how, but there was no arguing against it. For thousands of years, he had been mankind's protector. He had had many names throughout time. He had been Gilgamesh, Orion, Beowulf, and Theseus. In China he had been called Lu Tung-Pin, the great slayer of dragons. The demons called him “The Great Hunter” and “Ancient One.” In recent times, he had taken the name Joseph Miller. The demons would appear and he would be reborn and hunt them down. It was the natural order of things. Perhaps it was done to strike some kind of balance between good and evil, or maybe some god just found it amusing to toss him at the monsters of the world again and again. He supposed it was a curse of sorts to never truly rest, but it rarely bothered him. After all this time, it was just what he did, what he was, as natural as breathing. Maybe it had driven him mad long ago and he no longer noticed. One of the two.
He took a long, deep breath and his face twisted in disgust. The air tasted terrible here, like his time in London, and the smells were all new, and not exactly pleasant. Looking around, nothing resembled the things he had seen in all of his many years. Huge buildings of glass, like giant trees, sprung up in every direction. “Well, well, this should be interesting,” he thought, and took his first step forward.
A loud screeching noise filled his ears as a huge metal beast sprang at him, striking him full on. As he felt the darkness retake him, he thought, “This is not starting well.”
*****
The truck driver didn’t see the small Hispanic man until it was far too late. “Why was the idiot standing in the middle of the road past midnight? Fool deserved to be hit by a truck,” he told himself as he dialed 911.