Prologue

Angeline

Everything started when I died. Well, I guess I am not dead-dead now, but pretty much getting there. How did I end up like that? That’s a very good question. It was a swift death. Lucky me, right? I don’t think so.

At one moment, I was there trying to fight the mysterious man that came out of nowhere. But before my next blink, a curtain of black magic surrounded me, taking the breath out of my lungs and raising the darkness into my eyes.

Don’t worry; this is not a horror story, those are silly! This is the story of how I get back — or die trying. Well, the dying part is already covered.

But let’s live — or die — in the moment, shall we?

No one talks about how dying feels. So, I will be the first one: it’s hella cold. It’s darker than those nights you were afraid of sleeping alone when you were little. But, more than anything, death is silence, and I never liked silence. Death doesn’t suit me at all!

Going back to the darkness topic — it only lasted a couple of seconds before something suddenly flashed.

People say that you see your whole life playing like a fast movie in your mind right before you die; they clearly had never died before. As I fought to inhale a breath of air one more time, every disaster and wrongdoing that brought me to my final moment popped up in my mind painfully slowly.

Here we go, while the little movie was playing, I heard an odd howl as if someone – better said, a wolf — was calling for me. That wasn’t my wolf’s Sia’s voice. So, maybe the caller typed the wrong number in the otherworld telephone or whatever it was. This dying thing was so unclear!

But I didn’t care, I wouldn’t remain dead for a long time. I refused to. I had to find a way back, so I followed the wolf’s cry until I saw a beam of light washing over me. I immediately ran to the other side of my mind, getting safe in the darkness. Hell that I would go to the light, I knew well where it led and I wanted to live. I had to live.

The warm howl grew louder, filling my mind as some kind of energy and sparkle of life washed over me. Was it hope or only a pre-death hallucination of my batty mind? I didn’t know but I would hold onto it with all I had. I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t die.

As I let the wolf’s call fill my soul, I paid attention to my life movie once again, sitting and making myself comfortable. I wanted to have it all clear in my mind for the whole eternity, from how I got here to who was to blame for my doom. Behind the wolf’s cries, I could feel an unspoken meaning and something told me that the unknown wolf would bring me back to myself.

So, I did the reasonable thing, and trying to sound wolfish, I howled back into the darkness.