A/N: I'm editing the two chapters I have up until they suit my fancy and then maybe, MAYBE, I'll post more because I'm still interested in the idea of this story. Tell me if I should continue by reviewing/following/favoriting! Have fun reading!

EDITED as of JULY 22

/suicide mention, but there's a happy, sappy ending woohoo

...

When I died it wasn't necessarily some horrible, tear-jerking pity-party. In fact, it was sort of anticlimactic.

It wasn't big. It wasn't dramatic.

It was sad, depressing, lonely. It was pretty scary.

Basically it just sucked a whole fuckin' lot.

Now I didn't die some valiant heroic death. I wasn't saving or sticking up for anyone. I didn't die thinking it was the most honorable thing to do.

No, I didn't die of a horrible disease. I didn't spend my last days in a hospital bed, breathing in artificial air and living off a life prescribed to me. That way out Death's door sucked according to those I've talked to since my death.

My death was… of my own accord in the end, quite honestly. I committed suicide. It's something I look back on now and regret. But overall I was only capable of handling so much, and unfortunately also capable of taking my own life. But I don't wanna be a downer, maybe you'll get to hear more about that story later.

Lemme rewind, kiddos, and get off the depressing subject. I said "… according to those I've talked to since my death" and no, I'm not in hell like anyone might've believed. When I died it was, as I said, anticlimactic as fuck to begin with. I mean I'm sure if it had happened in a movie there would be some unnecessarily loud music building up in the background before the climax and then a quiet fade to black and it'd end on "the cliffhanger of the century" but…

You know, I'm getting off track. Big time.

When I died, there was that heart-clenching darkness for a while. A long while. At least a nine months if I were to follow human time, which I eventually stopped following for a while. It was something that initially made my stomach sink into my feet. I thought that I'd finally confirmed my suspicions of what was at the end of the road for us lousy humans. Nothing.

The darkness was scary at first, and then very quickly became comforting. It was like being surrounded by black downy feathers. I could grab the darkness and hold the darkness. I could become one with the darkness and let my mind become the darkness. It was an old friend and a new friend, one I was completely comfortable with and one that I was discovering more about all the time. That's more than you can do with light, I'll tell you that.

Now this period of darkness is what I like to call my sleeping period. I adjusted to darkness in this time and learned how to see things without my eyes. How to sense things by energy and aura. The darkness seemed to be a thin layer separating me from the living world, allowing me to hear murky conversations and walk through grey make-believes of people.

It was my rest and recovery, my teacher and my friend. It was probably my favorite part of the entire process, which unfortunately and surprisingly continued long after the darkness.

The sleeping period was followed by what I like to call my dreaming period, because it always seemed too amazing and fantastical to be real. For a while I thought it was simply something I was making up in my head.

That comforting darkness was pulled away from me quickly and rudely. Like somebody coming in and ripping the blankets off of you at six in the morning. And the first thing I opened my eyes to was a gravestone.

And after staring at the name and putting together the broken puzzle pieces in my head, I realized the name carved into the stone tasted very familiar. The sleeping period made it easy to forget you were dead after a while so my stomach lurched when I confirmed that I was staring at my gravestone.

Before I could even think of throwing up whatever ghostly contents were inside me I felt eyes on me. When I searched for them I was faced with many pairs. All standing at their gravestones, all looking sympathetic.

"Welcome, dear." I'd heard the one across from me say, a plump elderly woman. Except she wasn't exactly... there. She was sort of a transparent mist that looked like it would dissipate if I swung my arm through her.

Which I decidedly didn't do.

My dreaming period was filled with ghosts and the unbelievable. In a large city graveyard, I was surrounded. Whether they be from the 1980s or the 1780s, they were there. I spent about a year in my dreaming period but I don't quite want to have to go through it fully. For some reason I feel like that would be disrespectful to the others I met there.

I learned the rules, I learned about death, I learned about ghosts, the basic outline of what was to become of me. I learned about fading into the background, about haunting people, about becoming that transparent mist I'd seen, about communicating with the dead.

Now, you're probably wondering something along the lines of: Why the fuck would you need to learn to communicate with the dead when you've already croaked?

Believe me, I had the same question. So, I asked that question over and over and over again until finally someone got annoyed, sat me down, and told me. And, boy, if I weren't already dead I would've died of shock.

The first thing I was told was that I wouldn't be in that city graveyard forever, just like I wasn't in the darkness forever. And why was this? Do ghosts get transferred? Outsourced? Apparently, it wasn't that I wasn't allowed to stay in the graveyard, it was that I wasn't allowed to stay dead.

What?

Isn't death inevitable and eternal? Well, there's a funny story to that.

Now there's some rule somewhere. Suicide victims, like myself, are apparently a thorn in the Grim Reaper's side because they weren't necessarily scheduled to die. I mean, of course they do die. They were ultimately meant to if it fuckin' happens. But suicide victims carry a sort of element of surprise, evidently.

And that's not necessarily a good thing...? I don't know how I feel about it yet.

But anyway, because they weren't actually supposed to die, they don't. At least, not for long. Any ole ghost can choose to be reincarnated, but it's a bit risky 'cuz you could end up as a goldfish at PetSmart or something, depending on how good a person you were in past lives. (Explains that vicious pet hamster you had when you were 8, right? It was probably a dead serial killer that chanced their luck at reincarnation.)

But yeah, it's entirely up to a regular ghost whether they want to go through with it.

Well, suicide victims don't necessarily get an option.

They don't necessarily get reincarnation either.

They get another thing called resurrection. Which is the awakening of their soul in a different body of their choosing. Now for the longest time, I was thinking I was gonna get to pimp out my second body, you know? That I was gonna be able to give myself supermodel looks and just strut my stuff wherever I would go.

But that's not quite the case, I was quickly told. I would get to choose from a few handful of people that had recently died and inhabit their body, and my body would be in the handful they got to choose from. All bodies provided for me would be suicide victims, as was the rule.

Reincarnation is different from resurrection because reincarnation is the soul of the dead human coming to existence once again inside a newborn creature. Resurrection involves no babies.

When I was called upon for resurrection I was surrounded again by that darkness I'd lived with in the beginning. Except in front of me were dozens of people staring at me. All were my age, all came from different times, all committed suicide. And that was sort of sad.

The rule was that I was supposed to pick a body from one of them, and a time from another. Because we can't have the same body up and at 'em again if they've just kicked the bucket.

And I did. And it was sort of… depressing. Leaving behind my old body that would most likely be riddled with scars and memories.

I spent a lot of time there, which I also won't go into. Most of it was with everyone getting to know each other, getting to know what they would get into. I'll make it short and sweet. I chose the body of a girl my age with long black hair and noticeably big eyes. I chose the time of a boy (I think he said his name was Tommy?) wearing odd clothes, a stupid hat, and a wide smile. 1987.

I was slightly surprised when a shy soul assigned a boy at birth with a face done with pretty makeup politely asked for my body. It took me a second before I was smiling and nodding and talking to her about how what size bras she should get and what size shoe she would be. A boy from the 50s with greased back hair and sunken eyes asked for my time and I gladly accepted.

Four people that were immediately connected to me. That was more than I could say for when I was living.

Then things started going into motion, which was nerve-wrecking but relieving. One second I was talking avidly with the person whose body I took and the person that took my body, when the darkness gave way to abrupt light. I couldn't even feel shocked much at all before I felt like someone had drugged me. The light turned different colors in my eyes as I swayed, fighting off a feeling of sudden sleepiness. I stared up at the pretty, if not obnoxious, light until my eyelids drooped too much to see past.

When I finally capitulated to sleep it was relieving, as if I'd been forcing my eyes open too long. After a few long moments of seeing that excruciating white behind my eyes it all shut off, as if a light switch had been flipped.

In a single moment, I was struck with the realization that I had to do something. It felt as if there was a magnet pulling the feeling of life after death out of my body. I tried not to panic and attempted to think of something I could do that wouldn't result in me throwing this suddenly very active ball of life inside my dead body. I slowed my breathing and focused on that ball of life, I felt my brain spark with a spiritual effort I'd never dealt with before. I took this thing I never knew existed and was forced to bring it into existence.

Just as I was about to full on panic, I felt my breathing shallow. With one final exhale, my dead breath shook and left my body, a last goodbye to the old carcass I was. With that final breath I felt myself leave with it. As if I'd never really needed a body to begin with. I felt like I was nowhere and everywhere all at once.

I couldn't see anything without eyes, as my mind had been warped into that ball of life, but those 9 months in darkness had taught me well and I could sense every other soul in that place floating about. Some drifted back towards their bodies, others drifted towards their bodies-to-be. And they were all different colors and beautiful.

They were like children, untouched and innocent, curiouser and curiouser. It was beautiful, it was what they deserved, a moment of peace and understanding.

If I'd had tear ducts then I would've been tearing up. Because after a lifetime of struggles I couldn't contain and handle ended harshly by my own hand, this was finally a moment feeling absolutely fucking free. For once I was focusing on me and my future. I felt hope and joy and all things I would've scoffed at in my past life.

Ah, life, what can I even say about it at this point? Life never made me feel as alive as death did.

And so into the body that was new to me and mine to keep for now, I felt that breath come to me again and with it a new kind of life returned to me. I closed my new eyes and was surprised to feel tears falling down my face. I turned to that shy soul now in my body, clutching her hands over her heart and crying happy tears.

I reached over and pulled her in, sobbing with her like a war had ended. And, in a sense, a war had in fact ended. A war inside ourselves, if you want to throw in a metaphor. I sat there, feeling my breathing even out, and pecked her and my old body on the head in farewell. That magnetic feeling returned again and my eyes squeezed shut as I felt her disappear. It took a few moments of darkness until I felt a tug at my soul.

My ears started working first.

Birds were chirping, a large bell was ringing, and I could hear city life. It wasn't my old city life sounds. For some reason, the cars sounded different, the air felt clearer, the yelling was in voices I had never heard before.

And I was brand new.

"Um." I heard a distinctly male voice utter smartly, and then shuffling.

And then an even smarter statement from the same voice, "What?" The voice had a nice roughness to it as if it'd been used to tell stories upon stories.

Maybe this life around I could be more graceful and polite. I won't cuss as much, I'll learn something new. It'll be great.

I opened my eyes to an off black cloak and a shovel.

Well, more specifically, someone was wearing the off black cloak, but I didn't care enough to fully register their existence yet. In that moment I was more happy to be alive than I had ever been.

"Oh my stars…" I mumbled to myself. Taking an unnecessarily long whiff of the air around me and frowning a bit in contemplation when I smelled horses and dirt. The atmosphere around me was grey and foggy.

C'mon guys, this is the 1980s! Where are the boomboxes? Where's Michael Jackson? I thought to myself, This is sort of a shit welcoming party now isn't it?

I stiffened a little, my happiness ruined with doubt, Wait there weren't an abundance of horses in the 80s, were there?

"Eheh… are you okay, madam?" The cloak asked.

I looked up into a large smile, "Not… really?" To be honest, I wasn't quite sure.

Before he could say anything else I had to ask, "What's with all those horses?" I pointed at the dirt street beyond a fence I'd found filled with horse drawn carriages and oddly dressed people.

I'm pretty sure I heard the character stifle a giggle, "They're basic means of transportation, aren't they?"

"Uhm… what about like… cars and shit?" I asked, truly curious as to why the fuck this guy thought I was being funny. And also not noticing that I'd just cussed without meaning to.

Fuck the whole "New Life's Resolution".

"They're not as common, I suppose~" The man sing-songed.

I huffed and furrowed my eyebrows, whacking him on the knee, "Oi! You pullin' my leg? This is the 1980s right? Are you all some part of a reenactment? I'm not an idiot!"

The man frowned for a moment before snorting and giggling for a long time. He clutched his stomach and leaned back so far I thought he'd fall. His giggling turned into loud laughter very quickly, startling me back into a gravestone.

"Hey! Wait, wait, wait! What's so funny?!" I yelled over his tremendous cackling. I ran a hand through my new black hair and marveled at how soft it was for a moment before my hand accidentally touched some sort of material.

I turned around to glare at the gravestone and saw a vaguely familiar and stupid hat perched atop it. I scrutinized the carving:

Thomas "Tommy" Jones

1870-1887

May he rest in peace

I frowned for a moment and looked to the hat again. From the gravestone, to the hat, to the gravestone, to the hat, until finally.

1887?

Wait.

Fucking…

HELL NO.

FUCK THIS.

"Oh my fucking HELL." I nearly screeched, causing the man to finally stop laughing. He was wiping the tears of laughter streaming down his face with a large grin.

"M-my dear, it's 1887~!" He said, snorting at the end and giggling some more.

"I collected that." I said, my eyes wide and my mind buzzing. I'm pretty sure I stared at nothing in particular while the strange, tall man giggled above me.

"Hey, guy. I don't know who you are but keep this in mind, never trust a fuckin' ghost named Tommy."

...

This might continue past chapter 2, don't keep too keen an eye out though