I woke up in a small room, filled with strangely solid air. The walls, as I could make out with my relatively blurry eyesight were painted orange, and the wall paint was starting to peel off. You could see scratches and other damage on the furniture, but everything seemed remotely new. The small bed I was sleeping in appeared to be soft, even with the scratches and… were those bite marks?

I tried lifting up my head, but somehow, it was a lot harder than I expected. My body wasn't listening to me… again.

I remembered clearly the events in the nameless world I was stuck in for god knows how long. I remembered how my body transformed painfully, and my lungs void of any air. The cavity around me.

Therefore, I expected it was the afterworld. Though, I wondered why the hell was I in a bed. But hey, I have never been to afterworld before, so maybe that was how it was supposed to look like. I actually welcomed the thought of having nice beds (maybe the furniture could be a little more polished, it was the afterworld after all), and I could swear I smelled food. What kind of food, I wasn't sure, but I hoped for some specialty.

I also didn't understand how was it that I was placed in Heaven instead if what was supposed to be Hell. Not that I was that of a bad guy (few robberies and what I called self defense but wasn't sure if it counted as one when I provoked the attack), but I've had done my fair share of bad things. Some of them were really just a self defense, but somehow, and it usually happens to people with a headstart of mine, I worked my way to something more brutal and less innocent.

So, when I woke up in a sunlit room with flowers on the coffee table, I was pleasantly surprised.

Until she walked in the door.

She was no angel, by any means. Her wild ginger hair was flowing everywhere, her mouth wide open and she was yelling something into her phone. First thing, I doubted that the afterworld had phones, or electricity to begin with. She was screaming curse words the worst gang members in my life would be impressed with. That angel had a pretty foul mouth, I noted. And also, it really didn't go with her appearance. She was wearing a traditional Japanese kimono, if I still remembered correctly it was called yakuta or yukata or something like that. Didn't know. I was never a sucker for traditions of my country. Though, every Japanese girl should know what it was. I even wore it sometimes, but with us living in Chicago for most of my life, little details like this flooded out of my mind. Her sharp fingernails were painted red, and her makeup was literally an image of perfection (what would I do for achieving that), with her sharp eyeliner and red lipstick. Sure, she looked a bit whorish but I could go with that.

With a look at me, she stopped shouting and started muttering something so fast I couldn't register it. After all, my knowledge of Japanese was limited to curse words and few important lines I needed to survive my father's wrath caused by my lack of interest in his homeland. The woman than ended her call, and came closer to me.

I was expecting an explanation, maybe something like 'Welcome to Heaven, you are in the room 302, enjoy the afterlife', or maybe not anything at all (she still didn't appear angelic to me), but not what came.

She started cooing baby words at me, calling me different names that reached from 'sweetheart' to 'my little sunshine' . Now I was confused to the point I started screaming. It was a reflex indeed, a reflex I didn't have in my life before. A reflex absolutely new to me. And it was scary as hell. Even in tougher situations, I didn't yell for help. And now I was screaming like a… little… child?

I managed to lift my hands in front of my face, and what I saw nearly gave me a heart attack and made me die once again. But that would be a pain in the ass, so I settled down with screaming my lungs off. What came out was crying of a baby. An infant. The smallest creature ever, and suddenly it was me, and I was that small bundle of joy I always despised. I was that noisy little motherfucker that cried and shat itself. That thing I would never touch with a two meter long pole.

My eyes wide, I stopped screaming. But the supposed angel proceeded to try and calm me down, stroking my nonexistent hair and muttering words I didn't understand. Her hand on my bare scalp was rather unpleasant, but considering the situation I couldn't do anything about. So I controlled my emotions, and stopped with the annoying sounds.

So, I was watching her instead, intensively and maybe far too observantly, as I recalled later in my life. The first day I remembered might've been the cause of all of the problems.

She looked at me in what appeared as a shock, the red tinted lips open. She took an unintentional step back, muttering something about my eyes. What was about my eyes? If I remembered correctly, having hazel eyes was nothing out of ordinary. Actually, they were pretty as far as the other people's opinions counted.

Then she said one, seemingly crazy, word "Black." She breathed out, astonished.

And I knew. I understood. I remembered the black eyeballs in the mirror; I remembered the scars and bruises all on me, the blood, the guts…

I would love to grit my teeth, but my infant mouth didn't offer that kind of luxury. So I settled down with a horrified expression that didn't belong on my baby face. If the black eyes I gained lasted… this wouldn't be good. I was trying to calm myself down by saying that this is the afterworld. People here would not care. But deep down, I knew this just wasn't the Heaven, and neither was it hell. The air felt too normal, the room too ordinary, and the woman too humanly. I was reincarnated.

The reincarnation was surprisingly unsatisfying. Normally, a person would think having a chance to start again was golden. It wasn't. Mainly because… who the fuck get's reincarnated with completely black eyes? Had I have pretty, oriental black eyes, I would be happy as ever. But not this… monstrosity. Because the woman I was starting to assume was my family member, had vibrant green eyes. So unless she fucked a demon, there was no natural chance I would have these sorts of eyes. There was something fishy about my existence, and the woman knew it. It was written all over her face.

She suddenly screeched. "I've given birth to a demon!" the desperate sound of her voice made me growl on the inside. Only on the inside, because a growling baby wasn't exactly a common sight. My black, demonic eyes were staring at her with pure hatred, and I gave all of my negative emotions to that glare. I knew it unnerved her. I used the same kind of glare I usually gave the clients when they were paying low for a job, whether it was just a document delivery or something more… gory. My eyes were unwelcoming and suddenly angry, because I couldn't suppress the emotions inside of me and I was still used to the habits of my past life.

My mother- because now I knew it was my very own mother that I just scared to death- took another large step back and she hit the drawer, clutching it with her pale hands. Her bony hands were shaking, and she couldn't stop staring at me with eyes void of any kind emotions.

I heard tapping on the ground, and I was prepared to face another person who would hate me the very moment they would see me. I couldn't complain, after all, I would have the same reaction. Seeing a girl with pitch black eyes without any visible eyeballs was plainly scary. I was a walking freak show.

But in doorstep, there wasn't a human being. Instead, a large black dog was standing there, his crazily blue eyes watching me intensively. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth in a petty funny way, and I would've laughed hadn't I be so angry. He came closer, and my mother was watching him, fear and fascination present on her face.

When he was near my small bed, he tentatively reached out with his paw, placing it on the edge. I instinctively covered it with own small fist, that was just as big as his paw, if not smaller. The dog licked my hand than looked at me with those big blue eyes, and I could swear I saw affection in them.

That was when the woman I was bound to call my mother seemed to relax.