"You absolute imbecile," screeched a nasally voice.

The speaker snapped into focus, yanking me from a deep slumber. Standing over me was a trembling red-haired teenager with severe acne crowding a beaked nose. Fury shaped his face into an ugly sneer, making the whites of his eyes visible in the gloomy room. He pointed a long accusing finger at a boy to my left.

Boy number two was distinctly fatter and shorter than his zit-covered compatriot, but no less angry. He was round-faced, with shaking plump lips and quivering chins, both accorded mobility at the indignity of getting called out for his failings. Each youth wore an ensemble that screamed Victorian era romance novel, with fluffy shirts and dress suits under silken black cloaks.

"I-I t-told you I couldn't do it! I'm only a novice!" stammered the accused, doughy boy. It sounded pathetic, even to me, who did not know what was going on. Only a special type of cretin could achieve his wheedling tone.

"This is the sigil for the lower plane! I'm not even a Rituals specialist, and I know that," spat the angry ginger. That finger he loved thrusting moved to an unseen point between my legs. “You were supposed to use the sigil for the underworld plane. You know where his soul was supposed to be!? Moron! Imbecile!”

“If you knew all that, why didn’t you speak up before I started!” countered his red-faced rival.

“Gentlemen, calm yourselves,” said a third voice, rich and oozing with confidence.

A young man stepped from behind my head to stand next to the fat one, placing a hand on his shoulder in support. The third member of extras from Downton Abbey couldn’t have looked more different from his compatriots. He towered over the other two, wearing neatly tailored clothes that strained under his muscles. His thick, long blonde hair wove curly locks around his heroic face, and it was a toss up between which was more shiny; his perfectly white teeth or sharp green eyes. All three were under twenty, yet the newcomer sported a stylish and manly mustache. It was especially poignant when juxtaposed to the pubic hair masquerading as facial hair on the nuggety wheedler.

As Gaston entered the scene, I finally got around to wondering what precisely was occurring. I somehow knew I wasn't on Earth, so I looked around for an explanation. The stone gray ceiling of the room arched upward, carved with arcane circuitry that ran from the central point down the walls. Skeletons nestled into four stacked alcoves along each of the walls to my left and right. Straight ahead, past the three boys, was a dark hallway with flickering torchlight.

A crypt. I was in a dank crypt, or more likely, a network of them. Catacombs! That’s what they called it. Yes, I knew with growing certainty that I was in some catacombs.

“Death was always the most likely outcome, after all.” Continued the mustachio.

His name is Graham of House Vandergast, and he was my only friend. The thought came unbidden from a person who was decidedly not me. Now that I knew who the tall guy was, I had another gripping question: who was I?

That one left me stumped.

What was the last thing I remembered?

Dying.

Fractured memories of a life of hospital beds and chronic pain slapped my consciousness like freezing saltwater spray from the ocean. Anguished smiles from the faces of loved ones surrounded me and came to the forefront of my mind. I could remember none of their names. Nor could I picture my own.

But what I could remember was praying for it all to end. My life had become a series of invasive tests, relentlessly degenerating nerves, and a shameful loss of control that left me a prisoner in my body. The opioids helped with the pain, but gave no room for any semblance of personhood. I was a drug-addled vegetable kept alive by modern technology and modern morality. Oh, how I begged for it all to go away!

Thankfully, it had. One moment I lay in the crushed remains of a promising life, burdened with the melancholy of people that had the misfortune of loving me. The next, in a grave strip mall with three slimy teenagers. I gathered they had not had good intentions for the previous inhabitant of my body.

“We will stick to the plan,” continued the smiling Graham, stepping around the large boy to place his other arm on the shoulder of the ginger. Graham’s hands rested on each of their shoulders, giving off the impression of a spider with two fat worms caught in its web. His gaze settled on my unmoving body, widening his satisfied smirk.

I knew then that he’d wanted this person whose body I now inhabited to die. This wasn’t just a scheme or game-gone-wrong. He actually took pleasure in seeing me dead. I knew this as sure as I knew the sun would rise, though the notion of how still escaped me.

Hate filled my unmoving breast, and with it, a flood of information.

Oran. That had been his name. My new name. Oran of House Farrow, second born of the patriarch Victor Farrow. It was his memories providing me with the alien thoughts and context.

Like a fool, Oran Farrow had followed these three to his death. They’d promised him a cure to his affliction with a ritual, supposedly known only to the Willoughby family. He’d been too naïve to suspect foul play from Graham, a man he’d loved like his own brother. Oran had been a lonely soul, rejected by polite society for his inability to absorb mana. And out of all the people that had turned their back on him, Graham alone had treated him like he’d always done.

Guess that was a lie.

Mana! They really had magic here. Which meant that the three dandies did something with their “sigils”. Because of them, I ended up being pulled into this world. They would get no thanks from me, however. Oran did not deserve to have his soul cast out. His life had not been good, but it was still entire worlds better than my own. If there was any justice in this universe, they would pay for destroying a good man.

“Here’s the thing,” said the obese one, Wentworth of House Willoughby. “I swear I felt the ritual work. I don’t know why he isn’t moving.”

All three turned to look back at me.

“Really?” asked Graham, a little less smug. “You’re sure?”

All of Wentworth’s chins nodded, but his face lacked confidence. It was possible he just looked that way. Hard to tell under that much lard.

The ugly redhead, Stuart of House Renard, merely scoffed. “You can’t reach your own asshole, and you’ve already shown you don’t know basic sigils. How am I supposed to believe you pulled his soul back from the beyond? Best-case scenario, it’s a demon.”

“Enough!” spat Graham, turning noticeably paler.

His two henchmen quieted immediately, and there was now a tension in the air. Demons were a grave threat, not to be joked about lightly. That the ginger couldn’t read the room was no surprise. From Oran’s memories, I deduced Stuart had a bit of an issue with psychopathy. Still, for whatever reason, he followed Graham around like a mama goose. Oran had not known why Graham entertained the useless nutter. Was it merely a matter of pliability? A bloodthirsty toff didn’t sound convenient for anything but duplicitous murder.

Maybe Graham here is into darker stuff than Oran ever believed… Wait, this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this, is it?

As if to confirm my thoughts, Graham pulled a knife from his belt and said, “Only one way to find out if he’s playing dead.” After which, he yanked off my left boot, tossing it away to slide off into the quiet darkness.

I really tried to move, then. The words, “Haha! You guys got me,'' fresh on my lips. No chance of that working, but I tried it anyway.

But like my half-remembered life as a bedridden disabled person, my limbs refused to respond. I screamed inside my head as the dagger descended on my bare foot. The blade plunged from the sole and out of the top in a dark spray of blood. I braced myself for the pain that was sure to come.

Only to feel nothing at all.

“Huh,” said Wentworth.

“He still looks dead,” added a bored Stuart, as if watching his buddy stab corpses was the most ordinary thing in the world.

Graham ripped the knife out of my foot, then wiped the blade on my pant leg. The horror of the situation was too strong to allow the casual disrespect to offend me.

Why does this keep happening to me? I wondered. Two lives with no motor function is no way to go through existence.

“You’re sure this is the sigil for the lower plane?” Graham asked Zit-face.

“Pretty sure,” Stuart shrugged.

“Well, demons come from the abyss, not the lower plane.” Graham said with a thoughtful look.

“What comes from the lower plane, then?” asked Wentworth.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the summoner, fat ass?” Stuart prodded.

“Materials,” Graham said, interrupting another brewing argument. “Metals, stones, and things like that. As far as I know, only Conjurers pull things from the lower plane. I’ve never heard of it being used in a summoning ritual before.”

“So, like maybe he has gold in his stomach now?” asked Stuart with a greedy glint in his eye. Maybe carving up corpses did interest him after all?

“It’s possible,” admitted Graham.

A soul-shredding screech interrupted their conversation, and more importantly, my impromptu autopsy.

“It’s a tomb guardian! Run!” yelled Stuart, before lunging over to shove Wentworth sideways, on to his ass.

Both of his “friends” ran off without looking back. Wentworth scrambled on all fours after them, tripping over his cloak to fall on his face. His pants took that moment to escape, sliding off his prodigious rear end and exposing his naked buttcheeks to me alone.

I’m in hell. It’s the only explanation.

“Wait up!” he screamed.

By the time Wentworth was standing up, clutching his pants in his hands like a running back at the 10 yard line, the tomb guardian entered the room. Rattling chains and dust geysering foot stomps heralded its arrival into our vicinity. A staccato “thud-clink” reverberated grew in volume as the unseen monstrosity closed in. If I’d had a heartbeat, it surely would have to speed up, as my mind was replete with terror.

An enormous skeleton draped in a black cloak and spiked chains stepped into my field of view. Looking like the grim reaper cosplaying in a Hellraiser movie. Sickly green flames danced in its eye sockets, and fanged metal teeth had replaced its natural ones. Carved along every visible bone was similar arcane wiring to what was on the walls.

Wentworth made the mistake of looking back.

“Nooooo!”

A “schwink” sound was the only observable sign of the massive scythe that caught the boy’s outstretched arm. The guardian buried the blade into the stone ground, removing Wentworth’s outstretched arm at the elbow. It was almost comical how the shooting blood snapped him out of his stupor—though I wasn’t laughing. Wentworth spun on his heel, running at a pace far faster than I’m sure he’d ever done in his life.

The tomb guardian took two steps in his direction, but stopped at the exit of the room. For a moment, it looked like it was considering chasing after the bleeding teen.

But then it turned back to look at me.

Oh, come on!