The Do Over

Monday. October the 6th. 2121. On a quiet intersection.

Life is fleeting. That's what the advertisements hammer into the masses nowadays. People's worries turned to curiosity quickly after The Emergence shook the world 52 years ago. Within a few days research was being performed to determine humanities safety in this new era; the supernatural era. A privately-owned research company discovered an anomaly on the Earth's surface a couple of weeks before the portal to the Other-side burst into existence, destroying the temporary observation post that was erected to study the area. Everyone at the station was obliterated the moment the portal emerged. Your uncle, adoptive father to you, was the only one you cared for out of the explosion. Since that point the supernatural world poured into your modern way of life and integrated into every aspect seamlessly as through they had always been there within the first few months. As it stands right now however, life is certainly fleeting.

You could never quite find the right word to describe it. Tedious was too prestigious, boring was too informal... Your job is some named corporate office job in the big city, with a name of some CEO you happily don't care about in the slightest. Ashfield city was supposed to be the city of cities; a place your family could've made it when they first arrived eons ago. Instead the city become their tome and with time your prison. From the day your uncle died your aunt began to shut down, her life wilted away before your very helpless eyes. For the first two years your cousin tried looking after the both of you while you finished university. Tried being the keyword as one day she came to you, tears down her face and cried, "Don't let her steal your life away, leave while you can." Afterwards she was gone. Abandoning her own mother you thought. Perhaps she was right.

You work as an office drone, mindlessly sat in a lifeless cubical repeating the same tasks over and over as you have been for almost 50 years, unwilling to do anything more. Your life stolen away due to your inaction. Despite the fact of your long tenure you always get turned over for promotions and special positions. That is largely due to the fact that you work passively. You come in, do the job and leave, all with no emotion. No extra effort all these young, fresh faced business graduates put in. That being said, you never put much effort into anything. You drifted through life without being very assertive. As the shards of glass float with you, you catch your old winkled reflection. Coming to the early ages of retirement and you never got yourself a wife... Or kids... Or anything resembling your own family.

I suppose nobody will miss me if I don't survive. You can still hear the tires screeching as though the car was still swerving to avoid that lamppost. The driver had at least managed to avoid it, instead they were now coming straight at you and your soaked moped as you drove back home from another dismal day at work. Your bike flipped into the driver's window causing it to shatter. It's not that you didn't try for your own family; but after the incident took your uncle's life you drowned in a vain attempt to look after your aunt. She shut down like she'd stopped caring, much like yourself after her many years ago, like a switch was flipped off and you stopped reacting -stopped caring.

Your body is flung through the air with the shards of the shattered window plane, your mind seems to live every moment in an almost never ending show. Your life... Your wasted life. Just you never putting yourself forward, missing opportunities and letting your friends down. Thankfully you never even had a family to let down. Slow-motion like, you fall towards the dark abyss. Solid asphalt fills your vision as you're unable to turn your head away. The road creeps closer and closer, each moment slower than the last until it finally stops. A glimmer of light catches on the edge of your frozen field of vision. "Maybe you'd like to un-waste your life?" A faint angelic voice whispers.

Your body gets pulled back from the road, slowly at first but gradually picking up its pace, the shards of glass being pulled with you. Every individual shimmering splinter reflects moments from your life going backwards as they piece together rapidly growing in size until the entire pane of glass is fixed. Your blurry-eyed, tired, 18 year old self stares back. So many faded memories begin to surface with the faintest glance into the past. The whole situation feels unreal and yet you're completely calm. You almost died and now time is rewinding, except it's skipping the parts where you weren't really living. Maybe this is my life flashing before my eyes before I die...

"Not much of a life was it?"

The longer you stare into the past the stronger those memories become; your first lottery ticket, your friends you still had, the classes in university you went too. Even applying for your job comes back into your head, clear as though it was yesterday. Howell Financial Corp. You remain frozen in this moment far longer than you care to count, you find it hard to twist and move your body; which is still suspended in the air. Your hands can move much easier than your body. You try pulling yourself away, using the crashing car as leverage, to no avail. The only thing that appears to be moving is your younger self in the glass reflection. That is until the glimmer of light flutters in front of your face. A tiny, wrinkly, frail looking fairy wafts her glowing, glittery wings to keep herself level in your stationary eyeline.

"I can send your mind back to where it all began- for both of us. You can help us. But you must decide now." The fairy's glow begins to flicker and fade, her shiny golden locks of hair drain away into a cold white as she stares with an unwavering, pleading expression. "Take action for once Michael."

With the world around you frozen you tentatively reach out and touch the pane of glass. The image shifts and warps under your light touch before sucking you into a blinding tunnel of light and sound.

One word drifts into your frozen mind. The word you couldn't find. Dull... It was dull. I wish I could do it all again. I wish. I wish I could get-

Is this is your chance for a restart?

For a...