I don't know if the end of my life was the beginning, or if beginnings and endings are merely illusions. I remember the day I was born. Born... birth... rebirth... it's as good a name for it as any. I don't know what else to call it. Resurrection? Second chance? Somehow, that's just not good enough. It's so much more than that. I've had to stop trying to put names and meanings to things. My need for logic and order was the hardest part of myself to give up. But, if there is one thing I've come to understand, it's that classes don't exist. Labels are irrelevant.

To be reborn, first, you have to die.

My head was humming. That's what I remember first. The sound of billions of wings beat against the air mixed with the roar of wind rushing past my ears. The wind roared faster and closer with every second, howling and snapping at me until I couldn't distinguish one sound from another. I tried to cover my head, but my arms wouldn't move. They hung limply at my sides, flaccid and useless. Then the smell of sage, anise, and something dry filled the air.

In the distance, I could see a deep orange sun beginning to set against the mountains. Around me, the land looked as if the rocks had melted one on top of another in soft, dusty brown waves. I watched a man and a young boy standing with their backs to me at the edge of a rocky hill. As my eyes adjusted to the dimming light, I realized all around me were dozens of pillars of stone carved by the wind— the same wind that was howling wildly around me.

The boy leaned into the man, stretching onto his toes as he pointed into the distance. "Can you hear the sun whispering to her?" he asked, looking to a purple-ridged mountain far in the distance just being kissed by the setting sun. Despite the deafening noise, I could hear them clearly. They seemed either unconcerned or untouched by the storm. The man turned to him and smiled.

"The sun is whispering to the mountain?" he asked. The boy nodded. "What is he whispering to her?"

"He's asking her to run away into the sky with him," the boy whispered back. "But she can't because she's part of the earth. So the sun comes back to visit her every day."

As the boy squatted, dust blew fiercely into my eyes. I strained my arms, willing them to move. Instinct screamed at me to run, but I was rooted to the ground.

As the wind's howling slowly diminished, the buzzing retook its place. The man and boy disappeared along with the stone pillars. Wind and dust spun around me, whipping across my face, and I panicked. I still couldn't move. The buzzing intensified, and I felt tiny iridescent wings fluttering around me... wings, tens of millions of wings brushing my skin. I wanted to run. I needed to run.

Suddenly there was silence.

My skin felt warm as if I'd been bathing in the sun. I could smell something burning faintly, like metal and electricity. Resting on my back, I felt something hard and cold beneath me.

I stayed with my eyes closed for a few more moments, my heart still pounding from the storm and howling winds. Eventually, I opened my eyes. A pair of dark eyes met mine as the man leaned over me. He had his hands wrapped around each of my shoulders.

I was outside and on the ground. That was clear enough. Gradually he smiled.

"Welcome."

He waited for me to say something.

"You... What h..." My voice trailed off, I was unable to finish even that simple question.

"So many things," he answered cryptically. I waited a couple of seconds for him to clarify. He just smiled. Dark olive skin surrounded the darkest eyes I'd ever seen.

I moved my hand to my stomach and felt something cold and wet against my shirt. My fingers were covered in blood. "Oh, God!" It was blood. My blood.

"It's okay. You're alright," said another voice. Behind the first man, I saw another, as fair-skinned as the first man was dark. Blond hair fell down to his shoulders, making him look like a knight out of a medieval fairytale.

I tried to sit up, and a sharp pain shot across my abdomen. My bloody hand clutched at the place where the pain was agonizing while my other hand came up to my face. It was wet. I'd been crying. I brushed aside my shirt to look at the source of the pain. A deep red line blazed against the whiteness of my skin. I had clearly been hurt, but the only blood I could see was splattered and soaked into my shirt.

The dark man took my hand. "Come. We'll help you inside. You can clean up."

I allowed him to help me. Savage pain shot across my ribs as I stood up. They guided me through the back door of a sports bar. The blond moved in front of us. "I'll get a table," he said matter-of-factly before walking off further into the bar.

The dark man kept his hand at the small of my back as we walked toward another set of doors. "You can clean up in there," he said, gesturing to the women's restroom. I nodded, slightly dazed, as I made my way across the floor. I noticed he had my messenger bag slung over his shoulder. When had he picked it up? I vaguely remembered swinging it, trying to hit somebody with it. As soon as I tried to grip the memory, it vanished. He handed it to me. It was heavy with books I had just bought. I should have gone straight home after leaving the store. Instead, I had to make a little detour for coffee.

I stopped at the door as my stomach jerked and rolled. Was I going to be sick? I felt the man watching me and turned to look at him. He was slightly taller than me, well built and sturdy. He had thick black wavy hair curling down to the nape of his neck. Why was I noticing this?

"Um... wait," he said as he began unbuttoning his shirt. I could see a dark grey t-shirt underneath. He shrugged it off and handed it to me. "You'll need this." His eyes drifted down to my stomach. I followed his gaze to my blood-soaked shirt and grimaced. The sight of my own blood, so thick I could taste the copper on my tongue, should have had me shaken to the core. Instead, all I felt was a detached numbness, as if it were just another horror flick on Netflix.

Still dazed, I took the shirt and my bag and made my way into the restroom. It was empty. Good. If someone saw me splattered in blood, I don't know what I'd say... if I was able to say anything at all.

I walked to the sink and washed the blood from my hands, watching the water pool red. Very slowly and gently, I pulled the t-shirt over my head, smearing blood on my cheek in the process. The pain was sharp, but I was becoming accustomed to it.

I ran my fingers lightly over my abdomen. The gash was more than an inch long and spread between my ribs on the left side. It was swollen, tender, and just starting to scab over. Little drops of fresh blood clung to the edges. I wadded up a paper towel and ran it beneath the cold tap, then carefully began washing away the splotches of blood from my skin. It was still bleeding slightly but not too bad. I needed a bandage but didn't have anything, so I wadded up a paper towel and pressed it against the wound. Next, I bent over carefully to rinse off my face. I noticed dark circles had formed under my eyes. My skin was pale, and my lips were tinged blue, making a disturbing similarity with my eyes.

I pulled his shirt on and started buttoning it. It smelled pleasant, like sage and something else... the desert? Sweat had dampened my dark hair, and blood caked into it near my temple. I tried to get it out by wetting my fingers and running them through the long strands. Giving up, I found an elastic band in my bag. It would be easiest to just pull my hair back and hide it in a ponytail.

There was nothing I could do about the dark circles under my eyes but sleep. I rolled my shirt into a ball and shoved it into the bottom of the trash. The last thing I needed was for someone to find it in my bag later and start asking questions. I had no idea what I could possibly say.

I remembered I had a bottle of Excedrin in my bag, and after a quick search, I popped a couple into my mouth, wincing before heading back into the bar. Should I go to the hospital? I shook my head and cringed at the thought.

He was still waiting for me by the door. He nodded, approving, and walked with me to a table. As I walked beside him, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to know what it felt like to have his hand run along my skin... and lay my cheek against fresh-cut grass to breathe in the scent... and feel ice slowly melting in my mouth. What the hell had happened? What was wrong with me? Afraid I was going into shock, I looked down at my hands. They seemed steady enough. Would I even be able to tell if I was going into shock?

The bar was dark, with a mixture of rough wooden walls and forest green paint. We passed an old fashioned wooden bar lined with well-loved barstools. Half of the stools were filled with men staring fixedly at large television screens hanging against the wall. A basketball game was playing on the big screen while two screens flanked on either side. A man was nursing a short glass of a dark brown liquid in the corner while watching a golf match, and a NASCAR race was circling on a screen to my left. A small table near the door seated a couple of men and a woman who chatted in whispers, heads bent close to one another as if regaling secrets. The rest of the small crowd of patrons watched the screens while occasionally commiserating with each other and cheering in cacophony when something pleased them on the screen.

The blond man was seated in the back with a vast array of beers littering the table before him. Clearly, he was planning to drink enough for a small army, or maybe a heavy metal band.

"Feeling better?" he said with a lilting English accent. He flashed me a wide smile. I nodded. The Excedrin must have been working because I was feeling better. The pain had begun to ebb away.

I sat down slowly and then looked up at the two strange men staring back at me. I supposed they were waiting for me to speak, but I hadn't the foggiest idea what to say.

"Here," he reached for one of the beers. "Drink this, you need it." The idea of drinking a beer after what had happened seemed repulsive and oddly appealing at the same time. After what had happened... what had happened? I obligingly sipped. I'd never been much of a drinker. It felt cold and oddly comforting. Vaguely, I remembered too late I shouldn't accept drinks I didn't see made. Waking up in my own blood was messing with my head.

"What is going on?"

The dark man answered first. "Do you remember what happened? Who attacked you?"

I shrugged, "Nothing. Just waking up on the ground, covered in blood with you two standing over me." I thought of the man and the young boy in the desert.

"Anything else?"

I wasn't sure what he wanted. "I think... I remember feeling very... cold. The wind howling and a strange dream about the desert." They exchanged glances. The blond shrugged. "Do you remember anything from before?" he asked. I felt the blood rushing to my head as I thought of someone's arm pressing hard against my neck.

"I was running errands. I decided to take a shortcut to a coffee shop."

The blond nodded again. "Drink up, Pet, there's a lot to explain. The thing is..."

"Wait," the dark man interrupted, "What's your name?"

"Oh... Kaja. Landauer," I sputtered after a pause. My mind was racing in so many directions I'd had to think about it for a second. "After my grandmother. Old fashioned, I know." I was babbling.

"Is it?" the dark one replied, cocking his head to the side.

"I know you will find this hard to believe, but we are just going to tell you straight," the blond continued. "Quick and easy."

"You died," the dark one said.

Strange. I didn't find that hard to believe at all. I died. I was dead. I suppose I didn't think there'd be quite as much pain after death... or beer. I never enjoyed sports bars much before, so why was I suddenly stuck in one for my afterlife? Afterlife. There's an afterlife, and I'm in a bar drinking with two strange men.

They waited calmly while I processed. "Who are you?"

For a moment, they looked surprised. The dark one started to smile but stopped. "My name is Ezra. This is Leif."

"I'm dead," I replied calmly. It helped to say it aloud.

"No," Ezra replied.

I looked up at him, confused. "What?"

"No, you're not dead." Ezra slowly replied. "You died. But that's not the same thing. Not for you." They glanced at each other again, apparently deciding whether to continue or let that sink in.

"I'm not dead?" Being dead was easier to understand. "Are you dead?"

Ezra laughed, "No, we aren't dead, either." He nodded and leaned his arms onto the table. "But we are like you."

I sat silent. I wasn't typically the quiet type, but all reason seemed to have slipped out the door. I had no earthly idea of how to respond to any of this. So, I did nothing. My mind shuffled through options. I could be in a coma. Or hallucinating. I could possibly be dreaming, but my dreams tended to be more bizarre than this. Hard to believe, but true.

Leif decided to plunge ahead. "We are Avati. We cannot die." He paused for a moment.

How one reacts to hearing someone tell you they are immortal is impossible to predict. My typical reaction would be to either roll my eyes with impatience or humor them— sarcastically or not, depending on my mood. That is how I imagined I would react. In truth, I did nothing. I just sat there.

"You understand?" he asked after I'd been silent for some time. "For lack of a better explanation, we are immortal. For the most part, anyway. There are limits, even to that."

I locked eyes with him, his blue eyes staring into mine with complete sincerity. "You're serious." It was not a question. It didn't need to be. I knew he was serious. "Are you insane?"

Ezra leaned to the side and pulled something out of his pocket. Just as I started to realize it was a Swiss Army knife attached to a set of keys, he had pulled it open and in a swift motion, slid the blade across the palm of his hand.

If our lives are guided by an infinite collection of moments streaming to one culminating event, this was mine. This was my moment. My life before Ezra reached for that knife was trivial but infinite in possibilities, filled with frustrations and joy. It was purposeful and sometimes meaningless... precisely as life should be. But above all, it was entirely mine. After he reached for that knife, my life became a series of impossibilities.

As Ezra slid the blade across his palm, I threw myself into the back of my seat, ready to run. I'd been shuffling on the train to the edge of panic for a while, but this was a new and entirely disconcerting state for me. Blood pooled into the palm of his hand. He grabbed a napkin and soaked up the blood. It had already stopped flowing, and the muscle and skin knitted back together. The cut sealed and was reduced to a thin red line. Another second passed, and it was gone altogether.

"Jesus!" My skin was beginning to tingle. "Are you saying I'm... that I can do that?"

"Well, no," Leif replied. "There's a lot more to it. It's a bit hard to explain."

"It will take a long time before you will be able to heal like this," Ezra said calmly as he folded his knife and set it back down on the table.

"Okay, not that hard to explain," Leif said, looking annoyed at Ezra. "It's easier to understand today with genetics. Think of it as a genetic mutation. We are born, we live, we die, and when the electrical activity in our brain stops, the dormant gene kicks in. Our aging slows, but we can't die. Not from injury anyway. We will all die from old age... eventually."

"This doesn't make any sense," I said. "We have to die before we can't die? How can a dormant gene suddenly 'kick in' if we are dead?"

Leif looked down at the table and then up to me again. "That is a great question. One I can't answer."

"With a few exceptions here and there," Ezra chimed in, "your body is exactly like it was this morning." He leaned back in his chair. "You will age, but very slowly. You can get sick with colds, disease, and touches of flu. You can get injured. If you cut yourself, you'll bleed. If you break your arm, you will have to heal just like before. Over time it will start to heal faster."

"How much faster?"

Leif frowned. "You're young. At your age, it could take a couple weeks or more for a broken bone to heal. But still, a little faster." I must have looked spooked. I'm fairly sure he thought I was about to panic. "Here, have another. It'll help," he urged as he pushed another beer toward me like a frat boy feeding girls shots.

Ezra took this time to continue, "You have to be careful. Just because you can't die doesn't mean you're invulnerable. The younger you are, the longer it takes to heal. If you are injured enough to kill, it will take days before you'll be able to even move."

"Why do you heal so quickly?"

"The older you become, the faster you heal. You become stronger. Your instincts and senses are sharper. The older you are, the more powerful you are."

"How old are you?" I asked. He only looked to be a few years older than me, late thirties at the most.

"Old," he replied flatly.

I really looked at him then. He was pleasant-looking, with trim wiry muscles. Veins bulged against his skin on his forearms. His dark, deep-set eyes were almond-shaped beneath thick eyebrows. A five o'clock shadow kissed his chin. If he had a beard, it would be thick. I looked over at Leif. He looked exactly like a Viking god, tall with a broad muscled torso. He had shimmery, wavy blond hair I'm sure many women were envious of. With his blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and full lips, I'm sure he could have been on a poster modeling Armani. At least the not-Afterlife had supermodels.

I lifted the beer to my lips and drank. "If I'm one of these... Avati," sounding the word out in my mouth, "but it takes a long time to heal, then why is my wound here already so...?" I asked as I motioned to my ribs.

"We don't really know," Leif said. "Injuries you have from just before the change heal almost immediately. Once the change is complete, you have to age to heal quickly like the rest of us."

I picked up Ezra's knife. "So, if I use this knife on myself right now, what will happen?"

"Exactly what would have happened if you cut yourself yesterday. You'll bleed all over the table." He took the knife from me. "If you're looking for proof, you're not going to get it."

It was ridiculous. I was immortal... a real immortal. Immortals are real. But I had none of the perks. I was immortal, but exactly like I was before. I couldn't decide if I was irritated by that or relieved. I turned to Leif, "How fast do you heal?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he reached over and picked up Ezra's knife slicing it along his forearm. My heart thundered in my ears as blood ran down his skin. I started to panic again. Leif wiped the blood away, but it had already stopped flowing. The edges of his skin pulled together while the rest of the cut remained open. Leif grinned at me, "It will take most of the night to come together. By this time tomorrow, you'll barely be able to see there was a cut at all."

I couldn't respond at first. Watching these men so casually cut into themselves was more than a little disturbing.

New story who dis?

This is  one of my nano 19 projects. The chapters are a bit long, so chances are I'll update once a week as to not overwhelm anyone. There may be errors, since all I've done is run this through Grammarly. Feel free to point out any. I may not change it on here immediately, but I'll fix it in my document.

TEASER: "Zombies? Don't tell me I'm going to get a hankering for cranium soufflé."