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T he first thing I did was check the date and time to confirm what I already suspected.

Twelve years. Twelve fucking years.

I sat there, trembling in the car, my hands unsteady as I tried to claw through the onslaught of my most recent memories from my previous life: from the death of Old Me.

I had been driving. The light turned green.

A horn, long, panicked, too late and then the impact.

The sharp violent jerk as the front of a truck barreled into my truck at, what, seventy-five miles per hour?

Maybe more? That bright burst of metal in my peripheral, a scatter of glass, and the sickening crunch as my body ceased to exist.

I could imagine all that must have remained of me: a mangled mess, my body nothing more than a stain to be scraped off the front of the truck’s grill, a human carcass that couldn’t even be recognized as one anymore.

Whatever god standing nearby in those solemn last moments must have taken pity after listening to me beg for ten years for another chance. That skeletal wave of his hand was all that was needed for a second opportunity, a time-travel resurrection, a get-out-of-death-free card.

Even now, as surreal as all of this felt, I knew that I could not fuck up my life again. The Old Me had blindly destroyed everything, and never took the time to appreciate how perfect my life had already been.

The feeling of desperation held taut as my chest heaved from the pressure. The thought of what I’d put Sloane through tore into my stomach, a knife of guilt stabbing into me. I needed to see Sloane.

Trying to ground myself, I checked my wallet and took an inventory of what cards and cash I had on me. Debit, credit, cash and a punch card to a coffee place Angie loved.

Well that is fucking trash now.

A small wave of relief passed through me when I remembered that my important documents, passport, birth certificate, social security card, were safe. Sloane had them. She’d been smart enough to suggest I leave them with her back when I was still in the midst of moving in with Angie.

Angie. My mistress.

Even the word felt filthy as it made my stomach twist.

Looking to the sky, I realized that I still had plenty of time left before Sloane woke up for the kids and her demanding job.

The constant chaos at the emergency vet clinic left her drained and I had been too stubborn to let her stay home with the kids until my business became a success. By that point, Sloane's love for the industry kept her working there as she held every paw and hand that came through those doors.

As for me, I was a builder by trade. Simple.

Predictable. I built homes. Big, beautiful structures meant to last lifetimes and for a while, I thought I was building a future, too.

Business was booming. Money flowed in like water from a busted pipe, and I was arrogant enough to think it would never dry up since the housing market was on fire.

I let myself believe I had outsmarted the system.

What I didn’t know at the time, what none of us saw coming, was that the world was about to break.

A slow, creeping apocalypse was already threading its way through airports, subways, and schools.

A virus that didn’t care how many zeroes I had in the bank and trust me when I say I had plenty.

Like a bleak noir story, the end was already moving, silently and ruthlessly through the world, and by the time we realized it, we were all too late.

All the things I thought were permanent? Profit margins, business deals, my own sense of control? They meant nothing when our fluid-filled lungs collapsed from the onslaught of broken, damaged alveoli due to the danger in the air. So many deaths.

Regardless, I knew what to do. Fuck, things would be different. I would be different.

Fuck me, I need a drink.

Angie’s foul taste and my own vomit still lingered on my tongue, sour and sticky, and I wanted to cleanse myself of her. I'd remove her memory from my very being if I could.

I stopped at the store and grabbed some clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of water, and mints. Anything to feel clean again. As I was checking out, a rose bin sat next to me, its bright bouquets a contradiction to the rising storm inside of me.

Hesitantly I grabbed some; the sickly sweet flowers were a bitter contrast to what I’d done. Should I pick up a ring? No, that felt too ominous and negligent to the pain Sloane was enduring right now .

Standing in the parking lot, I brushed my teeth like a man possessed, gargling the taste of Angie away before popping several mints in my mouth.

I rinsed my genitals in a brutal scrub, wishing I could peel the skin off and be done with it all.

Had anyone tried to castrate themselves before? I was tempted to try.

After changing clothes, my finger scrolled relentlessly through old text chains, trying to piece together where I stood in this new life. My heart bled as I read the messages, each one a grim reminder of how far I'd fallen.

It seemed I’d taken a few days off to move, abandoning Sloane to juggle everything on her own. The kids. The chaos. The endless demands. I’d left her to carry the weight while I disappeared into my selfish spiral.

My last message to her was a cold, dismissive, “Whatever,” when she’d asked if I could spend some time with the kids and saying they missed me.

I didn’t even remember sending a response in my previous life much less this one.

.. but there it was, my indifference staring back at me, like a branded scar.

Fuck, the Old Me is a complete asshole.

Hands trembling, I pulled up the photos from my phone. To my dismay, Angie's perky breasts were the most recent ones, bile threatening to take over again as I began to delete the mistake.

Then I saw it. My family. Little snapshots of the kids and of Sloane. My breath hitched as I stared at her youthful appearance, etching every line into my memory of her.

In my previous life, age had worn her down, leaving the mature woman I had grown to love and respect; fine lines added to a masterpiece on a perfect canvas.

In those photos, in this new life, she looked exquisite. It was as if Aphrodite herself had descended to sculpt every perfect curve and every beautiful flaw. There was still that quiet, unconditional kindness in her eyes, a quality I loved her for that transcended my two lifetimes.

Seeing her shattered me. I broke down, sobbing into the steering wheel, my whole body heaving as her photo lit up my phone screen.

I kissed it, desperate, reverent, like a priest kissing a cross, as if it could bring me absolution as I whispered her name.

She was my beginning, my middle, and whatever was left of this fucked up life I was trying to salvage.

Everything felt so alien and all so familiar. It was hard to grasp, comprehend, much less make coherent decisions but I was trying. I wanted to fix my mistake from twelve years ago, in a reality that was only a few hours old to me.

It took hours and the ghost of years' worth of therapy to steady my breathing.

This time I would be devout. I would worship the very air she breathed and kiss her feet.

These things I vowed to myself as I stared at her photo, time standing still before I truly felt like I could move on from her image.

The next step of my rebranding was my truck. I tore through it like I was trying to erase Angie from existence, scrubbing every trace of her from my life, as if I could will her away.

First, the trash went: empty condom wrappers, receipts for overpriced dinners I'd never even enjoyed, an empty beer bottle, fuck, all the crap that had piled up over time.

Then, I dug deeper, pulling out anything that could remind me of her, the stupid little trinkets I'd bought to keep the lie alive, to keep her thinking she mattered more than she ever did.

I threw it all away with a savage sense of urgency, each discarded piece a small victory in my fight to reclaim whatever was left of myself .

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought crept up, cold and detached: I needed to schedule a vasectomy. A permanent cut to make sure there was no chance I could ever fuck up again. No more mistakes. Fuck that future, and fuck the mess I'd made.

After I scrubbed the truck clean, I left the AC running, trying to fend off the suffocating humidity already creeping into the morning air.

The truck hummed softly as I stared at the trash bag in the passenger seat.

My hands still felt contaminated. No matter how much I scrubbed, the weight in my chest remained, suffocating.

Nothing I did could wipe away the filth clinging to me. I exhaled a long, disgusted breath.

As I stood there listening to the soft, almost imperceptible hum of the radio, memories resurfaced with dizzying force, unwanted and invasive.

The world outside blurred, like the edges of a nightmare creeping closer as my brain recalled what was to come.

The chaos. The instability. The madness.

Soon the world would collapse under its own weight and the fear of the impending pandemic crawled under my skin.

My hands clung to the truck door for balance, grounding myself even as cold sweat slicked my skin.

I had to be smart. The world was going to crack wide open and before it did, I needed to be ready to profit off the collapse.

I recalled the handful of companies that would bleed us dry during the impending pandemic, the ones that would explode from obscurity to become household names in the coming decade.

I climbed back into the truck with purpose. Plans swarmed my mind as I took the long way home, dragging out the drive. I pulled into a gas station, tossing the trash into a rusted bin while the pump clicked behind me .