To Pandy’s surprise, death wasn’t dark. In fact, when she first opened her eyes, she thought she must have had some extraordinarily vivid nightmare while sleeping in a park. The first clue she had that this wasn’t true was the fact that she never slept outside. For someone with her luck, that was just asking for trouble. The second clue was the god.

  He looked like her idea of a Greek god, complete with draping white toga, muscles a steroid addict would envy, and a cleft chin. Why cleft chins were godly, she didn’t know, but that and the tiny thunderbolts flying around his head like a halo were a dead giveaway.

  “Am I dead?” she asked, then immediately regretted it. Honestly, Pandy was a little surprised every day she didn’t wake up dead. She’d lost count of how many times her apartment had caught fire, had a gas leak, or been invaded by disease-carrying cockroaches the size of golf balls. If the universe really was out to get someone, it was her, Pandora S. Boxx.

  The god raised his chin and his arms, flexing his very impressive pectoral muscles. “Alas,” he said pompously, “thou hast perished, fair maid! But weep not! For your valiant actions, thou shalt-”

  Pandy lifted a hand to her head, which was starting to pound. She waved her other hand limply, as if she were chasing away a persistent fly. “I’m really sorry,” she said, “but I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Turning, she looked around at the glorious garden that surrounded them. Soft grass cushioned her bare feet, and riotous blooms covered the ground and nearby bushes. Trees laden with fruit drooped invitingly, perfuming the air with the scent of ripe apples and pomegranates. If someone had asked her to describe the Garden of Eden, this would be it.

  Wiggling her toes against the cool, soft grass, Pandy marveled at the fact that not a single blade of it sliced her skin. She had to wear shoes at all times, because any grass through which she decided to walk would invariably be sawgrass, which could shred a human leg to the bone in two point five seconds flat. For added misery, the taller blades were usually home to spittlebugs, which left foamy bubbles streaking her skin or clothes.

  A disgruntled cough pulled her back to her current situation, and she smiled at the god bemusedly. “Actually,” she tried again, “I just need to know where to go now. No need to bother with me. I’m really quite self-sufficient.”

  Which was good, because the only thing her parents had ever done for her was give her a terrible name and abandon her in a box on the doorstep of a monastery. Not even a convent. No, they left a newborn girl at a building full of aging male ascetics. Fortunately, the monks called the police, rather than just leaving the infant to Jesus, and Pandy had been making do ever since.

  Now, the god just looked befuddled, which was much easier to deal with than angry. Most people who spoke with Pandy for long ended up with that look on their faces, so she was comfortable with it.

  The god coughed again, but when he spoke, his voice was mild, and he’d stopped using all the fancy words. “You’re going to be reincarnated,” he told her.

  “Oh!” Pandy was surprised. She’d spent a good bit of time trying to figure out where she might go after death, since it seemed likely she’d find out sooner rather than later. ‘Nowhere’ was actually on the top of her list, but Purgatory wasn’t far behind. Pandy wasn’t evil, but she’d never done anything particularly good, either. The most she’d ever done was try to be a vegetarian for six months in high school. A mediocre, undecided sort of place seemed about right for her.

  “How does this work, then?” she asked, glancing around. Reincarnation wasn’t something she’d looked into much, but didn’t people get sort of… downgraded, if they didn’t do anything to earn a step up? Would she return as one of the cockroaches she’d so loathed in her last life? There was a certain poetic justice in that, really. It probably wouldn’t even be that bad. Someone would squash her, and then she’d get to try again.

  The god blinked. “That’s it? No begging? No pleading to go back to your life? No, ‘I died too young, with so much of my life left to live’ sort of thing?”

  Pandy shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a life,” she admitted. “I was barely able to make rent most of the time, and the only boyfriend I ever had actually meant to ask out Patrice Dickerson, but got our desks mixed up when he left the note.”

  “I… see,” the god said, then sighed and ran his hand through his mane of lush blonde hair. “Well, ah, you have two choices. You may return to your previous world as an infant, with no memory of your past.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  That wasn’t terrible. Maybe she would get a nice family this time? Almost any family would be better than ending up in the foster care system, really. But then he went on.

  “Your circumstances will be determined by your actions in your previous life. Your heroic death will be taken into account, so I doubt you’ll be born into poverty, but-” His eyes slid away from hers. Pandy knew what that meant. She’d probably be born to a yurt herder in outer Mongolia. Yurts were things people herded, weren’t they?

  “Or?” she asked.

  He tugged at his toga, revealing a little more well-muscled chest. Pandy knew an attempt to distract her when she saw it, though, and kept her eyes on the bridge of his Roman nose. Why did a Greek god have a Roman nose, anyway?

  “You can play a game and depend on luck,” he finally said, almost grudgingly. Meeting her eyes at last, he grimaced. “I’d recommend against it, honestly. There are far more potential bad outcomes than there are good. The only benefit, if you can call it one, is that you retain your memories of your previous life.”

  Luck. The one thing Pandy had never run out of. Admittedly, it was all bad luck, but she had it in spades, as it were. Her shoulders slumped. If only she was playing Gacha Love. Then she might actually come out ahead in this mess.

  Slowly, she looked up. “Can I…pick the game?” she asked.

  He smiled, as if things were finally going the way he’d expected. His too-perfect pecs flexed as he raised his arms again. Objects appeared in the air around him, spinning in lazy circles. “Dice?” he asked. “Or cards, perhaps? Will you bet it all on a game of chess?”

  He didn’t really look like the chess type, but appearances could be deceiving, and she barely knew her pawn from her queen. “Gacha,” she said.

  His face fell, and so did his arms. One by one, the dice, cards, and game pieces vanished, popping out of existence as suddenly as they’d come. “What is that?” he asked, but his eyes were distant.

  “It’s like a toy vending machine,” she said, miming the pull of a lever. “You put in money, and then-”

  He waved her to silence. “I see, I see. This, then.” Stepping to the side, he revealed a gacha machine. It was straight out of Gacha Love, complete with the big red button that read, SPIN! Opaque plastic balls sat patiently waiting in a clear glass globe above the button.

  Pandy’s mouth went dry. This was it. Did she accept the first option, returning to a world that had never really seemed to welcome her, or trust in the one form of luck that hadn’t tried to stab her in the kidneys? Her hand lifted, but before she could push the button, her traitorous feet carried her backward.

  “Can’t I just…stay here?” she asked. “I promise I can help with, um, whatever it is you do. If people cry, I can give them tissues and pat them on the back. If they get angry, I can, uh-” Nothing. Pandy was worthless at confrontation.

  The god’s lip twisted. He was obviously unimpressed. “This is the home of the gods,” he told her, sweeping his arm around. “Mortals may not remain here. The only reason you are here at all is because of your heroic deed.”

  There he went with the heroic deeds again. What was the big deal? Anyone would try to save a child if they could, wouldn’t they? She was pretty sure that even some of the villains in the comic books she’d read in high school would rescue a helpless kid if none of the heroes were available to do it.

  She took another step back, away from the gacha machine and that too-inviting heart-shaped button. This wasn’t a video game. This was some version of real life where gods played games for her future. If she pushed that button, she would end up as a flea on the butt of a camel somewhere in Australia. She’d once read that there were camels in Australia, and there was no doubt she’d be reborn on a continent where absolutely everything was determined to kill her. Again.

  Her eyes went back to the button. “What would have happened if I hadn’t been, um, heroic?” she asked.

  The god folded his arms, looking a bit like a Tyrannosaurus rex trying to stretch his teeny tiny arms across his massive chest. “You would have simply been reincarnated, without the possibility of choosing another path.”

  Pandy pointed at the gacha machine. “How is that a choice?” she squeaked. “It’s just another way of doing the same thing!”

  He clicked his tongue at her. “But you’ll remember your past life. Under the correct circumstances, that is a great boon.”

  “Not if I come back as an amoeba frozen in ice on Mars!” She waved her hands in front of her face. “Oh no, my pseudopods are too squishy! I can’t invent books!”

  A decidedly ungodlike snort burst from his nose. He tapped his fingers rhythmically against his arm as if he was running out of patience, but she was almost certain he was actually laughing at her. They stared at each other, and finally he reached out and tapped the gacha machine. A series of little lightning bolts struck it, and smoke rose from beneath the button.

  “Choose now,” he snapped. “I will count to five, and thou must select a path. I have rendered the odds very slightly in your favor.” Sweat popped up on his upper lip, and thick, gross veins appeared on his neck and shoulders. He began to count, and he wasn’t taking his time.

  Pandy slapped the button.