Cain Westwood got out of his car and walked to the sidewalk in front of his parents’ house. Things had been going rather fine for him until the day before, with his parents supporting him in his independence from being a burden. However, that was soon becoming a thing of the past.

  To start, he lost his job as his boss pulled the job right out from underneath him, given to some schmuck who did not know what he was getting himself involved in. On top of that, because Cain’s job was now voided on him, he had no way of paying the rent for his apartment, so that was a surefire way of losing his home. Finally, his father gave him a cryptic message saying that he had to return to the family house post-haste.

  So, after a few phone calls to the moving people, he got his things packed out of the apartment and returned home… to find that his parents were not out there to greet him.

  Okay, what gives? Why aren’t my parents here to greet me? Did something happen between me getting the phone call and now?

  He didn’t have to wait for long before learning what happened.

  As he walked over to the front door, the entryway crashed open, revealing a burly man in a lumberjack outfit wielding a bloodstained switchblade in his right hand… his gloved right hand at that.

  “What the—?!” Cain all but exclaimed before the burly man roared wordlessly and charged at him. “Who the hell are you?!”

  “Die, you radio face!” the burly man yelled at him as he came within swinging and stabbing distance of the switchblade’s range. He swung it at Cain blindly.

  Cain barely had time to dodge, which he took almost none of it to do. It was pathetically easy for Cain to dodge the switchblade, almost as if the man facing him was a rank amateur in the art of dagger fighting… or even regular knife fighting. Then again, the man fighting him didn’t let it get to him by having to swing repeatedly, as if one swing will allow him to score a hit.

  The dodging took up a grand total of two minutes before Cain found himself in the way of a swing that could (and would, if he weren’t careful) hit and slice him, the swing nearly slicing at his throat. As for where he ended up to get there, he was twenty feet away from the front door when it started, and now he had gotten two feet away from the curb some fifteen feet away from his parked car. It was a major predicament.

  Shit! As if I had anything else I could do to stop this madman from killing me…

  The burly man gave off a rather ominous chuckle. “Nowhere for you to run now, you radio face. How about you just accept your fate on my blade? I promise you’ll be joining your parents sooner than later with this blade.”

  Is this guy serious?! Oh, wait, don’t have him answer that soon or at all. I’m sure he’s insane.

  “Now, how about you die for the sake of your end-of-life dignity?” the burly man asked.

  “How is this for the sake of my dignity at the end of my life?!” Cain demanded, a vein pulsing in his head.

  “Don’t worry, for you’ll find out soon enough, radio face,” the burly man said faux calmly. He then displayed a smirk on his face. “Enough talk. Die, you radio face!”

  What followed was a complete fluke of fate that caused Cain’s future to go sideways.

  As the burly man swung his switchblade at Cain again, Cain leaned backwards enough to dodge the blade, but not to the point of safely stopping himself from stepping onto the road. He stumbled onto the road and barely kept himself on his feet when a semi-truck collided with him, killing him…

  O=====||===============================>

  …only for him to wake up in a bed that he didn’t remember crawling into the previous night. He shot up, breathing hard, a hand to his beating heart.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  What in the… what happened to me? I could’ve sworn I got run over by a semi-truck…

  It was at that point when he looked around himself. The bed he slept in was in a room where there were five others, all of them being occupied by other men, and the entire place was practically filthy compared to his modern sensibilities. How was he supposed to accept this level of grime when he was supposed to be dead?

  He then looked at the window looking outside the room. It looked to be at least half past 1 in the morning, but he couldn’t be sure. If only he could find a good way of knowing the local time.

  He attempted to get out of the bed, but then realized something was utterly wrong. His arms and hands were way too small to be normal adult size, and his torso reflected that. It was as if he were a kid again, when, last he checked, he was in his mid-30s.

  Oh, no!

  With a quick pull of the covers off his bed, he looked down to confirm the truth. Yes, his legs and feet reflected the same state that his torso and remaining limbs were in. He didn’t really know how come that was the case.

  Wait, calm down, me. It’s possible that I’m a dwarf in this life… wait, really? Dwarves aren’t supposed to be of human origin, are they?

  He mentally backpedaled when he processed that thought. Dwarfism wasn’t a medical condition in this world? That didn’t make sense.

  He was about to get out of bed when his neighbor in the bed next to him groaned awake. “Gato, what’s going on with you lately?” his neighbor in the room asked him. “It’s not even time to get to work on the farm today.”

  Cain blinked rapidly for about five seconds before looking at the other man. “Are you talking to me?” he asked, pointing at himself.

  “Yes, Gato, I am,” the other man said. “You’re the only other one awake.”

  Cain drooped his head. “I could’ve sworn that my name was something else, though…”

  “No, it’s not, Gato. Let’s get that straight, shall we?” the other man asked.

  “Humor me for a bit, then,” Cain said. “What’s your name, in this case?”

  “What are you…?” the other man asked before trailing off momentarily. “Wait, did you hit your head yesterday and refuse to say anything on the subject?”

  Cain blinked as he raised his head. “Maybe, depending on how come I’m awake in this bed and room, though don’t exactly say I didn’t warn you about how unbelievable this might be.”

  “What are you going on about now?”

  “Okay, hear me out. I was seeing someone with issues in a different time and place, and that means I was having a fair bit of trouble staying alive. In that time and place, I was in my mid-30s, and I was being attacked by a strange man in a lumberjack’s outfit wielding a switchblade.”

  “What’s a switchblade?”

  “A knife with a blade that folds into the hilt and hides there when not in use. Anyway, it was while the lunatic nearly sliced me up with that switchblade when I backed onto the road and got run over.”

  “Hold on, run over? By what, a nobleman’s carriage?”

  “No, but only because the carriage had become vastly obsolete by that point in time.”

  “Are you messing with me, Gato?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  The other man sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry to say that I’m having trouble believing this. What replaced the carriage, exactly?”

  “There’d been a development that allowed for carriages to move on their own, allowing for self-operated vehicles eventually called cars and trucks,” Cain said.

  “Okay, then… this seems too fantastical for anyone to believe, but you speak of it with such conviction. Why don’t you promise me something about this for the future?”

  “Sure, depending on what you want me to promise, I can hopefully do it.”

  “Oh, that’s fair. I want you to promise me you won’t talk about this or anything similar to anyone who will attempt to replicate this without proper safeguards in place.”

  Cain blinked rapidly. “Wait, that’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it. I don’t want you to be sent to prison for causing a disturbance in the way things are, baby brother, so please…”

  Cain nodded. “I promise. Don’t worry about me, then, will you?”

  “I’ll have to hold you to that, Gato.”

  “Thanks… now, what exactly is your name, again?”

  “My name is Delaz, the son of Alexander, which makes you Gato, son of Alexander,” the now-named Delaz said.

  “That’s understandable,” Cain said. “Now, I don’t feel like I can sleep just yet, what with how I woke up…”

  “That’s fair, but please try to fall back asleep, okay?”

  “Very well. I’ll do that, then.”

  O=====||===============================>

  As Gato tried and then eventually fell back asleep, Delaz looked at his baby brother with a fair amount of confusion on his face. Gato was not acting like he normally would, especially for someone who would turn five years old in a few days. For one thing, he spoke in a verbose way that few five-year-olds would have access to. For another, Gato’s ability to talk about things that were outright impossible to comprehend was nearly impossible to believe… except that Gato was believing the stuff he talked about.

  Then there was the fact that he woke up as if someone was trying to kill him in his sleep. What exactly was it that would kill him?

  How am I supposed to deal with this at a time like this? It sounds ridiculous, even by my rather high standards.

  Still, when all this would define the end of one life as others knew it and replace it with another, Delaz did not know how to best explain the situation to anyone, even his own little brother.

  Now, then… how do I get Gato to answer to the name he was born with?

  With a sigh, Delaz went back to bed himself. He knew his tasks for the morning, and he needed to be fresh enough to pull them all off.