The Second Life

Here is the discord server if you want to discuss the novel The link is in the comment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel woke up feeling heavy and groggy staring at the cracked ceiling above his small bed and thought to himself 'now where the hell am I, Was it all a dream, Or is this the dream'

He tried setting up straight and managed to pull it off with great difficulty and then he looked down at his hands only to see that those weren't his hands they were too small and his skin tone was much lighter but most importantly they were very malnourished they were skin on bones and that led to his next thought he was hungry, So hungry he couldn't believe it and Daniel wasn't a stranger to hunger because of his upbringing he rarely had enough to eat that he was full, But this hunger was different, This hunger was primal, He didn't know how far he would go just to eat a stale piece of bread.

And so he ignored his thoughts for the moment and moved his body forward on a mission to find something to eat, He exited the room barely sparing a thought to the environment around him but he noticed he was in an apartment of some kind, A small one, There was a door ajar to another room on his left but he ignored it for now and headed right through the hallway and at the end of it he found a small living room with an even smaller kitchen attached and in it, He saw his goal a pale blue refrigerator with some chipped paint all over it so he made his way to it and grabbed the handle and pulled, He was greeted with the sight of a mostly empty fridge with two bottles in the door one was water and the other looked like milk.

He uncapped the water and drank it all in one breath like a dying man in the desert and when it was over he went to the milk only to throw the bottle after a sip it was spoiled and very acidic he looked in to see what else he could find there were a couple of eggs and three mostly empty jars that looked suspect and what remained of a head of cabbage and a some dried tomatoes at the bottom he sighed and started eating the cabbage with a disgruntled look on his face.

When he was done raiding the fridge his hunger was somewhat satiated at the price of the stomach ache he was sure to get later and he decided to reinspect the environment to see where exactly was he, The house looked quaint on a second inspection it was old but looked nice with some paintings of flowers littering the walls 'i can't be the only person here right'.

He walked towards the room he had skipped at the start and knocked on the door and when he heard no response, He pushed the door forward and stepped inside, It was a dark room with a line of sun coming through the closed curtains, There was a bed in the center of the room with somebody not very visible laying in it, He made his way to the curtains and pulled them apart, With the light now bathing the room he turned around and noticed the mirror facing the bed, So hesitantly he stood in front of it to observe his new existence, And in it, He saw a face he didn't recognize looking back at him it was pale both in skin tone and in disposition, His hair was golden yellow unlike the dark black that it used to sport and his eyes were dark brown and the owner of the face looked about three years old give or take.

He cut his turbulent thoughts after staring for more than a minute when he saw in the mirror the bulge in the sheets of the bed behind him, So he turned around and walked to the side of the bed and slowly pulled the sheets off to reveal the laying figure of a short old woman in her seventies or sixties by the looks of hair paper white hair and her blissful wrinkly face he looked at her for a moment and said

"Hello"

To no response, He repeated a couple of times and when she didn't show any signs of rousing he nudge her shoulder gently to see if that may have any result but there was no reaction, So he put his fingers on her neck trying to feel for a pulse and when didn't find any he wasn't sure if it was because she was dead or because he didn't know the right place to place his fingers

"Come on please don't be dead"

But again the was no response so he sat down on the bed facing the other way and contemplating how he ended up here and what to do now, After being frustrated with the lack of any idea regarding the how he focused on the what.

'So, First of all, I need to deal with this situation and insure my short term survival I should call the cops and say my mom isn't waking up, Wait she is too old to be my mom, Ok my nana isn't waking up and they'll send someone, Let's just hope they don't think it a prank call, I wonder if I have any other relatives but by the looks of it she was It, I had or it wouldn't be in this condition if somebody else was talking care of me, She must have passed away in her sleep and the old inhabitant of this body didn't know what to do and ended up this starved and this malnourished, Wait did he die too is that why I am in his body, Fuck I am back to the why I am here, I am probably gonna end up in foster care aren't I well look at the bright side if I had relatives they would be wondering why I can't remember any of them, Fine let's just call the cops and think about this later my stomach is starting to hurt again'

He made his way to the living room and found an old rotary phone and started dialing on it, Nine-one-one but he was surprised to hear that the call we redirected to nine-nine-nine.

'Wait I am in England, Haha why the fuck not at this point between everything that happened that is the mildest I guess, Ok focus I need to stay in the game here'

"Emergency. Which service"

He heard a voice say through the phone and so he answered giving his voice a scared tone to sell the act.

"I don't know my nana told me to call this number if I was ever lost, But I am not lost right now"

"Ok sweetheart that's fine don't cry ok, Why did u call if you are not lost"

"My nana isn't waking up she has been in bed for days and she won't wake up no matter what I do or say and I am hungry can u please send me something to eat "

He listened to the silence for a second before hearing

"Ok honey can u tell me your name and where you live and if there is somebody older with you right now"

'Fuck, I don't know his/my name, Why did I not think of that, I can't just say any name they'll find out later and asked me why I lied, Fuck, Fuck, Okay calm down the probably won't question a three-year-old but just in case I'll just say some pet name and say that was what my nana called me, I am sure they won't question that'

"Honey are you still on the line"

"Yes miss I am Archie, But I don't remember the address and I don't have anyone with me it's just me and my nana"

"Ok Archie can you tell me if the front door has a hole for the mail in it"

Daniel looked and saw that there was one with a bunch of mail unopened at the bottom of the door so he put the phone down and grabbed one with the address on it and then he thought 'wait should I be able to read this I am still three'

'Whatever I just want to get this over with if anybody asks later how I read it I'll just say my nana taught me'.

Wo he went back to the phone where the operator was calling his name and said

"Yes there are miss, And there are some letters there too"

"Good Archie now be a good boy a go get one of those letters with your address on them"

He held for a beat and then said

"I found one miss it says 17 Guilford st apartment 6"

"Ok good boy Archie now just sit tight and a friend of mine is gonna come to check on you very soon until then how about you keep me company on the phone"

He spent the next five minutes talking to the emergency line operator while she asked him about his family and how old he was and his grandmother and when was the last time she got out of bed but when the questions started to get specific he hung up the phone to hide he lack of answers and sat there waiting for the police to arrive and a couple of minutes later they did and he heard a knock at the door and someone saying

"Archie can u come and open the door please"

So he got off the chair and walked to the door and opened it revealing two officers standing there who looked back at him and then their faces turned dark at the sight of such a malnourished child, they entered the house and split up one stayed with Daniel while the other started looking around the house.

"Okay son, Your name was Archie right"

Daniel nodded

"You look hungry how about we go to the supermarket down the street and get you something to eat"

And the promise of food Daniel was getting excited but at the same time he remembered the half-rotten things he had just eaten and decided to say

"My tummy hurts"

Leading to the officer's face turning even darker as he thought just what this kid must have gone through and said

"Ok then how about we go to the hospital and check you out I have a very good friend that's a doctor and I heard that he always gives candy to all kids who see him come on let's go"

He said carrying Daniel and talking him to his car.

Setting in the back of the car swaying with the vibrations of the road Daniel's exhaustion hit him hard and suddenly he was working on fumes ever since he had woken up so he laid back and went to sleep wondering if he was gonna wake up in the same body or not but at this point, He didn't care he just wanted to fall asleep.

What followed when he woke up and found that he indeed was in the same body was a lot of bureaucracy of him talking to doctors and cops and social workers and saying the same thing over and over where he found out that the name on his birth certificate was Liam James Murphy and that his parents passed away two years ago and that he had no extended family except for his now passed grandmother Ruth and her brother who nobody knew where he was and had no idea how to get a hold of him and so it looked like foster care was the most likely option.

Daniel felt lost he didn't know anyone and he didn't even know what the point of this new life was without his family, He had found out that he somehow went back in time on top of everything else that happened he died when he was fourteen and it was the year 2005 and now he was four and it was the year 1984 and even his family was still there in this strange new world what we he be to them, Just a stranger he can't just walk up to them and announce that he was his mother yet unborn son, And even that went well somehow what was he gonna do with his past self could they interact or what that mess with the fabric or realty and could he save himself somehow from that car accident that did him in but wouldn't that create a paradox if he saved himself he wouldn't go back to the past to save himself and therefore he wouldn't save himself, All of it gave him a headache and led him nowhere in the end he couldn't find a way to find out if this was the same world or a parallel one or verify if his family existed when they were supposed to be in a different country across the ocean and he was an orphan with no resources or funds.

And so after much head and heartache, he decided that he was gonna let those questions go and try to move on with his life and try his best in this new one all things considered it wasn't that bad and he would try to make the best with it, He ended up with some nice enough people if a bit strict but that wasn't a problem for him, They were a couple in their early fifties that ran a small foster home with him and five other kids they were all older than him the least of them by and nine-year margin, He was mostly left to his own devices as long as he was polite and did what was asked of him, His guardians always found him curled up somewhere with a book in his hand reading it in some corner and so the time started to pass.