I should have thought through the fact that it would be cold as shit here before I moved here.

  Vic was shivering in the little dinky motorboat that could barely be counted as one, arms crossed and hands in pits, waiting to see any movement in the water. Or on his line. That would have been even better because at least then he would feel as if he hadn’t wasted his morning before work trying to catch some fresh fish yet again. It felt like it was 10 below freezing on the water but Vic was pretty sure that was just his sunny Californian disposition being stupid again. His goal had been to try and see if he could catch breakfast in the morning before work. Maybe grill it up on his tailgate after cleaning the fish? Some spices and some nice fresh lemons waited in the cooler already but he has a feeling he's gonna end up tossing them when he gets to work again. Or he could try and make a scratch lemonade for once. He’d never done it before, but it can’t be too difficult right?

  He got the idea of fishing for breakfast before work after watching a dude online do it forever when he was in college or on break at work. He’d even use the videos to run in the background when trying to get to sleep. Something about the whole process seemed like it would be quietly fulfilling, or maybe cathartic is the right word. It just so happened that when he moved to Palmer, his house had a surprise addition of a little motorboat with no motor just chilling out in the back yard by the trees. So he ended up saving up for a motor over the last year and a half, bought and installed it, and has been trying to catch his breakfast whenever he has the drive to do so in the morning.

  Vic’s first couple of catches weren't so great. The first time, he didn't really know how to gut and clean a fish, so he ended up wasting a good third of the meat on that one. He also forgot to buy a grill at first, so he ended up also dropping some money on a little camp stove-thing from his work. The next couple fishing attempts turned out better and he finally got the hang of it after the first month passed. Vic even got a mini spice rack and assembled a kind of small travel kitchen-thing he stored in the back bucket seat in his truck. There were still a week or two where he didn't catch anything, which made him feel like he might have over spent too early on a hobby he wasn't sure he would continue. Whenever he didn’t catch anything he ended up learning to just bring a Poptart or something in his truck just in case.

  Vic watches as the sky goes from darker shades of pinkish purple towards brighter colors before his watch alarm starts beeping. With an exaggerated sigh he begins the process of trying to wake his cold joints from their cold nap and reeling up his line.

  I know I said I’d do this more often, but god damn, this cold ain’t making me think it's worth it. I should look and see if we sell any heated butt pads or something at work, my ass is cold and asleep. Maybe there's a better set of thermals? Maybe start bringing fuzzy slippers too.

  As Vic is reeling in the line, he feels a snag. He gives it a couple of tugs, trying to feel if it's a fish or a stingy rock....nope it's definitely a rock, that line ain’t moving at all.

  Well shit. I hate breaking the line. Tying new hooks is stupid in this cold. Should’ve moved to fucking Colorado or some shit not Alaska. Or I could have just picked a hobby that I don't have to do at the ass crack of dawn in the cold. My truck doesn’t even have a remote start. It's gonna take forever to defrost.

  He trawls closer to where his line got caught near the pylon of the bridge above, gliding annoyingly through the quiet morning on the water, when he hears the loud horn of a semi truck down the road on one side of the river echoing over the water.

  Probably that damn moose I almost hit earlier.

  Vic gets to the spot where his line is perpendicular to the water and gives the reel another turn, testing the line to see if he can work it out from being caught. It doesn't budge. Vic decides that the smart thing to try at that moment is to wiggle the pole in every-which way like he's fencing against a magnet for an opponent with an iron stick. His genius plan seems to almost not work, but the line goes slack after flailing the rod around for longer than is probably socially acceptable. He begins to reel up the line, his hands and arms are much warmer and awake for the impromptu tug of war with a river rock, when he hears the truck horn again only closer this time.

  Must be more than one moose? Or is it meese? Did Brian Regan ever figure that out? I should watch that special again.

  Vic pulls the end of the line out of the water and sees that his “pro” method of getting the lure unstuck was definitely the dumber option since there was no longer a lure at the end. Even the clip thingy at the end that's supposed to make swapping lures easier is gone. He never learned the proper names for the stuff that go in tackle boxes and he refuses to do so at this point. He sighs and begins to tie the end of the line to the little hook catch at the base of the rod, when he hears yet another horn, but this time it sounds like it finally reached the other end of the bridge above him.

  I'm starting to think this guy is just really into truck horns, there can’t be that many animals in the road right?

  Vic finally having packed away all his loose items in the poor excuse for a dinghy and turns it about and starts puttering towards the little boat ramp, looking forward to being able to stretch out his legs that fell asleep and walk around for a minute. Vic hears the sound of screeching tires and a simultaneous blast of the truck horn much closer than before. He looks up as he passes out from under the edge of the bridge toward the noise when his body freezes in shock and growing terror, time slowing as he stares upward.

  Above him Vic watches as the guardrail of the bridge bows outward, concrete cracking in large chunks and the sound of the truck's engine and blaring horn, giving the whole scene a monotone background as the rest of the truck follows through the newly formed detour to the river. Vic stares at the truck, realizing it's falling directly at him. There's no time to move. He knows this is it; his final moments. No way he makes it out of being at best horrifically maimed just enough to drown in the river, or at worst flat-out killed immediately. Bits of the concrete are already hitting him in the face as his arms slowly rise with the yell trying to escape his body, if only he had more time. His thoughts are going by as if on speed, thinking of everything from how will his family find out to who is going to tell his boss Ted that he will be indefinitely late?

  The semi truck grows in his vision as it falls at him. Time feels as if it gets slower and slower, Vic’s brain working in overdrive to try and make out any options to get out of this, but knowing deep down, there's no way out. Vic watches in his peripheral vision as the largest of the blocks of concrete have passed him by now. All that's left in his sight is the grill of the Semi. He sees every detail, the dead bugs, the dirt, the chips out of the chrome, the bent and scored metal from the impact, the radiator behind. Everything seems to have dragged on for minutes at this point when he thinks about how people always say “their life flashed before their eyes” in these moments, and yet nothing even close has happened.

  Did everything I’ve read lie to me? Where’s the flashbacks? The instant blackness? The slide show of important memories?

  Then he finds that he can move his eyes again. Vic looks up at the badge of the truck, still coming toward him but at the speed of cold molasses. As if somehow time is legitimately in slow motion. His eyes trace up past the badge and try to look into the driver’s seat, barely being able to make out the shape of a person, and seeing nothing. Not that there wasn't a person driving the truck but in their place was a humanoid shape morphing in and out of clarity and colored in the same murmurations of static that Vic remembers seeing behind his eyes whenever unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep.

  Vic’s mind immediately thought of the older CRT TVs. When he looked at the thing in the driver seat of the truck through the cracked windshield, his body felt the static as one does when holding their hand close to those old TV screens. The strength of the sensation was enough to make him react and he pushed himself further back in the boat seat as if he could get away.

  What the fuck is that!? What the hell is happening!?

  As if hearing his thoughts, the thing in the truck opens the door. It feels as if there is a disconnect in his mind when he sees the door moving at normal speed while everything else is all but frozen. Vic has his eyes glued to the open door with a feeling of overtaxed dread. This whole about-to-be-a-pancake situation has his nerves on the fray and the whole inexplicable nature of the ordeal is starting to make him panic. More so, since he already thought he was dead and now that things are still happening, his brain is just constantly re-upping the anxiety and dread. The thing from the driver seat stands at the open door as if looking out at the gridlock traffic ahead of it and looks directly at Vic.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Another weird one, huh? That's like the third one in this pass. Usually only a couple show up. Wonder what caused a third? Whatever.

  Vic’s mind is engulfed in fire and acid. He screams in agony as the thing speaks, doubled over in the boat, hands over ears as if it would accomplish anything. It feels like his whole being was put through a belt sander and a particle accelerator at the same time, all his senses feel like they got eviscerated but when the thing stopped, so did the pain. The sense of static fuzz his entire body felt was unlike anything he’d ever known one could feel. Both warm and hot and cold and freezing, but he was fine. No damage, no more pain, just a deep sense that something was either very wrong or very right and Vic hated that he wasn't sure which one it was supposed to be.

  “...-at, what the fuck just happened?!”

  Sorry, usually your kind just kind of, you know, pass on when we arrive. Give me a moment, this should become easier to bear.

  More pain wracks Vic’s body but not as much as before. The Thing was correct, there was now less pain. His sense of self feels like it’s doing theoretical gymnastics trying to get out of his body and away from whatever this thing is.

  What the fuck is happening to me?!

  That would be your soul. It senses We are near. Yours is definitely interesting, it's pretty uncommon to stall the process so long but yours is putting up a token effort. This was supposed to be a lot quicker, that… truck? The Lived always make up the weirdest languages but I'm not here to judge. That truck was meant to do you in pretty much instantly, get the whole life projection and then you were supposed to move on.

  "Move on? Like die?” Speaking somehow, doesn’t fail him even though it feels like talking with a mouth full of angry bees and peanut butter while being allergic to both. “Who the hell are you?” Vic feels the pain recede and gains some agency back from his…him… “what the hell do you mean my soul?!” Vic pats down his body to make sure it's still present.

  We come along and sweep through and make sure The Tides are moving as intended. Some souls either get too lost or chance makes them miss their time. We are those who set The Tides right. You should be feeling it, right? That your soul is trying to move on? It is time to come back with The Tides.

  “What the fuck are “the tides” and what do you mean too lost or a missed chance? Also, you still haven’t said what you are!” Vic’s internals feel as if they’re in a race to evacuate his body and any orifice will work it seems as he proceeds to double over and start violently donating blood and bile to the bottom of the boat. The constant pull of what the Thing calls his soul causing massive damage internally and Vic feels as if he is actually on fire with how feverish he has become so rapidly.

  The Tides are The Tides. You may never know them and Us telling you will do nothing to help now or in the future. We would be called many things, if any of those who are witness to us could recall. It does not matter either way. We have taken long enough as is and we are already past the point of return. You are you no longer. Come, Recede with The Tide.

  Vic continues to heave as he feels what must be his soul, be grabbed as the Thing takes hold of his head like one would a bowling ball and pulls while the appendage that grabbed on to his body pushes away. His awareness comes with the Thing’s grip, the static feeling no longer painful as there would be no body left to feel the pain, except there is still pain. Muted to only just bearable but still to cause a problem. Both the Thing and Vic’s soul turn their attention towards the place they identify as the culprit of the snag. Along Vic’s right arm is a tattoo he had gotten after getting ridiculously drunk one night years ago in college. His soul is stuck at the arm with the tattoo.

  What the fuck?

  Well that's just insane. How the Hell is that here? The other two didn’t have one, so why do you?

  Vic watches the Thing do what he would call “ponder” if it was possible for what looks like a sentient chunk of psychedelic hallucinogen.Vic tries to remember back to the night he got the tattoo. It was a weird geometric pattern that reminded him of the cyber-sigilism style and was colored in what looked like opal, which pissed him off since he felt like the style was goofy and tacky and not something he would have ever asked for.

  It was hard to piece anything together from that night as it was every time he tried to remember. Even the days after he got it he had no idea what happened other than he got drunk as hell and made nice with a random patron of the bar, but that's where the night ends in his memory. There's no memory of a tattoo parlor or of how he had got back to his place two days later. Even going back to the bar to look for any clue as to what happened to him turned up nothing. The bartender recognized him as having been there before but never saw Vic leave and told him that his tab was still open.

  The Thing’s attention comes back to the present after what feels like a couple of minutes but vic notices that around them, the world has continued on with a sped-up time flow, moving days in minutes. Vic watches as the local authorities come out to check the scene of the accident and find the mangled wreck of the truck and boat at the bottom of the river. They pull out Vic’s body, what's left of it anyway sans arm, from the wreck. He watches as the truck gets pulled out and sent off and sees his mangled boat get taken away. The county road crew comes by and blocks off the section of wall on the bridge that is missing. All shown in minutes and seconds to him, but it must have felt like a long few days for the people left behind to deal with the mess.

  Alright, we need to get moving now. Your soul has what is known as a Mark on it. It is either Fate playing tricks again or that “tattoo artist” that gave you that tattoo royally screwed up or wasn’t a tattoo artist to begin with, which kind of brings it back to Fate anyway so it doesn’t truly matter. That Mark is a path forward not given out to more than two souls per world. You now have a choice Victor, you either let me rip that Mark from your soul and you move along with The Tides or, and I really don't think this is a good idea, you could keep the Mark and see where Fate takes you.

  The world around them has changed to mid autumn as they stand, the Thing waiting for a response, and Vic oddly calm now that there doesn't seem to be a way to go back. The world has clearly moved on without him and that gives him more closure than he thought it would despite not being able to leave his affairs figured out and not being able to say goodbye to those he needed. He floated there with the Being watching the river move along and seeing the occasional boat zipping around in the accelerated time flow like water striders on a pond.

  Vic thinks of his family at that moment and wonders how they took the news. Or even if they know yet. He was not the best at communicating with them, it wasn’t their fault. It was always his intent to reach out, but the day to day just kind of made it easier to fall behind. After college he had a small quarter-life crisis, not really sure if he had made the right choice in denying taking over the family business, so he decided to uproot and move somewhere he felt would give him clarity and some time away. A boneheaded move in retrospect since he has become basically all but broke and working in a sporting store where the only good time to work is during hunting and fishing season.

  Why does it sound as if ripping the mark off would be worse then? There’s got to have been a better way to sell me on that option. “Remove” would have been way better, and less terrifying. Why is keeping the mark a bad idea? I feel like the option that doesn’t involve any sort of ripping is my best choice.

  The thing takes Vic’s arm and wiggles it around, causing Vic’s soul to be bandied about like a torch in the darkness before continuing.

  Perhaps ripping is not the most accurate term for what We would have to do, but it is as close a description as We are willing to give. There will be damage to your soul after the process is complete, and your next life will be Lesser than the one you have just left, but it will also let your soul recuperate. You would no longer bear the Mark. It's not as if the Mark is bad necessarily, but know that your next life will be much harder; many who are Marked come to regret that they were ever offered the choice. Even though you were never offered the choice, since it looks as if Fate would have intervened anyway, if you’re to keep the mark it will come with a Task of some variety. No Marked soul knows what the task will be and We would only be able to know if we were to rip it off.

  The world around them continues on, the water colder now that winter has arrived in full. Snow covers the banks of the river and the bridge has been fully repaired now, the replaced wall unnoticed by the people that drive by. The Thing begins to drag them away, or maybe they weren’t moving but the world was fading away. It could have been both, it was Vic’s first time being conscious during whatever process was happening, so he had no clue what was happening.

  So the option is between whatever a lesser life means post-rip, or a random task given out from whatever Fate is, and both are going to be difficult but in different ways. One with pain immediately and one with unknowable possibilities? It doesn’t really sound like much of an option to me. If you had been here anytime after I got my degree, I might have been aimless and depressed enough to have picked the Lesser option.

  Vic watches as the world pulls further and further away from them. He can see the planet now. It's as beautiful as all the astronauts made it out to be and as he watches the moon pull by, he comes to his final decision. Not that it was too difficult.

  I’ll keep the Mark. Like you said before, either way Fate gave me the mark and who am I to say no? Also, fuck being whatever the hell a Lesser is, whoever names this stuff need to be fired. Who would actually want to know that they’re a Lesser while being one? Fuck that.

  The Thing raises Vic’s arm, bringing his soul to its static filled face. Vic swears that the Thing is narrowing its eyes at him but with no discernible features it's hard to tell what exactly it's doing or thinking.

  Victor, you are most likely to regret this decision, but since you have already chosen, We cannot do anything to alter the course. We will accompany you to the next Shore, but will not be able to go any further. Once you arrive, your next life begins and your Task will make itself known whenever you become coherent enough to grasp the trials ahead of you. Until we arrive I suggest you look about. Not many are privy to the goings on of the Cosmos, and even to Us it is a sight to behold every time.