Death Shifter: Ch. One

Chapter One

                I’m not sure who or what I really am. I’ve existed through many different people from all over the world. I’ve lived and died more than 63 times, which includes at least four times that I committed suicide. Well, not necessarily suicide, for when my body dies I shift into a new body. I can’t even be sure that I had a beginning; I can’t remember anything about myself.
         I call what I do death shifting, but I’m never in control and I have no knowledge that this is even an accurate term for it. I can’t be certain that I am male or female, or even if those terms apply to me or what I am. Through my various shifts gender was never biased, in the majority of my shifts I am male.
         I’ve lived lives that some people always dream of and others that you would dread. I’m tired of shifting. I just want it to end. I just want to stop.

         
         Each shift began the same way. Whenever his “host” would die, he would become someone else as fast as he could blink. Immediately after shifting he wouldn’t know anything about his host or his location. Host was a term that he used to describe those he shifted into, but he didn’t consider himself a parasite, at least he didn’t believe himself to be.
         Eventually he would be flooded with all the knowledge of his counterpart. This was a process he referred to as downloading. It could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, the longest being a day. Downloading was almost always accompanied by a splitting headache.
         This time he found himself in a man named Oscar Freeman, a forty-two year old man who could stand to lose weight. He wasn’t obese, just simply fat. He was married to a very hefty woman who almost needed the use of the motorized carts offered in stores. She hardly ever left the house, unless it was to wait for the pizza man or the extremely rare occasions she made Oscar take her out to a fancy diner.
         For all intensive purposes Oscar hated his wife and her spiteful cat. There were many times that her cat would claw his legs as he walked by. He loved the memory of the woman she used to be. Once she had been a beautiful, slender woman that loved to go out and do things. That was before Oscar got a job as an accountant for Bender-Macros and made more than enough money for her to quit working. She let herself go while watching daytime television.
         Now it seemed that no matter what he did he could never make her happy. She had lost whatever kept her spirit light and happy, or rather she ate it, along with gallons of ice cream and sweet cakes. Her days were spent lounging around the apartment and complaining to her husband about how hard she had it.
         His daily routine had become very monotonous. Each morning he’d make himself a pot of coffee, pour himself a single cup with lots of sugar, take a short walk through Central Park to and from work, and during the work he would admire Vanessa, the intern, from afar.
         Life as Oscar was dull and had no purpose. It seemed like the most useless shift that he’d encountered. Even he couldn’t help by agree with Oscar’s obsession for Vanessa, for she was the vision of an angel. She had long strawberry-blonde hair, and an amazing shade of green eyes that were almost cat-like.
         When he shifted he knew exactly how to act, think, and feel like the person he became. He didn’t do it to fit in, but because it felt natural to him. Sometimes he decided to change his host’s behavioral conditioning. This was one of those times.
         He’d decided that he was finally going to strike up a conversion with her, something he believed that Oscar would never have been able to do. She was have trouble with the copier, which was half as old as Oscar himself.
         She kept slapping the machine trying to get it to work while muttering obscenities. Oscar walked up to her and spoke two words, “having trouble?”
         Vanessa looked at him, but didn’t know that it wasn’t exactly Oscar. “Yeah, this machine is a real piece of work. I just need two copies of this form, but it just sits there. Sometimes I imagine the person inside of there laughing at me. Is that odd?”
         He looked at her, carefully as not to stare. “No, show the copier-man whose boss.” He jabbed the two button and wiggled it around a little bit until it beeped, then he hit the big, green copy button. To her surprise, and a little bit of his, two mirror images of the paper she wanted came out.
         “Thank you so much, Mr. Freeman,” she said with her award-winning smile.
         A millions things to say, some of which were clever and witty, were floating around his head and all he managed to grab was, “You’re quite welcome, Ms. Madison.”
         That was the most that either had conversed with the other since she started working there almost a year ago. He’d been Oscar for a month and he’d finally broken the ice. Unfortunately for the both he and Oscar, she’d just started seeing someone who worked as an advertising agent across the street.
         It wasn’t like he’d missed his window, because in actuality that window never existed for him. He was married o a fat sow and she was nearly have his age. Vanessa was definitely out of his league. Why she chose to intern instead of modeling was beyond him.

         A few weeks after the copier encounter, he’d requested that she work for him rather than McDounin. With his seniority he got his wish. She didn’t seemed to mind, in fact she actually got to do more work and learn more. This made her a lot happier than she was.
         Out of the blue she wanted him to meet her boyfriend. After all of the time they had worked together he’d fooled himself into the illusion that she was falling for him. To her he was a great mentor. He felt like he’d reached the culmination of his--Oscar’s--life. Now he was plummeting downward as if from the top of a roller coaster.
         Oscar had thought, on rare occasions, about jumping out of his thirtieth story window. This mortal blow he received brought the old idea into light. He couldn’t just jump however, he wanted to do something for Oscar first. The only thing he could think of was standing up to the woman he feared, his wife.
         The idea of murder hadn’t crossed his mind until he started walking home that afternoon. This time it wasn’t in Oscars mindset that he was acting. No, this was his own plan of action. With all of the lives he’s led and lost, mortality and consequences meant nothing to him.
         As he walked home he pondered how he was going to do it. During his existence he had been many different people, some of which were actual serial killers. Those were the personas he reflected upon as he went down the road.
The same feelings and thrills would not be achieved as they were before. This would throw Oscar’s senses completely out of whack.
         It sounded easy enough, but he was breaking his host’s protocol. The effects inconsequential at this point and irrelevant to his objective. He had one thought on his mind: kill the bitch. Besides, he wouldn’t be around to witness the aftermath. After his thoughts were of homicide than the following suicide.
         A part of him wondered were he had developed this morbid darkness that blackened his soul, if he indeed had one. Had he always been this bleak and dismal or had he once been a happy-go-lucky person with unbound dreams of enjoying heavens spoils or laying on a bed of emerald green grass next to his sweetheart and dying peacefully in his sleep. He had done the latter, several times in fact, there was no promised afterlife for him.
         Each time he died he hoped for the great, white light to engulf him and guide him through the pearly gates. Unfortunately the moment his breathed his last breath in his body he’d find himself in a new one, or rather a used one. He’d never come back as a newborn infant, which to him ruled out reincarnation along with the fact that he retained all if not most of his previous memories.
         Life without the reward of an after had created the bitter person he was now. Of that at least he was certain. It also didn’t help that he’d come back as several serial killers post-slaughter. One of his shifts was right in the middle of a grand concerto of homicidal magnificence. This was his first delving into malevolence, at least as far as he could remember.
         Not all of his lives were fairytales and horror stories, most of his characters were boring everyday people that lived out meaningless existences and inevitably dying in the normal, everyday fashion.
         Oscar was supposed to be one such case, but he was now going to be something different. Perhaps if Oscar’s life got screwed up bad enough he would just have to repeat it until he got it right as if he were Billy Murray in Groundhog’s Day. This wasn’t Hollywood, there would be nothing of the sort, he would simply act upon his fiendish desires and then once Oscar was officially dead he would become someone else. Same person different character.
         Although he had a wicked intent walking home it felt invariably wrong. It was the equivalent of someone with an OCD not following their self-prescribed routine. The specious nature of his murder-to-be was losing it’s appeal with each step down the hallway. His hand shook as he twisted the doorknob.