My name is Daniel. I am 42 years old and I live in South East London. I am an executive for an international plastics company. I have a beautiful wife, two rambunctious children, and a dog named Bongo. At first sight you would say we are the very image of a perfect family. If you look around our flat you would see photos of us all at family picnics, selfies in the London Eye, and beautifully serene vacations around Europe. Waking up this morning to tickle fights and being slapped in the face by a confused and enthusiastic dog tail is the beginning of every romantic comedy we hope to live. I would love to be Daniel forever, but today is my last day. Today is always my last day.

Allow me to explain. This isn’t a suicide note to my beloved family. In fact, I met them all for the first time this morning with aforementioned tickle fight. Yesterday, my name was Jake. I was a 26 year old sailor on leave in Norfolk, Virginia. I had an amazing boyfriend of two years, in fact, if I were still Jake today I was intending on proposing to the love of my life. Well, the love of a life.

The day before that my name was Sarah. I was an 18 year old high school graduate during beach week. Let me tell you, I have woken up to my “first” hangover more times than I care to remember. I have been every age from 13 to 85, every sex, every race, every sexual orientation, and every gender identity. All of my lives have been unique and beautiful in their own way but none have truly been my own, and none have lasted longer than 23 hours and 59 minutes.

The first time it happened I thought it was a dream. I thought it was an elaborate nightmare that I couldn’t wake from, but then when I died in my “dream” I didn’t wake up in my bed or even my body. I woke up with a whole new set of memories and people surrounding me. I thought I was going mad. The first few times my days ended in psych wards, bathtubs surrounded by pools of my own blood, and even skydiving sans parachute, but every morning I woke up anew. A new body, a new history, a new everything. Eventually I grew accustomed to my fate and had to find a way to live 23 hours and 59 minutes at a time.

I never know how I am going to die, but I do know it will happen without fail. Besides by own hand, I have been struck by vehicles, burned alive, shot by jealous lovers, had trees fallen on me, stung by a bee, drowned in pool, and aneurisms galore. There have been some lives I have led that when I wake up I know EXACTLY how I will die and others it’s a complete mystery.

For example, when I was Jake yesterday I was jostled awake by a very orally talented Marine, and the morning before Sarah was tied in the trunk of a car. Both very different scenarios starting out, and very similar endings followed. Jake was subsequently stabbed in the back by a homeless man whom I neglected to give change to and Sarah is yet another innocent teen who was murdered by a local serial killer.

I will say I’d rather have Sarah’s fate than Jake’s hand over fist. Dying alone is much easier than dying with people you love around you. You never want to see people crying over you when you are trying to get to the other side. I think that is why pets hide when they know their time is coming. Honestly, it draws out the pain longer because you cannot concentrate. It’s like someone pounding on the door when you are constipated trying to take shit. Leave me alone and let me go.

So far, I have lived 2543 different lives and have died 2542 times, so by now I am definitely the foremost expert at dying 101. If you did your math correctly you would have figured I have been doing this close to seven years now. I am not REALLY sure what caused my, as I call it, “curse” to appear, but I think it had something to do with the way I lived the first life, my life.

My first name was Robert Raintree, but my friends called me Billy the Kid and not in a loving way. I was quite the spoiled brat to say the least. I came from a well to do family in Manhattan. I had everything going for me. Money, looks, women, men, cars, you name it… I easily got it. But, like every clichéd playboy eventually it all caught up to me. I made many enemies, from the door man I never tipped in my penthouse to the jilted spouses of my many lovers, I did not leave a good impression on this Earth.

What finally did me in though, was not an accident or a grisly murder but good old-fashioned karma. Literally, I was killed by Karma. I was leaving the hotel from a one-night stand with a married Senator, classy I know, and there was a torrential downpour. My private car was running late and I was not one to wait around. So I found a cab, pushed the little old lady who originally hailed it out of my way; she fell to the ground and I got right in.

Again, I was the epitome of class.

The cab itself was disgusting as most cabs in Manhattan are, ripe with rancid body odor, sticky floors, and stains of all kinds of fluids… that alone should have been my punishment to be honest. Fate had other things in store though. As I was exiting the cab I slipped, fell, and hit my head. I fell into a coma and stayed like that until one day I woke up in my second life… Max, a dirt farmer in Idaho.

I honestly feel bad for Max’s family. Like I mentioned before, I thought I was dreaming the first time it happened so when I ran head first into a wood chipper in front of my family I thought it would wake me straight up into Billy’s fantastically easy life, but when I woke up as Samantha the pregnant runaway, I knew something was VERY wrong!

Since then I have learned that I am NOT dreaming and my actions, though no longer Billy’s, have real consequences. I learned that unfortunate bit when I woke up in psych ward as Max’s son who apparently got a mouth full of dear ole’ dad soup two years prior.

I don’t know what cosmic being is doing this to me. Maybe I am not alone and this happens to us all but on different timespans or circumstance. Perhaps I am just being punished by having to live the hardest day of other peoples’ lives for them and for all I know saints, when they die, get to live everyone’s best orgasms.

I have come to accept this is my punishment. I am not sure if there is a way out of it. I have tried to live with dignity and help people as much as I have hurt them in my past, but even that isn’t enough it seems.

Maybe there is no way out. Maybe I am destined to play out someone else’s final day for the rest of eternity or… at least until people cease to exist. If there are no more people there would be no more lives to live, then maybe I can finally stay dead.

Maybe one of these days I can jump into a world leader and speed things along. One can hope!

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Part 2