Chapter 1: Waking Up To Reality
A distant sound starts ringing out the blue, it is at a low magnitude but it is a bit annoying to the ear of a listener. Every second of the time it keeps getting louder and becomes even more annoying to the listener's ear.
As seconds go by, it gets noisier to the point where it is so loud that it frustrates the listener and forces him to broaden his consciousness, so Tovey's sleeping state ruptures and he groans and whines turning his body and his head to the other side of the bed where his wife lies.
With his brain halfway to gaining full awareness, he whines some more at the sound of the raging alarm. "Please get up and get it." Lucy- his wife, begs him in a low pale tone as she feels the torture as well.
Tovey only sighs at her request without taking any formidable action toward resolving the situation. The sound of the alarm continues to pierce through their minds with rage. "Get up, will ya!" Lucy begs some more, and Tovey sighs some more still not doing a thing about it.
The sound proceeds to pile frustration and discomfort upon their life. Accepting defeat, grumpy Lucy gets up and smashes the stop button of the alarm clock seizing the noise on the spot. "You are such a jerk." She wails at her husband lazingly, Tovey sighs discreetly.
****
As lukewarm water runs down his body from a shower tap, he is abruptly struck with a thought concerning his daughter's birthday. He was thinking of a gift to get his daughter. "A doll. No. A huge doll. Maybe one of them big bear dolls." He uttered ideas to himself.
****
"Hey, honey." Tovey said as he walked inside the kitchen in his work suit and carrying a suitcase. He leans over and kisses Lucy on her cheek while she is setting up the table for breakfast. She brings her body to a complete halt as she is afraid of spilling beans which she was dishing mid the kiss. She is a nurse by profession and her scrub is as white as a summer cloud. More of the reason she had to be careful not to spill a drop. "Honey I was thinking of getting Charity a bear doll for her birthday. A big one. What do you think?" Tovey says as he pulls a seat.
"She is not an eight-year-old, Tov." Lucy replied.
"What! She is only fourteen." Tovey says with a stiff facial expression.
"Ok. Suit yourself." She reacts with a ravishing smile as she pulls up a chair and sits. Tovey shakes his head in disbelief, definitely not liking this idea of his baby girl growing up too fast.
"Oh. There comes the birthday girl." Lucy screams at Charity who just walked into the kitchen. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.." Using both her palms, she began banging on top of the table while Tovey created rhythmic claps and so an instrumental to the song was birthed. Tovey joins on to sing as well. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Charity, haaaappy birthdaaaay tooooo you." They applauded blissfully.
Charity could not contain her excitement and so she was blushing and constantly turning her body sideways during the harmony. "Thank you guys." She says, with a dimpled smile. After hugs and kisses, she joined them at the table. They then eat, talk, joke, laugh and yell.
They were without a doubt having a stunning family moment. A memory that will be embedded in their hearts. The smiles and laughs lightened the room which helped put Tovey in a good mood and made him feel like a blessed soul considering that just two weeks ago he was caught up in a traumatizing situation. He hit a pedestrian with his car and broke her leg. Even though he was found innocent, he could not help but feel guilty about it which fueled a lot of emotional pain on him. Plus he was currently facing major financial issues among a few. Now, as he is seated with his family and discussing birthday party plans with his baby-girl, he is completely oblivious to his problems and it felt awesome.
Now alone in his car driving to work, his downside saw a loophole then seized the moment. Judging and comparing his livelihood with other people's status mostly his most successful friends, he battered himself to nothing but a mere failure.
These bad egoistic thoughts did not last long as he suddenly smiles in silence when he is tackled by comforting memories of his family. His smile widens when he remembers the first time he met Lucy. (how great would it be if he switched between these two worlds at will alone!)
It was at the hospital, and he had brought a horrible migraine for a check-up. He can vividly recall how the pain magically disappeared when he laid his eyes on her, at that instant he fell in love. To this day he calls it bounded fate. Four years later, they were married and Charity was brought into the picture a few months later.
A thirty-one-year-old family man, Tovey's face blushed at the sound of that. As a former Mexican refugee in the streets of America, chances of survival seemed slim at the start. But he made the most out of it since.
As he pulled over and parallel-parked by his workstation, his thoughts shifted as he recalled the abundant unfinished paperwork from yesterday. "Damn this job." He said in a rigged tone to himself as he felt enslaved by his job.
As he stepped outside the car, he wondered of a different scenario where he walks into the building as an owner of the company rather than a no-good employee who is always accused of slacking behind progress. "A bossman." He thought. "That'll be real nice."
Before he could close the door, his cell phone rang canceling his wonderland trip. When realizing it was Lucy calling he smiled emphatically at the screen. Nonetheless, the smile did not last more than two seconds as a strong hand ran from behind grabbed and locked his neck violently. Another hand of the same guy pushed a blade to the side of Tovey's torso, he felt the wicked chilliness of its tip slightly touching his sensitive skin. A frown-like face as well as his shivering body expressed his take on the experience.
The hand that held the blade was of a man whose presence gave Tovey the impression that he was ready to kill. He bathed in fear.
"Listen. If you do not want to die then give me your fucking wallet." The culprit said in a deep but sinful tone. Tovey quivered some more at the sound of his voice. "Now!" He shrieked.
"Ok. Ok." He gives an answer hoping to alleviate the tension.
As his hand reached inside his chest pocket to retrieve the wallet, in a split second a phenomenon occurred. A very strange thing that he had never anticipated, but even so, he did not pause to try to understand what it was.
It was a feeling, or perhaps a belief, regardless of, he is hit with belief plus enormous confidence that he can disarm the offender and take him down as smooth as wool and escape without a single dent to his body or dignity. He can even get to answer his wife before the call goes to voicemail.
Where is this suddenly coming from? It was not a question for his brain to tackle at the moment. His mind made up, a hard elbow to the gut will take him off balance and buy some time to disarm and perhaps land a few punches that are going to lead to a clean knockout. The plan was final, it is now or never.
He poised his body in position and stiffened his hand, as the culprit was just about to utter a word he pulled back an elbow as hard and fast as he could. The culprit lost balance and he tumbled backward groaning in pain. Tovey turned around to face the man who has been standing in front of his sovereignty all this time. It makes sense that he wore a mask, to hide his face out of shame for his sins. His eyes are that of a monster.
Monster or not Tovey is gunning for justice regardless. With a tight bowled-up fist infused with the euphoric emotion of wrath, he intended to neutralize the threat respectfully. He swung his right hand as hard as he could, aiming for his face, a clean but vicious contact with any facial feature will do for Tovey. Only if it were not for the agility of the culprit, maybe Tovey would have won by a clear knockout but the evildoer moved to his left side to duck a raging punch from Tovey as smooth as it come which left his body widely open.
"Shit, I should have thought of a way to protect my body before I threw that punch." He weighed down on himself in his thoughts.
Conversing in his mind he hoped for a punch, slap, or a kick rather than - His thoughts are brought to an abrupt as he felt the chilliness of the tip of the blade run deep inside his gut. Pain transpired as soon as the culprit pulled out the blade just to run it back into the gut again. He gave him multiple stabs, eight to the exact.
Tovey slowly renounced control of his nerves and his legs struggled to maintain balance.
He crumpled backward and his back collided with the car, which gave him yet another view at the culprit's eyes.
But this time he did not see a monster, he saw the eyes of a man who is utterly scared and feeling a lot regretful. He saw fear and regret all over his retina.
A bloody blade hit the ground as it could not retain a fair grip with the quivering hand of the holder. 'N- n- no no." The culprit stammered in a voice contrary to a deep tone. He turned his heels at the sound of an approaching voice.
Tovey slid down against the car to the ground and began dozing off.
"Hey, Tov. Hey hey." A worried voice yelled at Tovey. Even with blurred vision, he could tell it was his best friend Jack from the sound of the voice. "Stay with me, man."
That was the last thing he heard before he dozed off.
A few moments later he regained consciousness and he learned that he is inside a car driven by Jack who is still yelling at him out of worry. Amid being in the midst of catastrophe, he took this chance to think of his daughter. He reflected on a memory of when he and Charity were playing a game of ball in a swimming pool. It is an event of three years ago and Charity was eleven, they were both loud and extremely joyous at that time. He smiled genuinely at the thought of reliving this moment on a loop before he began dozing off again.
A few moments later, multiple sounds of yelling voices are picked by Tovey's conscious state right after coming out of a blackout. Among these voices, there is his wife's.
Little did he know that he is being raced on a stretcher to the Operation Room and it happens that Jack took him to a hospital where his wife works. With Jack, it respectfully had nothing to do with Lucy, it was simply because this hospital was the nearest.
"Stay with me baby, please," Lucy said with a shivering voice as she tried to comfort her husband.
Upon picking up Lucy's voice brought up a blissful memory of their honeymoon. He recollected the events of Africa, Botswana to be precise. They had their honeymoon in a safari lodge at Okavango Delta. He vividly recalls the dress, shoes, bracelet, and earrings she wore at their dinner. Most of all, he recalls all of the striking smiles that decorated her face during that whole day. In that memory, Tovey found absolute comfort. The comfort did not last for long as he blacked out again.
Entering the OR his wife is retained outside. As doctors step on it, he is settled down and connected to an electrocardiogram.
"We losing him." One of the staff members shouts as the monitor shows his pulse collapse. "Pulse falling. 45."
The lead surgeon called the defibrillator machine into action. "Damn it. He's lost a lot of blood." The surgeon said.
The doctors raced against time trying by all means to spark some life back into his soul. But the pulse kept plunging down.
"25." The monitor keeper cried.
"Hit him. " The lead surgeon said. Tovey's chest jumped up at the shock of the defibrillator pads applied to his chest.
"It is not working. Pulse is still dropping." The monitor keeper said.
"Hit him again." Surgeon ordered.
"Still not working sir. Pulse on 15."
The surgeon kept implying until a constant low-frequency beep sound from the Holter monitor commands him to stop.
"He is gone, sir."
"Damn it." He said out of frustration.
Moans and despair wore their faces as they thought of their co-worker, Lucy.
Now, from Tovey's point of view - Physically, Tovey felt nothing, no pain, he could not even feel his body, if he felt anything at all, he felt lighter - a lot lighter but more alive and full of energy. Matter of fact he felt so light it was as if he is floating and hovering everywhere in the atmosphere, like the atmosphere itself.
His awareness being wrapped up around this type of state, merely made him feel a lot safer and unworried, in total accordance with everything about reality. In terms of feeling what he was feeling, he realized that whatever it is he was feeling, It is pristine and would be nothing but a mythical story to the ears of the inexperienced.
As he wafted and flourished in this prestigious experience, he felt one with the stars, he felt one with the moon, also he felt one with the earth and everything in it. He no longer deems himself as Tovey - a human on planet Earth. Rather inside of him, lies the origin of reality - he deemed himself The Universe.
The adventure is interrupted by yet another state of awakening. With his senses coming back to life, his vision and instincts began to reveal his surroundings. He comes to an understanding that a beaming sphere of red light hovers him in the air.
His legs are crossed in a half-lotus like in meditation and his hands are joined together in a manner of a fist bump across his chest.
In front of him is a figure of a man. His legs are crossed like in meditation but his are in a full-lotus style rather than half.
A globe of beaming white light suspends him in the air as well. Sparkling arousing energy runs all over his body and Tovey's eyes can see it through his robe and skin.
"I would say welcome back but-" The man said. He did not have to finish his sentence as Tovey already knew the conclusion.
This man in front of Tovey wore a black robe with red sleeves. His body size is that of a gym addict. His skin tone is expresso and his dreadlocks the size of a man's thumb wide and the size of at least forty centimeters long each dread. His robe is decorated with prints of human skulls all over.
"Shit." The man known as Tovey said out of frustration after he is hit with an overwhelming memory. In an instant, he remembers his own name, and how he came to be here, he also knew that the man in front of him is a demon by the name of Vory.
"I am sorry, Bomba." Vory said. "I did what I had to do."
Yes, his name is Bomba, not Tovey. He does a Mexican, let alone a human. He does not even have a family and what is more crucial is that he is an evil spirit living in a world of spirits. The man in front of him is an evil spirit as well, or at least he was and now he is about to transition to something better.
This world of spirits which is also known as Dimension-4 is a dark place for the likes of Bomba. Eternal anguish and suffering are bestowed upon the evil spirits living in this world, out of desperation they will do anything in their power to break free from this world.
For the existence of the law of polarity among a few, there arises a way for evil spirits to redeem themselves for their vices to become something good. All they have to do is fight Watchers for a soul.
In a brief statement, the World of Spirits is a very horrible place for evil spirits and a pretty fair one for good spirits who a known as Watchers. It is Watchers against Demons, good against evil, harmony against chaos.
How Bomba came to be here is quite austere. Just like any other spirit living in Dimension-4, Bomba fought his fight for one of the billions of souls kept in a place called the Gut Of Souls and he won. For an evil spirit like him, this is the greatest prize ever. Having won a place in the Gut Of Souls, his energy/spirit, is transferred and merged with the soul then falls into a deep sleep state. This gives him a clean slate - he becomes pure again and free from sin.
His memories of who he is seize to exist and he sinks into an illusory dream of being a certain somebody from Earth living among other people when in fact all the people he sees are other mergedspiritst & souls of former demons who emerged victorious on a battlefield.
Credits to the architects of Dimension-4 government who have created this place where all these mergedspiritst & souls meet within a connected dream. This place was named the universe.
Demon vs Watcher is the only official fight in this parts. Victory by a Watcher means a soul from the Gut Of Souls is retrieved for that Watcher to merge with. The former occupant of that soul would then be reborn back in Dimension-4 as a Watcher. That is a Demon's ultimate wish.
A victory by a Demon also means winning a place in a Gut Of Souls and in order to merge with that soul, a former spirit merger is pulled out from it and brought back to Dimension-4 as a Deomn still.
Which is why at the moment Bomba grinned at Vory's face with great bitterness.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone