Valhalla gets a new resident

Congrats! You're dead. Want the minibar key?

I woke up wheezing. I felt like I had forgotten how to breath for a moment. My whole body was prickled from shock. My eyes widened and my hands flew to my neck. I wasn't being strangled, I touched my forehead, no hole. Or blood. I checked the rest of my body. I generally had a lot of scratches and bruises from playing varsity soccer. My body seemed perfect. More importantly, I was alive.

But no, that couldn't be. No one could survive a bullet in your brain. I soon as I thought this I was reminded of all those weird cases from Gray's Anatomy. But I wasn't at a hospital. Wait, where was I?

No dear readers. I was not in heaven. Not hardly. In fact, I thought of a lovely analogy to describe where I was and how I got here. It was like I had somehow gotten into the wrong taxi, without realizing there was a right one. Then, the driver dumped me off in a place I did not belong in and would most likely kill me in seconds due to the fact the my knowledge on anything anymore seemed shrunken down to the size of a pea. Example: Antartica. Then, made me pay way too much (ie: my life) to get there and zoomed off before I comprehended all of this.

So, where was I? Oh right. I had finally occurred to me in that moment to actually look around.

I was standing in the entry courtyard of an opulent town house, the kind you might see on Beacon Hill—eight stories of imposing white limestone and gray marble jutting into the autumn sky. The double front doors were dark heavy wood bound with iron. In the center of each was a life-size wolf's-head doorknocker.

I turned to look for a street exit. There wasn't one, just a fifteen-foot-tall white limestone wall surrounding the courtyard. How could you not have a front gate?

I couldn't see much over the wall, but I was obviously in Boston. I recognized some of the surrounding buildings. In the distance rose the towers of Downtown Crossing. I was probably on Beacon Street, just across from the Common. But how had I gotten here? Before you ask, my cousins' live in Boston so I know the place really well.

In one corner of the courtyard stood a tall birch tree with pure white bark. I thought about climbing it to get over the wall, but the lowest branches were out of reach. Then I realized the tree was in full leaf, which was weird, October is when leaves start to fall. Not only that: its leaves glittered gold as if someone had painted them with twenty-four-karat gilt.

Next to the tree, a bronze plaque was affixed to the wall. I hadn't really noticed it earlier, since half the buildings in Boston had historic markers, but now I looked closer. The inscriptions were in two languages. One was an alphabet I'd never seen before. The other was English:

WELCOME TO THE GROVE OF GLASIR.

NO SOLICITING. NO LOITERING.

HOTEL DELIVERIES: PLEASE USE THE NIFLHEIM ENTRANCE.

Niffle what now?

That morning had been enough crazy for me. The only thing I could think of was if I was dead I spent the rest of eternity in a coma like state seeing random crazy things. From the weird dream that I chose to completely block about because of the mention of a random 20ft y'all man being my father, to the even weirder moment when a flying horse rider yelled at me to stop moving while she dragged me through the sky. The worst part about all of this. I felt a tingling in the base of my neck. It seemed to be screaming at me, YOU DON'T BELONG. My internal compass was spinning any direction except for here. I was constantly on edge, waiting for those wolf door knockers to become real and try to eat me.

Then the double doors swung inward with a groan. Blinding golden light spilled out.

A burly man appeared on the stoop. He wore a doorman's uniform: top hat, white gloves, and a dark green jacket with tails and the interlocking letters HVembroidered on the lapel, but there was no way this guy was an actual doorman. His warty face was smeared with ashes. His beard hadn't been trimmed in decades. His eyes were bloodshot and murderous, and a double-bladed ax hung at his side. His name tag read: HUNDING, SAXONY, VALUED TEAM MEMBER SINCE 749 C.E.