Reincarnated as a Land Shark???

Chapter 1: Have I been Reincarnated?

What is the first thing that comes to mind at the thought of death? If I were to ask what happens after death, how would you answer?

A religious man or woman may think of the afterlife, in one way or another. One who is not religious may find themselves thinking that only nothingness came after death, a nothingness so deep that we cannot comprehend it.

I thought dying would bring a stop to everything, that I would be unable to even ponder after death. Everything would just cease in a way the human brain was not built to fathom. There would be no floating in limbo, for your brain would not be there to comprehend the limbo. It would be a simple and absolute end.

But somehow, even though I'm sure I've died, I'm still able to comprehend things. I can tell it's dark, that I'm floating. I don't think I'm in any form of limbo, because even though my movements are alien and constricted, I can still move.

I try and stretch an arm, but it's not right. Something twitches, but it feels... incomplete. It takes far too much effort to move that arm, which feels more flipper-like in structure. My fingers wiggle bonelessly halfway down the limb instead of where it ends. I try to kick my feet, finding them weak and hardly mobile. My spine moves as I try to turn, twisting far longer than it should. Is that a tail?

My neck doesn't move right either... or perhaps it's more accurate that my neck is far thicker than it should be, almost as though my head is simply attached to my shoulders without one. My face is at the wrong angle to my body - I don't think I'd be able to stand upright and look forwards.

I breathe without air somehow, feeling the sides of my neck fluttering. Gills? I can tell I have lungs, but I'm not using them and they don't ache as though I need to.

Obviously, whatever I am, it's not human anymore.

I continue to move about, trying to feel more of my body. Perhaps some kind of fish? No, the limbs are wrong and I know I have lungs. Perhaps some sort of amphibian?

I continue to ponder my own existence, boredom keeping me moving. I feel more and more of my body developing, lending credit to my theory of being an amphibian of some sort. Amphibians lay eggs externally in water, where they are then fertilized by a male and left to grow and survive on their own. I suppose I am one such creature.

My eyes adjust to the lighting with time. Soon enough I can see that I am at the bottom of some sort of reef... and that I am much larger than I first imagined. Perhaps the size of the average adult male. I'm bigger than I was when I was last alive, and I haven't even hatched yet. A look around shows a few other eggs like mine, the large yet underdeveloped creatures looking around curiously themselves. They twitch occasionally with movement, but are otherwise far less active than I am. It's probably because I was alive before and therefore feel more bored than that were...

But wait a minute. If I'm here, having lived a previous life, maybe they're in the same boat? I try and move my egg over to one to make contact. It's not that different, I'd presume, than trying to roll a hamster ball. The other egg bumps against mine, but the creature stares at me dumbly and doesn't move. I roll my egg away again, deciding with a strange sort of sigh that they probably aren't, and that I'm more than likely on my own in this strange scenario.

Now, what to do next?

Well, looking at both myself and the other creatures I can definitely say we resemble sharks... except sharks don't have such long flippers with arms attached, and they most certainly don't have legs. So I'm some sort of amphibious shark, then? Maybe some kind of mutant creature that came out of a lab or was created by toxic waste like Godzilla?

Well, the mystery can be solved later, I suppose. There's not much more I can do here aside from theory.

Now... I suppose the only other thing I can do is wait. Eggs like these dissolve on their own... or rather they're slowly absorbed by the creature inside of them. That means when I finish 'eating' the egg, I'll be fully developed and able to move about on my own. I feel like trying to 'hatch' in this situation would bring nothing but harm to myself - mother nature knows what she's doing after all. So I suppose I have nothing to do at the moment other than move around and wait.

I roll my egg closer to one of the gaps in the reef-floor cave, looking out at the ocean. I see the surface far above me, rippling with the occasional wave.

It's breathtaking. I'd always wanted to go see the ocean for myself; it had always been a huge part of my future. I was planning to go to college for Marine Biology, so I studied all I could about the ocean at every opportunity I had, even if I'd been landlocked all my life and never seen this place with my own two eyes. Pictures and documentaries never did it justice though, and I count it as a blessing that I was able to be reincarnated as a creature of the depths.

Looking about elsewhere, I study the creatures swimming about in awe and confusion.

A few things are similar. I see a sea anemone with a few clown fish threading in and out of its stinging fronds, a few common sand crabs crawling about nearby, and of course the coral is the same no matter how you look at it. But everything else...

Everything else is completely different.

Up above me, a serpentine creature not unlike a barracuda with long fan-like decorations and what appeared to be vestigial legs weaved through the currents, headed further into the reef. What appeared to be three glowing blue piranhas swim about, snapping at anything smaller than them. Golden fairy-like creatures glide through the water as though they fly through the air, dodging the snapping jaws and leaving glowing golden trails behind them that vanish as quickly as they appear. A large octopus-like monster with a fish-like upper body and a mohawk-like fin on its head meanders by, seemingly without a care in the world.

...What the hell? Did I just wander into the scene of a nuclear apocalypse? Are all of the creatures here, myself included, all mutant monsters of some sort? What the heck is this?

A shadow lurks by the cave, and I twitch in surprise at the sight of a large black shark-like creature swimming by.

It looks like a bigger version of me.

Hind legs are tucked into its sides, its massive swimming fins spread out to glide and quickly change its direction if needed. The massive creature must be ten feet long - a true man eater if ever there was one.

That's a huge shark. Is that thing what I'll grow into?

And more importantly... the arms hidden below the pectoral fins and the legs tucked into its sides are far more developed in shape than any other amphibian I've ever seen. It must spend extended periods of time on land in that case, meaning...

I've been reincarnated as a land shark?

And suddenly, everything clicks.

This is a dream.

All these strange creatures, the way I can feel my lungs but they don't hurt despite me not consciously using them, the way I feel strangely warm and comfy despite the fact that the ocean must be frigid out there...

It's because I'm actually asleep, tucked up nice and comfy in bed, and am simply seeing through the eyes of a dream.

If this is nothing more than a long dream, then I may as well enjoy it while I can.