# Chapter 1: The Cat, the Spatula, and the Questionable Afterlife

Charlie Fisher believed in many things. He believed that putting milk in before cereal was a moral failing. He believed that people who didn't use turn signals should lose their license immediately. He even believed, rather optimistically, that his fantasy football team might make it past third place this year.

What Charlie didn't believe in was the afterlife. Or reincarnation. Or any mystical phenomenon that couldn't be explained by science, common sense, or a Wikipedia article he'd skimmed while on the toilet.

So when his alarm blared at 8:15 AM on that fateful Saturday morning, Charlie had no reason to suspect it would be anything other than the first of many normal, mundane mornings to come.

He reached over and slapped the snooze button with the practiced precision of a man who had been avoiding mornings for thirty-four years. Sunlight streamed through the blinds he'd forgotten to close the night before, casting prison-bar shadows across his unmade bed. Charlie groaned and pulled the covers over his head, creating a warm cocoon of denial.

"Five more minutes," he mumbled to no one in particular. His one-bedroom apartment remained unsympathetic to his plight.

When the alarm blared again, Charlie admitted defeat. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, running a hand through his perpetually disheveled brown hair. His bedroom looked the same as always – clothes scattered across the floor in what he liked to call "strategic placement" and his laptop still open on the desk from the previous night's Wikipedia rabbit hole about obscure medieval torture devices. (It had started with a harmless search about cheese production, and honestly, he still wasn't sure how he'd ended up there.)

After a shower that could generously be described as "perfunctory," Charlie dressed in jeans and his favorite t-shirt – a faded blue number with "I'd Rather Be Sleeping" emblazoned across the chest. Truth in advertising, as far as he was concerned.

In the kitchen, he contemplated the contents of his refrigerator. The selection was sparse – a half-empty carton of milk that he sniffed suspiciously, some eggs of questionable vintage, and condiments. So many condiments. Why did he have three different kinds of mustard? He didn't even like mustard.

"Breakfast of champions," Charlie muttered as he grabbed the milk and a box of cereal from the cabinet. As he poured the cereal (before the milk, because he wasn't a sociopath), he remembered today was the day of Mike's backyard barbecue.

Mike had been Charlie's best friend since college, when they'd bonded over a mutual hatred of their Macroeconomics professor and a shared appreciation for terrible sci-fi movies. Now Mike lived three blocks away with his wife Jen and their aggressively friendly golden retriever, making him Charlie's closest friend both emotionally and geographically.

Charlie checked his phone. A text from Mike had arrived during his shower:

*Don't forget BBQ starts at noon. Bring beer. NOT that craft stuff you brought last time. Dave still complains about your "pretentious hops."*

Charlie snorted. Dave, Mike's brother-in-law, was the kind of guy who considered anything more exotic than Bud Light to be "fancy European nonsense," despite most craft beers being made by bearded guys in warehouses across America.

After breakfast, Charlie made a quick trip to the corner store, where he deliberately selected the most mainstream, inoffensive beer he could find. The cashier – a teenager with blue hair and approximately seventeen piercings – gave him a look that could only be described as profound disappointment.

"Rough week?" she asked, eyeing his selection.

"Not for me. For a friend's brother-in-law who thinks flavor is a liberal conspiracy."

The cashier nodded sagely. "We all know that guy."

By 11:45, Charlie was walking the three blocks to Mike's house, a six-pack of mediocrity dangling from his fingers. The day was perfectly pleasant – sunny but not hot, with a gentle breeze that ruffled the leaves of the oak trees lining the street. The kind of day that gave no indication it was planning to end in fiery disaster.

Mike's modest two-story home was already showing signs of the gathering to come. Balloons tied to the mailbox bobbed cheerfully in the breeze, and Charlie could hear music drifting from the backyard. He let himself in through the side gate, where he was immediately accosted by Churchill, Mike's golden retriever, who apparently believed Charlie had been gone for seventeen years rather than two weeks since their last meeting.

"Yes, hello, I've missed you too," Charlie said, trying to balance the beer while fending off eighty pounds of enthusiastic canine affection. "Your breath still smells like you've been eating out of the garbage, so that's consistent."

"Charlie!" Mike appeared from around the corner of the house, spatula in hand and wearing an apron that read 'Danger: Man Cooking.' "You're actually on time. Are you feeling okay?"

"Hilarious," Charlie deadpanned, finally extracting himself from Churchill's loving assault. "I brought the beer. Specifically selected to not offend Dave's delicate palate."

Mike took the six-pack and examined it. "Perfect. This has exactly the right amount of nothing special." He clapped Charlie on the shoulder. "Come on back. Jen's setting up the food table, and I'm about to fire up the grill."

The backyard was a testament to Mike and Jen's suburban domesticity. A wooden deck extended from the back of the house, complete with a patio table and chairs. The lawn was meticulously maintained, with flower beds along the fence. The centerpiece was the large stainless steel grill that Mike had purchased the previous summer and referred to as "the best investment of my adult life," much to Jen's chagrin.

Jen was arranging plates on a folding table covered with a checkered tablecloth. She looked up as they approached and smiled. "Charlie! Glad you could make it." Her smile turned mischievous. "And even more glad you didn't bring any of that 'beer that tastes like someone dissolved a pine tree in it.'"

"I've learned my lesson," Charlie said, raising his hands in surrender. "No more attempting to elevate anyone's taste."

More guests began to arrive – Mike's coworkers, some neighbors, and inevitably, Dave, who entered the backyard with the confident swagger of a man who believed his opinions were facts.

"Fisher!" Dave boomed, slapping Charlie on the back with unnecessary force. "Still writing those computer programs that nobody understands?"

"Still installing toilets that everybody understands all too well?" Charlie countered with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Dave was a plumber, and while Charlie respected the essential nature of the profession, Dave had a way of making it sound like software development was for people afraid to get their hands dirty.

Dave laughed too loudly. "Touché, my friend, touché." He wandered off toward the cooler, no doubt to check that the beer selection met his exacting standards of mediocrity.

Charlie mingled, making small talk and nursing a beer. He wasn't antisocial, exactly, but large gatherings always left him feeling slightly off-balance, like he was performing in a play where everyone else had rehearsed their lines but he'd just been handed the script.

"Mind if I join you in your corner of solitude?"

Charlie turned to find himself face to face with a woman he didn't recognize. She had curly dark hair and glasses with bright red frames, and she was looking at him with amusement.

"I wasn't aware I had staked out a territory," Charlie said. "But you're welcome to cross the border. No passport required."

"I'm Ellie," she said, extending her hand. "I work with Jen at the school. You must be Charlie. Jen mentioned you'd be here – said you were 'socially awkward but in a charming way.'"

Charlie winced. "That's... actually a pretty fair assessment. I'm going to have to stop telling Jen my secrets."

"Don't worry," Ellie said with a smile. "She meant it as a compliment. I think."

They fell into conversation easily, discussing everything from their jobs (she taught third grade, which Charlie thought required more courage than he possessed) to their mutual appreciation for documentaries about bizarre historical events. Charlie was just beginning to think that perhaps social gatherings weren't entirely terrible when the atmosphere was broken by Mike's triumphant announcement.

"The grill is hot and ready for action! Who's ready for the best burgers in the northern hemisphere?"

A cheer went up from the assembled guests. Mike approached the grill with the reverence of a priest approaching an altar. He had assembled an impressive array of grilling implements – tongs, spatulas of various sizes, and what appeared to be a meat thermometer that could probably also calculate trajectory for NASA.

"I should warn you," Charlie told Ellie in a stage whisper, "Mike takes grilling very seriously. Last summer, he gave a twenty-minute lecture on the proper way to create grill marks."

"I heard that!" Mike called without turning around. "And it was fifteen minutes, max."

The backyard settled into the pleasant rhythm of the barbecue. Mike flipped burgers with theatrical flourishes. Jen organized games for the kids who had come with their parents. Dave loudly explained to anyone within earshot why his method of lawn care was superior to all others.

It was, by all accounts, a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon. Which is why what happened next seemed so absurdly out of place.

The first indication that things were about to go sideways came in the form of a sleek orange tabby cat that appeared on the fence separating Mike's yard from his neighbor's. The cat – which Charlie recognized as belonging to Mrs. Abernathy next door – surveyed the scene with the imperial disdain that only cats can muster.

"Uh-oh," Mike said, noticing the feline visitor. "It's General Whiskers."

"General Whiskers?" Ellie asked.

"Mrs. Abernathy named him," Charlie explained. "She was married to a colonel in the Army, and I guess she thought her cat outranked her husband."

The cat in question leapt gracefully from the fence to the deck railing, then down onto the deck itself. It prowled toward the grill, tail twitching with predatory interest.

"Mike, your admirer is approaching," Jen called, noticing the cat's advance.

"Not today, General," Mike said, waving his spatula in what he probably thought was a threatening manner but looked more like he was trying to conduct an invisible orchestra. "This is a cat-free zone."

General Whiskers was unimpressed by this declaration. He continued his approach, eyes fixed on something beside the grill. Charlie followed the cat's gaze and realized it was focused on a plate of uncooked burger patties Mike had set out.

"Mike, I think he's after your meat," Charlie said, then immediately regretted his phrasing as Dave let out a braying laugh.

"That's what she said!" Dave exclaimed, high-fiving the air and looking around for appreciation that wasn't forthcoming.

Mike turned to shoo the cat away, brandishing his spatula with more enthusiasm than skill. "Go on, get out of here, you furry meat thief!"

What happened next occurred with the kind of rapid-fire sequence usually reserved for action movies or particularly chaotic cartoons.

General Whiskers, startled by Mike's sudden movement, leapt backward. In doing so, he collided with the side table where Mike had placed his grilling supplies. The table wobbled. A bottle of lighter fluid that had been perched precariously on the edge tipped over, sending a stream of flammable liquid across the deck and directly into the grill.

The resulting flare-up was immediate and dramatic. Flames shot several feet into the air, causing guests to shout in alarm and back away.

"Holy shit!" Mike yelped, dropping his spatula and jumping back.

The cat, demonstrating a self-preservation instinct that Charlie would later wish he'd shared, bolted away from the scene and over the fence in one fluid motion.

"Fire extinguisher!" Jen yelled, already running toward the house.

But Charlie, in a moment of what he would later recognize as monumental stupidity, decided he could handle the situation. He'd seen Mike deal with grill flare-ups before. All you had to do was smother the flames, right?

He lunged forward, grabbing the fallen spatula from the deck. "I got it!" he called, advancing on the flaming grill like a matador approaching a particularly angry bull.

Several voices shouted warnings, but Charlie was already committed to his course of action. He swung the spatula downward, intending to somehow bat out the flames.

Instead, the metal spatula hit the edge of the grill, sending sparks flying. Some of these sparks landed on Charlie's shirt – his favorite "I'd Rather Be Sleeping" shirt – which, unbeknownst to him, had been splashed with lighter fluid during the initial chaos.

Charlie Fisher had approximately two seconds to register the horrifying realization that he was, in fact, on fire, before the rest of the lighter fluid bottle exploded.

His last coherent thought was that this was a remarkably stupid way to die.

And then darkness.

Consciousness returned to Charlie with the abrupt jolt of a record needle being dragged across vinyl. One moment there was nothing, the next he was...

...lying in his bed?

Charlie sat up with a gasp, heart hammering in his chest. Sunlight streamed through the blinds he'd forgotten to close the night before, casting prison-bar shadows across his unmade bed. His alarm clock read 8:15 AM.

"What the hell?" he muttered, running a hand through his hair. It had been so vivid – the barbecue, the cat, the fire. He could still feel the heat on his skin, hear the shouts of alarm.

But it had just been a dream. A remarkably detailed, extraordinarily realistic dream, but a dream nonetheless. Charlie let out a shaky laugh. "No more late-night Wikipedia sessions for me," he promised himself, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Charlie picked it up, expecting to see the daily news alert he'd signed up for and immediately regretted. Instead, he found a text from Mike:

*Don't forget BBQ starts at noon. Bring beer. NOT that craft stuff you brought last time. Dave still complains about your "pretentious hops."*

Charlie stared at the message, a cold feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. It was word for word what Mike had texted in his dream. Word for word.

"Coincidence," he told himself firmly. "It's not like Mike's beer preferences are a state secret."

Still, as Charlie went through his morning routine – shower, dress, breakfast – he couldn't shake the feeling of déjà vu. Every action felt like he was following a script he'd already rehearsed. The cereal before milk. The contents of his refrigerator, right down to the three different kinds of mustard. Even the faded blue t-shirt with "I'd Rather Be Sleeping" across the chest, which he'd pulled from his drawer without thinking.

By the time he was standing in the corner store, staring at the beer selection, Charlie was thoroughly unnerved. He grabbed a six-pack of the same mainstream beer from his dream, then on impulse, added a second six-pack of an obscure craft beer with a label featuring a melancholy octopus wearing a top hat.

The cashier – the same teenager with blue hair and multiple piercings – raised an eyebrow. "Covering all your bases?"

Charlie couldn't even bring himself to make the joke about Dave. Instead, he just nodded and paid, his mind racing.

It was just a very specific dream, he told himself as he walked the three blocks to Mike's house. People had those all the time. And if certain details matched reality, well, that was because they were details from his actual life that his brain had incorporated.

But when he arrived at Mike's house and found balloons tied to the mailbox, exactly as in his dream, Charlie felt a chill that had nothing to do with the gentle breeze ruffling the leaves of the oak trees.

Churchill accosted him at the side gate with the same enthusiastic greeting. Mike appeared wearing the exact same "Danger: Man Cooking" apron, spatula in hand.

"Charlie!" Mike exclaimed. "You're actually on time. Are you feeling okay?"

Charlie stared at him, unable to form words for a moment. Then, recovering, he thrust the six-pack of mainstream beer at Mike. "I brought this for Dave," he said, his voice sounding strained even to his own ears. "And this one's for people who enjoy tasting their beverages." He held up the craft beer.

Mike looked surprised but pleased. "Look at you, being diplomatic." He took both six-packs. "Come on back. Jen's setting up the food table, and I'm about to fire up the grill."

Charlie followed Mike to the backyard, his sense of unreality growing with each step. The wooden deck, the patio furniture, the meticulously maintained lawn with flower beds along the fence – all exactly as in his dream. Jen was arranging plates on a folding table covered with a checkered tablecloth.

"This can't be happening," Charlie muttered under his breath.

"What can't be happening?" Mike asked, glancing back at him.

"Nothing," Charlie said quickly. "Just... thinking out loud."

As more guests arrived, Charlie found himself anticipating each new arrival. Dave entered with the same swagger. The children played the same games organized by Jen. And when a woman with curly dark hair and bright red glasses approached him, Charlie wasn't even surprised.

"Mind if I join you in your corner of solitude?" she asked, exactly as she had in his dream.

"Ellie, right?" Charlie said before she could introduce herself. "You work with Jen at the school."

She looked startled. "Yes... have we met before?"

"No," Charlie said, trying to sound casual. "Jen mentioned you might be here. Said you were a third-grade teacher."

"That's right," Ellie said, looking slightly less concerned. "And you're Charlie. The software developer who's 'socially awkward but in a charming way.'"

Despite his growing panic, Charlie couldn't help but smile. "That's me. Awkward but allegedly charming."

Their conversation flowed as easily as it had in his dream, but Charlie found it hard to concentrate. His eyes kept darting to the fence separating Mike's yard from Mrs. Abernathy's, waiting for General Whiskers to make his appearance.

And sure enough, just as Mike announced that the grill was ready, a sleek orange tabby appeared on the fence, surveying the gathering with feline disdain.

"Mike," Charlie called, his voice tight with urgency. "We have a visitor."

Mike looked up and spotted the cat. "Uh-oh. It's General Whiskers."

Charlie was already moving, crossing the yard toward the grill. "Keep that cat away from the grill," he said, his voice rising. "And move that lighter fluid. Now."

Mike stared at him in confusion. "What are you talking about? The lighter fluid is fine."

But Charlie could see it – the bottle perched on the edge of the side table, exactly where it had been in his dream. "Trust me," he said, reaching for the bottle. "This needs to be—"

He never finished the sentence. In his haste, Charlie knocked into the side table himself, sending the lighter fluid bottle flying. It hit the deck and the cap popped off, sending a stream of flammable liquid across the wooden planks – and directly onto Charlie's shoes.

"Oh, come on!" Charlie exclaimed in disbelief, jumping back. But in doing so, he stepped directly into the path of Jen, who was carrying a plate of burger buns. They collided, and Charlie stumbled backward, directly toward the open grill.

Time seemed to slow as Charlie felt the heat at his back. He tried to twist away, but his foot – now slick with lighter fluid – slipped on the deck. As he fell, his hand shot out instinctively, grabbing for anything to stop his fall.

What he grabbed was the edge of the plate of uncooked burger patties, which flipped into the air like meaty frisbees. One landed with a sizzle on the grill. Another, by some cosmic jest, landed directly on Charlie's face as he hit the deck.

Momentarily blinded by ground beef, Charlie didn't see Mike rushing to help him. Didn't see Mike step in the puddle of lighter fluid. Didn't see the spark that jumped from the grill when Mike's spatula knocked against it.

What Charlie did see, when he finally scraped the raw hamburger from his face, was fire. Fire spreading across the deck. Fire climbing up Mike's apron. Fire racing toward the overturned bottle of lighter fluid.

"Everybody down!" someone shouted – possibly Jen, possibly Dave, possibly God himself reaching down to narrate Charlie's imminent demise.

Charlie had just enough time to think, *Not again*, before the world exploded in heat and light.

And then darkness.

Charlie opened his eyes to find himself staring at his bedroom ceiling. Sunlight streamed through the blinds he'd forgotten to close the night before, casting prison-bar shadows across his unmade bed. His alarm clock read 8:15 AM.

For a long moment, he simply lay there, processing what had just happened. Or what he thought had happened. Or what his brain was telling him had happened.

Slowly, Charlie sat up, every movement cautious as if he might shatter the reality around him. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, but he already knew what the message would be.

He picked it up and, sure enough, there was Mike's text about the barbecue and the beer.

"This is impossible," Charlie whispered to his empty apartment. "People don't die and come back. That's not a thing that happens."

And yet, as he sat there in the morning light, Charlie Fisher was forced to consider the increasingly unavoidable conclusion that he had, in fact, died. Twice. And somehow returned to this moment, this morning, this precise point in time.

He stared at the ceiling, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat. "Something impossible is happening," he said to no one in particular. "Something impossible is happening to me."

The ceiling, much like the universe itself, offered no explanation in return.