"Where am I?" You looked around, ad you found yourself standing in complete darkness. Every direction you looked absolutely nothing was visible except a never-ending void.
"Is this a dream? You ask yourself as you try to probe your memory for how you got here. You remember you were in your car, driving, and then suddenly there was a huge impact. You were in a car crash! You remember that much, but nothing after that.
"Am I" you shiver, "dead?"
"Bingo!"
"What!?" You turn around quickly, and behind you is standing a girl who is probably in her younger twenties. She is dressed in a black gown, and is carrying a silver staff in her right hand.
"Who are you?" You ask, taking her in.
"You really don't know? Here maybe this will help." She slides her left hand along the silver staff, and suddenly the blade of a scythe unfolds from the end of it. "I'm the Grim Reaper."
"You're the Grim Reaper? But, isn't he a skeleton, and a he?"
"He used to be. The Grim Reaper is a position not a person. He was the original, and left some pretty big shoes to feel. However, even an anthropomorphic representation of death dies eventually. And well, I have the position now. I think I'm somewhere along the fifth thousandth. I suppose that seems kind of small for a business that's over a billion years old, but we have longer life spans than humans.... My dad wanted me to be a tooth fairy or a muse but I frankly found those jobs boring. So, I became the Grim Reaper instead. My resume was good, it's not a job people are exactly dieing for, so they had no reason not to hire me. Which brings us back to the point at hand. You're probably wandering why you're here. Well, you're dead."
"I'm dead?" You laugh. "This is just a dream. I'm going to wake up and everything is going to be fine."
"No such luck, however, you could wake up if you want. You see, doing the same thing every day in day out, just reaping souls over and over again, well it gets boring after awhile. So, instead of sending some to whichever afterlife they're destined for I play a little game like this. It works like this. I give you a new life, but it gets better than that, you get ten new lives. However, here's the catch. This isn't reincarnation. You aren't born into the new body, you start out in a body that has already aged. It may be an adult or a child. It also won't necessarily be human. Well, you might be born as a human, or an animal, or a combination of the two. Then you may also not be born in the same time or dimension or even planet. You could end up on some weird alien world, or as a rat during the middle ages. It really is a gamble. Of course you get ten tries so odds are you can find at least one you like. There is a catch, and it's what makes it entertaining for me. Once you decide to move on to a new life, you can never go back to the previous life. There are ten lives total, and if you get to the tenth, you're stuck with it no matter what it is. No life is perfect, and each will have advantages and disadvantages you have to weigh to decide if you move on or not. So, are you interested?"
You think for a moment. "I get ten lives, I have no idea what they are, and for all I know they could be worse than death. What happens if I refuse?"
The Grim Reaper smiled, and gestured toward and empty space, then suddenly a shining golden gate appeared. "If you refuse, you simply go on to the afterlife. I doubt you'll refuse though, I've learned humans are eternally curious, and have an addiction to life."
"Alright then." Deep down, you know she's right, you've already decided to take the deal. "How do I start?"
"Simple. To start your first life, or to at anytime move on to the next life, simply recite the following incantation:
"I seek neither heaven or hell
"but the Earth between to be well
"So I ask to be granted new life
"And I hope to forever escape strife."
You realize you have nothing to loose. The worst thing that could happen is you die, then you'd just be back where you started.
"Well then, I think I'll give life another try."