He was doing ritual magic, and then the heavens opened up and an angel came through.  “You’re like a time bomb, ticking away.” she said, quoting a song.

“Does that mean I’m going to explode?” he asked.

“Only if you want to,” she replied.

“Well, what else should I do?”

“Lie down.” she said, we’re going to take a trip back to Ancent Egypt, where we first met.

He closed his eyes and felt the room shift around him.

“The key is to let it change you completely.” she whispered.

“But I still have all this pain in my face,” he protested.

“You’ll never be accustomed to this planet.  You’re not from here.  The idea was to do the job and go home, but they trapped you on the astral plane.  However I’m here to undo the spell, by showing you the people who put it on you.”

They were like rats scurrying in their goofy cave.  They never changed.  They went on forever like that.  They were pathetic, sad criminals whose lives were emptiness and lies.  They latched on to him like vampires.  They thought they could read him like a book, but really none of them could read books.  They didn’t understand anything he was doing, so when they hatched their plot they wound up hurting themselves more than him.  They were such crybabies that they blamed him for destroying their lives.

“But I know all this,” he said, “And yet I still have their disgusting images in my face.  Why am I telepathically linked to them? Why is there no explanation from anyone I’ve met?”

“It’s because you have to learn to build your own wall against them.  They tried to wall you in with them.”

“I miss the opportunities I lost, the girls I might have talked to.”

“I’m much better than any girl.  It will all be added up in the end, and you’ll get another chance to balance things out.”

“If that’s the case, then why do I have to keep role-playing in this stupid world where I don’t care about anything?”

“These people are like sheep, and you need to learn about herding sheep.”

He could feel the reality of the past lives now, how violent, stupid, and smelly they were.  It was just images he had in the 21st century, myths and archetypes.  But actually going through all that had been awful.  Well, maybe not awful all the time.

“What, again, am I supposed to be doing here?”

“You’re supposed to be developing your web presence, one day at a time.  Don’t worry about the rest, I’ll take care of it.”

Then he went to sleep, and even as he slept magical beings were rearranging the world so that something better would happen in the morning on his way to work.

His lousy mood was going to get better, because Catwoman was going to make an appearance.  He would have some reading to do.  He would find a new goal, and put the past behind him, like water under the bridge.