It's a question that I've been asking myself for over three hundred years. A good friend once told me never to think about it. "You'll only make things harder for yourself like always," she scolded, but these days I have plenty of time to reflect as I struggle through these icy fields and clamber over jagged mountain tops alone with nothing but my mind to keep me company. It's too bad that I don't have the strength to stop these dangerous thoughts which continue to assault and torment me.

I'm no fool. I know good and well that I died long ago and left my body rotting far behind, but I continue to exist in this godforsaken wasteland just like all the other miserable living people here, so doesn't that make me somewhat alive?

You think I'm Crazy right? If you were here right now you'd probably laugh at the crazy soul who thinks he has the right to be alive, but luckily for you these are only written words so I can't punch you in the face and tell you to shut up. I Guess that if you're reading this it means that you somehow managed to find my pitiful notebook out in the snow, so I guess I should introduce myself so that at least someone will remember the name of the miserable soul who was fucking stupid enough to believe that he could get away.

My name is Ethan. It's not my real name, and it's only one of the many that people have called me over the centuries, but my last master seemed to like it so I've decided to stick with it for now. A long time ago I apparently lived in some place called Earth. Maybe you've heard of it. It exists in some dimension far away from here and once you die you can never go back. Too bad for me right? Judging by my appearance I must have lived there until I was sixteen or so, but then one day I decided to make a deal with a devil and sell my soul away. I've heard that plenty of stupid humans do it for selfish reasons like money or fame, but whatever I wanted resulted in centuries of suffering so I better have gotten something decent in return.

I don't know if this is the real story, or some fiendish lie they made up to pacify me, but either way my body soon died and I was taken to this shitty hole, otherwise known as The Underworld.

I wish I could tell you some happy stories of my childhood or what things were like on Earth, but it's impossible. All Souls have their memories erased when they come to Hell and it's impossible to get them back. Trust me, I've already tried once or twice. They supposedly do it for our sake (because we're far too fragile to cope with leaving our past lives) but I'm certain that those bastards at the soul market did it so that we can't remember how badly they screwed us over.

As a soul we're all just ghosts of our former selves. Our skin is transparent and if you beat us too strongly your fist will pass through. I guess the only good thing about being dead is that we can't feel pain, but that doesn't do much to protect us from all the other despicable things that those masters can do.

Here souls are just slaves to whoever has enough money to purchase their lives. We're puppets who dance to our master's commands until it all becomes too much to bear and we lose our minds. I might not be as bad off as some of the nutjobs I've seen out here, but even my mental state has taken a beating over the years. Crazy souls are treated like trash who are destroyed and disintegrated into thin air. I've seen it before and I'm certain that those fucked up bastards probably enjoy ending our lives.

That was going to be my fate too if I continued allowing myself to be passed from one monster to the next, but I'm not anything like those other stupid passive souls.

I ran away.

I decided to flee before they could collect me to be resold. Maybe not the best idea in the world but what other choice did I have? It was actually her idea not mine, I guess someone as beaten down and bitter as me would never have enough hope to consider rebelling again. She asked me to do it, and in my grief stricken state I agreed without any idea about how difficult it is to flee from those who are masters at enslaving the weak. I guess it's fortunate that I picked up some tricks from old masters that I can use to stay one step ahead of them, but no matter where I go they're always at my heels. Coming closer and closer like they can sense where I am. I'm certain that they must have some sneaky and unfair way of tracking their souls, which is why after weeks of running I've fled to the coldest and most dangerous part of Hell.

Hell is mostly red mountains and scorching deserts, but in the remote mountain ranges it snows almost every day. Here my ghostly body is immune to the cold, and an accidental fall from a dangerous cliff won't destroy me. The deep snow and freezing blizzards have finally begun to slow them down, and this could be my last chance to figure out a way to get rid of them once and for all. Unfortunately those sad excuses for life have got all the villagers out here searching for me. Normally it's no challenge to outsmart a bunch of dull farmers, but looking for me is the most exciting thing that's happened for years so they're almost more persistant than them. I fashioned myself a brown coat that I hand sewed together from old potato sacks that I stole from a farm. It's covered in mold and I look like a fucking potato, but it's just enough to cover my transparent skin and make me look like a beggar.

I guess you must be wondering why a nutjob like me is even writing in this notebook instead of fleeing for my life. I guess I must have snapped again and leveled up to a whole new level of crazy. This is what happens when you spend too long in Hell. I told others about the crappy things that happened to me many years ago. My friends, other souls, the masters who actually gave a damn, but now they're all dead and gone and there's no one left who knows what happened to that strange soul named Ethan. I want to believe that I can somehow make it out of this, but if I don't this could be my very last chance to tell anyone about the shit I've seen and the suffering I've been through.

I guess it's best to start from the beginning when everything wasn't so fucked up and sad. I'll start by telling you the story of my very first master. Some crazy guy called Alistair who deluded me into thinking that hell wasn't the pit of suffering that it is.

Author's Note! I hope that you enjoyed this first chapter. I was wondering whether or not to include the swear words but I thought that they were best for conveying the amount of emotion that I wanted to use. If you like free stories I currently have two free on Smashwords called "How I Was Murdered By A Fox Monster" and "Khan and the Kingdom without Gods." please feel free to give them a download and let me know what you think. I put a lot of work into them so I hope that you can enjoy my work.

The next chapter begins Ethan's story of the underworld, so please follow this story to keep updated!