“Are you really that eager to feel pain? Is it the only way for you to decide whether this is a dream or not.” He snapped his fingers once, “there, go ahead, try it one more time.”

I didn’t need to pinch myself to know it was going to hurt this time, still I jumped in surprise as a tinge of pain erupted over the skin on the back of my hand I had pressed. I could feel a faint throbbing near my left elbow too.

“That is the arm you fell on, when you fell off the bed” he said.

I was more than confused, this was weird, if the pain was real, the coconut was real, then this man over here was god, and as impossible as it might sound, the guy in the picture was ……

“You, you are the worn-out tired man in the photographs.” He finished for me.

“Is it the future?” I asked

‘Could be, but no not really, this is another life of yours.”

“A Past life or a life after this one”

“This life my friend, just listen” he said when I tried to interrupt.

“What you see over here, is your life with slightly different choices, the coin fell down heads instead of tails, another number fell on the dice. A human life can go any way with every decision that you make. That is why it is difficult for me over here. I do not write your story; I give you but two things, life and will. The rest you do yourself. You make a choice and you take your life in a certain direction, then you make another choice and you take another direction, by the time one is finished there are a hundred million ways your life could have turned out.”

“So this is what my life would have turned out had I chosen something else?” my confusion was starting to ease the horror.

“no buddy, this is what your life was before I decided to correct it” he paused “ nobody gets his or her life totally right, you managed to screw it royally, that was until we met last time, you have done reasonably well since then.”

“What was my story then?” I asked, this was getting too hot to handle.