He sank to the cold tile floor, pressing his forehead against the porcelain of the bathtub and weeping. He wept for Diana, he wept for himself, and he wept for the boy he used to be.
As he sat there in the dim light, the sounds of Diana's debasement still filtering through the walls—slap, squelch, slap-slap—his mind began to spiral backward, retreating into the only place that felt safe: his memories of his past life.
Before this world, before this reincarnation, he had been someone else. He remembered the mundane frustrations of his previous existence.
He had been a man who lived in the shadows of his own insecurities. He remembered the loneliness of his apartment, the endless cycle of failed attempts at connection, and the hollow ache of being a 'wimp' who could never muster the courage to ask a girl out, let alone hold a relationship.
He had been a man who watched life happen to others through a screen, a spectator to intimacy.
