Gin and tonic

She re-read the letter in front of her, not that she didn't already know its contents by heart by now. It wasn't after all everyday that you received a proposal for a rebirth. Well, of sorts, anyway. 

She fixed herself a drink--More gin, less tonic--and read it out aloud, to her cat this time...

Hello Andrea,

We won't ask you how you are doing because we know the answer. We have been monitoring your life since the past few years and know that you would rather be dead than live a life of fading popularity. So, we are offering to kill you. 

Now that we have your attention, we would like to clarify that we have no intentions of murdering you, unless that's what you want of course. All we want to do is to give you a chance at a do over. See, we are the good guys really.

So, we invite you to participate in the biggest reality show of all time, Second Chances. You are one of the select nine celebrities from around the world who gets a chance at a new identity, if you so choose.

Pick a name, profession and face and sign on the dotted line* below to confirm your participation.

Hoping to see you soon

Team Second Chances

*Please read the terms and conditions (attached) before agreeing to participate

Sometime, in the middle of the narration, Mr Tubby had slinked down from her lap and now sat perched on the table, as if musing over the offer himself.

"What would happen to you then, Mr Tubbster?" she asked more to herself than him, only to be met with the indifference felines reserve for their lowly slaves. She folded the letter carefully and kept it on the dresser, a walnut wood piece that her cost her a princely sum. But Andrea had never scrimped on anything in her life. When she needed a table, she would outbid everyone even if she had to go without food for the next two weeks. The time she loved a Jean Val Damme dress, she had to borrow money from a friend to purchase it and then pay her back in installments. It still hung in her wardrobe, a bitter reminder of a time when she could afford to be impulsive. 

She still remembered the day her Instagram profile notified her she had crossed the 1 million mark on the number of followers. She had celebrated by dancing around her empty apartment and later throwing a party for her staff. But since that episode, when in a fit of rage, she had thrown a glass of wine at the waiter, things hadn't been the same. Overnight, she had lost five thousand followers and the numbers had only dwindled since. Her last album, an apology for her misbehaviour, had to be pulled out of the market due to a lack of response.

By the time she nuked the microwave lasagne for the third night in a row, while nursing her fifth glass of the evening, she had made up her mind. She stumbled her way to the piece of paper that was going to be the end of her, and, with a cheese-greased pen, gave her consent to be killed.

Preferred name: Elizabeth (It made her feel like royalty)

Preferred day of death: 5th March (Today)

Preferred reason of death: Drug overdose (Clean and glamorous)

Preferred day of birth: 6th March (Tomorrow, her birthday)

The next hour was spent deciding how her face would look. She gave herself a defined-yet-soft jawline, green eyes, an aquiline noise and bee-stung lips, and traded her boring brown hair for blonde tresses. She was still thinking of what dress should she be buried in when she dozed off.

Andrea woke up with a splitting headache and, as hangover pacts went, promised herself to never drink herself to sleep again. Last night, she remembered, she had almost allowed herself to be dead. Phew! She opened her eyes and had to close it shut again immediately. The sunlight was too harsh, too white, too bright. Then came the noise--a thunder that sounded like the march of a hundred elephants. And then it all went away.

In the dark, Andrea stood up and looked around. It's funny how the darker it gets, the greater the need to see. Slowly, a pool of light formed before her and she stepped into it and looked up, as if on cue. The rest of the lights started going on, one by one, and she saw herself facing an audience who were looking at her like she was an animal in the zoo.

Welcome to Second Chances, Elizabeth, a voice boomed on the speakers above her. And before she could form her question, the audience was clapping once again. Mirrors descended all around her and she found a stranger with green eyes and blonde locks staring back at her. Once they retreated, Andrea could only ask one thing: "How?"

"Let me show you," the voice replied from above.

Andrea watched as all surfaces of the set turned into a TV screen and she saw herself, he her old self, breathing her last. Over the next one hour, she watched as she was dragged out of the funeral house through the back door, a new body replacing hers. This was followed by pictures of newspaper clippings announcing her death 'under mysterious circumstances'. 

Next, she saw a team of doctors operating on her, giving her her choice of appearance. Every time the bandages came off her face, she saw a bit of her old self fade away. Before her eyes, Elizabeth was born, exactly a year after Andrea's 'death'. 

"But why don't I remember any of this?" she wondered aloud as the lights went on, once again, around her. "Because you were awake as an avatar on the reality show you agreed to be part of. Your consciousness was operating it, while you lay in cryosleep," the voice informed. "Did I win?" she asked again, curiosity getting the better of her. "That we will only find out when you die for real, this time as Elizabeth. How you make the most of this second chance will decide if you are the winner. Till then, you'll be recorded every minute of every day," the voice boomed. 

But Elizabeth didn't want to win. As she stepped out of the studio, that day of her birth, she decided she would spend the rest of her second life trying to be a better Andrea than she had ever been. She owed it to her especially after committing the biggest drunken mistake in the history of drunken mistakes.