I slam my fists on the hard ground. I scream. I shout. The truth, the memories have hit all at once.

I hear the chirping cackle of my jailor. He looks like a giant cricket with compound eyes, who always accompanies his speech with the screeching fiddling of his serrated legs.

"How was it this time?" he asks mockingly. I have gone limp.

I don't answer. Not that I need to. He knows my thoughts, he can read my soul like an open book. This time, I was born a woman in a middle-class family in Japan. I worked my ass off in school. At 18 I had moved to the US to go to college. At 26 I was an architect with a PhD. I had some success, founded my own firm, and wasn't left wanting for anything in life. At 67, a brain tumor took my life. I had spent my last hours surrounded by my husband, children and closest friends. But now I was back.

I lacked the strength to move. I didn't reply.

The first time, I thought it was clever of me. I could ask for anything, so I thought to ask to be reborn on Earth. I figured existing forever would get dull or drive me mad, so I thought it was even more clever of me to ask to not remember anything of my past lives when I started a new life.

But of course, they knew better. My sinful soul is always the same, no matter what I do with my new lives. I have been a saintly man who gave away everything he had to the sick and poor of his country, and was even canonized by the church for his virtues. The devil must have had a laugh at that, knowing God-fearing people were revering a man who was damned even before he was born. No, it doesn't matter if my new life is that of a saint or a monster, when my time is up I come back here.

And I remember.

The cracks in my mind spread and widen every time I return. Every time I realize the decades I just lived, the entire life I just went through, were merely a diversion for a cursed fool who was trying to cope with their own damnation. And as I lament my latest, meaningless life lived, I lose sight of the ones who came before. They blur and meld together, and I even lose track of which came before and which after. I can't even recall anything of my first one.

The jailor lets out a few chirping tuts, with a subtext of feigned impatience. It's a farce. He only has one job, and it is to torment me. Not by doing anything, no. All he has to do is wait for me to say those few words. But for a long time now, the silence before I eventually cave and say them is worse than any torture I could imagine.

It hurts more and more every time. I know that eventually I will lose all drive to go on. I will completely lose my mind and lay motionless here for eternity, my soul rotting in this pit.

I drag my head up to face him. It feels as if I had a boulder strung around my neck. My eyes are unfocused, I can barely see his mandibles twitch in anticipation. I push the words out of my throat, they scratch at my windpipe as I mouth them.

"I want...to go...again..."

The devil chirps affermatively. I feel a sense of hollowness, as if icy cold water was just pumped into my body. I know this is wrong. I know this will make it hurt even more the next time I come back. But I want a reprieve, any reprieve from this.

I feel relief as I sense my mind being wiped clean. I would hope this life was better than the others, so good it would give me the tiniest bit of solace afterwards, but the very concept of hope is so far divorced from me I struggle to even think the word.

I slip into blissful oblivion.