Lyfting Spirits

- What if souls were shuttled to the afterlife with some sort of ride-sharing vehicle? - What if the logistics of collecting souls was a battleground of corruption - What if a guy, one weighed down by simply existing, got pulled into all this? Joe moves through the city with the posture of someone expecting bad news. His coat never quite fits, his conversations ended awkwardly, and every ambition seemed to collapse before it began. He wasn’t cruel or foolish enough to be hated - just tired, unlucky, and quietly defeated by the machinery of ordinary life. The city itself - all grime, rain, and alleys that smelled faintly of urine and criminal intent - appears to regard him as an exhausted footnote. His hopes and dreams dying with remarkable efficiency, as though the universe had a clerk somewhere whose sole occupation was marking them DENIED in red ink. Joe meets Karon at the site of a traffic accident where she was picking up more than souls - a device that could break the way the afterlife operated. Joe was not impressed by any of it - missing souls, competing factions, or supernatural turf wars. Until the Resurrection Syndicate and the Forgotten Gods gave Joe powers. Which, unfortunately, made him everyone’s problem. This is a draft, actually more of a pre-draft, and I'd really appreciate any feedback. I have an outline for around fifty chapters, but I'm writing each chapter and publishing them as fast as possible. This is not the best way to do things, unless you enjoy "narrative discovery" over continuity.