The Wrongful Death of Eddie Shan

Eddie Shan died on a Thursday. Not a dramatic day for death, but it fit him. He was the kind of guy who’d choke on a fishbone during a Ted Talk on sustainable salmon farming. Or get struck by lightning while arguing about how unlikely it is to get struck by lightning.

Except that’s not how he died. Not exactly.
Not the first time.

See, the problem started because Eddie Shan wasn’t supposed to die. Not then. Not there. And certainly not in that particular brand of sweatpants.

The paperwork got mixed up. Cosmic paperwork. Quantum red tape. Somewhere in the dusty back office of the Multiversal Bureau of Mortality Oversight, a caffeine-addicted intern named Glorp clicked the wrong checkbox. Instead of “Edward Shand, Age 97, Died Peacefully in Sleep Surrounded by Family and One Very Judgmental Cat,” he selected “Eddie Shan, Age 42, Slipped on Slug While Eating Microwave Nachos, Neck Snapped, Alone.”

That slug had it out for him, by the way.
But we’ll get there.

Let’s Back Up.

Eddie was a conspiracy theory enthusiast with the work ethic of a pothead houseplant. He lived in a barely functional apartment above a vape shop in DeLand, Florida, and made most of his income live-streaming hot takes like “The Moon Landing Was Filmed Inside a Giant Turtle Shell” and “Birds Are Government-Drones Made of Recycled Pokémon Cards.”

People loved him. Or maybe they just loved laughing at him.

Eddie didn’t care.

His neighbors called him “Weird Eddie,” which he took as a compliment. He once tried to build a time machine out of a stolen tanning bed and some discarded Wi-Fi routers. He claimed to have “almost” succeeded. Until it gave him a rash and made his Alexa speak in Latin.

So when Eddie died, no one was totally surprised.
Until he came back.

The First Death.

Thursday, 8:23 p.m. Eddie’s microwave beeped its mournful little beep. Nachos, soggy but full of hope, waited inside. He sprinted across the room, tripped on an old TV remote, slipped on the aforementioned slug (which had come in through the cracked sliding door in search of warmth and existential dread), and landed headfirst into a stack of unread Popular Mechanics magazines.

Neck snapped. Instant. Boom. Lights out.

Cue heavenly elevator music. Cue Glorp panicking as he watched Eddie’s file float up the tube labeled “Final Processing – Irrevocable.”

“Aw, floop,” Glorp muttered.

See, every human is tagged with a death-beacon. Once triggered, it’s like trying to stop a nuclear missile with a rubber spatula. But Glorp was nothing if not desperate. So he pulled the old Multiversal Override Protocol, slammed a can of something called Hyper-Java 9, and hit Ctrl-Z on Eddie’s death.

Big mistake.

Eddie Wakes Up.

In the morgue.

Naked. Cold. Very much not dead.

He sat up with a gasp, startling the poor coroner who was midway through a turkey sandwich.

“Jesus tap-dancing Christ!” the coroner shouted, flinging his sandwich at Eddie like it was a grenade.

Eddie blinked. “Did I time-travel again?”

“No. You were dead!” the coroner shrieked.

“Well, clearly not very well,” Eddie muttered.

Problem is… death doesn’t like being reversed. It’s like trying to un-flush a public toilet. Sure, technically possible, but you’re gonna end up covered in something.

Eddie didn’t know it yet, but by coming back, he’d pinged every interdimensional predator with a taste for temporal violations. And worse, he’d attracted Them.

They don’t have a name. Just a smell. Like wet cardboard and burnt soup. They wear trench coats made of static. They buzz when they move. And when they smile, it’s like looking into a dentist’s lamp made of spider legs and regret.

They started appearing around DeLand.

One at the grocery store, staring at a row of canned peas.

One at the vape shop, hissing softly at a bubblegum-flavored cloud.

And one, right outside Eddie’s window, whispering, “Give. It. Back.”

The FBI Gets Involved.
And the NSA. And the TSA, for some reason.

Because Eddie’s miraculous resurrection made waves. On TikTok, mostly. A morgue intern had filmed it. Captioned it: “DUDE COMES BACK TO LIFE FOR NACHOS???” It got 4.2 million views in six hours.

Soon, men in suits showed up. Sunglasses. Earpieces. One of them had a tie that seemed to breathe.

“Mr. Shan,” said Agent Clover, not blinking. “You were deceased. Now you are not. Explain.”

Eddie offered him a cold nacho.

“I think there’s been a clerical error,” he said.

By Friday, things got weird.

Every reflective surface in Eddie’s apartment showed a slightly different version of him. One with no mouth. One with eyes on his neck. One just… screaming silently.

The slug came back too. Bigger now. Glowing faintly. Wearing a top hat.

“HELLO EDDIE,” it gurgled. “YOU DISRUPTED THE CYCLE.”

Eddie blinked. “I just wanted nachos.”

“NAIVETY IS NO EXCUSE.”

The slug vomited a stream of ancient symbols onto his carpet, then slithered into the toaster. The toast it made afterward tasted like broken promises.

Meanwhile, Glorp was being court-martialed.

A tribunal of Time Lords, Cosmic Bureaucrats, and one sentient eggplant interrogated him.

“Why did you revive the human?” the eggplant boomed.

“He… slipped on a slug,” Glorp offered weakly.

“Not. An. Excuse.”

Glorp’s punishment? Fix it. Or be reassigned to the Flatulence Tracking Department. No one survives that twice.

The Battle for Eddie’s Soul.

Glorp appeared in Eddie’s kitchen, mid-taco.

“You’re not supposed to be alive.”

“I get that a lot.”

“We have to reset your timeline.”

Eddie burped. “What if I don’t want to?”

“Then They will come. And they will erase you. Not just from this world, but all of them.”

Eddie thought about that. “Even my YouTube channel?”

“Especially your YouTube channel.”

He sighed. “Alright. How do we fix this?”

“We fake your death. For real this time.”

Enter: Operation Re-Death.

It involved a laser disco ball, a truckload of ferrets, a wormhole in the Everglades, and a brief cameo by Guy Fieri. The plan was stupid. The execution was worse. But damn if it wasn’t entertaining.

When the trench coat creatures arrived, screeching, flickering, multiplying, Eddie stood on his roof in a bathrobe and screamed, “COME AT ME, YOU KRAFT MAC N’ CHEESE NIGHTMARES!”

They did.

The sky split. Time reversed. And everything turned inside-out for 6.8 seconds.

Then: silence.

Eddie Shan Died.
Again.

Only this time, it was the right Eddie. The other Eddie. One from a dimension where people ate soup with chopsticks and sneezed glitter. He died heroically. Noble. Screaming “I REGRET EVERYTHING!” as the trench coat creatures dragged him into the void.

Our Eddie? Slipped back into his timeline like a drunk sneaking into a wedding reception.

Today.

Eddie Shan lives quietly now.

Off-grid. Sort of. He does ASMR mukbang videos under the name “CrunchDaddy42.” No face. No location tags. Just long, sensual chewing of cosmic nachos.

The slug lives with him. They’re roommates now.
The toaster still hisses when it's angry.

And sometimes, when Eddie passes a mirror, he swears he sees himself blinking… just a beat too late.

Final Note.

Somewhere in the Bureau, Glorp got promoted.
Turns out, saving a timeline, even by accident, counts as innovation.

The paperwork for “Eddie Shan – Deceased” still exists, though.

Filed. Pending.

With a sticky note attached:
DO NOT PROCESS UNTIL HE FINISHES THE NACHOS.

And that could take a while.

Because cosmic nachos?

Don’t. Go. Stale.