Possibility of the Future

Chapter Twenty

Unedited

Chapter Twenty

I didn't go far which was weird. I just sort of hung out for a bit, floating in the dark. Solid but no body. Wispy, like I was smoke lingering in an empty room ready to dissipate and scatter. No pain, a nice change from the norm. But there was something hollow about it. Unfamiliar, disconnected, impersonal.

I didn't know who I was, where I was, but there I floated.

Like a little afterthought.

Waiting for something.

Time was irrelevant, nonconsequential. Moments happened in some disorganized, fluid manner, with a large amount of nothing going on. Just endless expanse of dark with no beginning or end.

But then the darkness curled back to place me somewhere and with someone else far away. There was a man in a bedroom. In and out of sleep, restless. Tossing and turning. His hand reaching out for something or someone who wasn't there.

But should be.

Cold.

He didn't know I was there. Couldn't see or sense me. I didn't exist. Not in the same way he did.

He found sleep curled around a pillow but then two loud shots from outside woke him up again.

Something was wrong.

One moment I was there. The next, gone. The darkness sweeping in and ripping me away, infecting and saturating everything about that place. It felt like I wasn't supposed to see it.

But then it happened again.

This time another man, sitting in the passenger seat of an SUV.

Phone in his hand.

Turning it round and round as he thought.

Detached, lonely, furious. So much anger it coated everything.

"She's fine," someone else said but I couldn't turn to look. "We'll meet her in New York--"

But then two loud shots echoed in his ears, silencing everything else.

He felt a tight pull.

And then an odd--break.

I felt it the second he did.

His chest erupted in pain. Like someone reached in and tried to carve it out.

His heart.

He grimaced, winced, pressed a hand to hold it all in.

But it poured out.

No matter how hard he held on.

When he roared, the world shook.

Darkness took that one too and for a moment I felt relief. That one hurt. I wasn't supposed to hurt anymore. But after that, those scenes began to infect the darkness instead. They came fast, warping reality to the point I didn't know what the hell was going on.

Another man roared in a forest, a great fire burning next to him even though he couldn't feel it.

Everything was cold.

He didn't know what to do.

Blood. So much blood.

It coated his hands as he pressed the heels of his palms to his forehead.

He closed his eyes and thought.

Thought, thought, thought.

So much thinking.