Over due, I know. Sorry guys. I've been preoccupied. I was in a car accident and I had to take some time to recoup. Please enjoy. Sorry it is unedited.
Alex’s POV
Have you ever looked into the flash of a camera? It is this brilliant flash of light that blinds you. I was never good at holding my eyes open during the flash. Go ahead, try to find one decent picture of me that I am not squinting in.
However as I opened my eyes they began to be filled with this purely agonizing flash of light that never seemed to go away. I held my hand over my eyes to shield them but it didn’t help. Noises from the restaurant faded in the background as I was swallowed up into this bright ominous light.
My body was wracked in pain. I felt my lungs start to collapse. The pain consumed me just as the light had. It almost felt as if I was getting sucked into another dimension. It is the only way I have to describe it. I tried to scream but I couldn’t hear myself. I felt myself falling backwards but I never hit the ground.
I don’t know how long I was out for but when I woke up I was still blinded by that annoyingly vibrant light. The world had become quiet and still. I sat up and tried to let me eyes adjust to the light. In a rush of adrenaline I pulled myself up to my feet and took in my surroundings.
There was nothing but white all around me. That is the only way I have to describe it. There was no change in coloration. No walls. No trees. No houses. It looked like the largest white room I’d ever been in without any confines.
I felt lost and dizzy. I turned around to look in every possible direction but found nothing. I then remembered the gun and Leann. I looked down at my chest and I found nothing. No blood, no rips in my shirt, no nothing. It was like I had been in a bad dream. Well if that was a dream, what the hell was this?
“Hello?” I yell out. I can hear the sound of my voice and it sounds strange. It’s empty and hallow. “Hello!” I yelled louder. Panic started to really consume me. I’ve had some pretty screwed up dreams but this was something else.
I started thinking about Stella. Was my dream about the restaurant real? Was she in danger? If this was some kind of dream I needed to wake my ass up and come back to the world of the awake.
“Help!” I screamed. “Alex it’s time to wake up. Come on man wake the fuck up.” I scream at the top of my lungs. “This shit is funny man, wake up. Time to get out of your own head.” I started walking around like I was searching for something or someone.
“Jesus fucking Christ what the hell is going on!” I growled.
“You’re going to wake the dead.” I quiet woman’s voice whispered in my ear.
I threw myself forward away from the location of the noise and whipped around to look behind me. I volted so quickly that I fell back down to the ground and was now am looking up at the owner of the voice.
“You’re dead.” I gasped in the horrible realization of the person standing in front of me.
“Yeah well, who isn’t around here?” She smiled sweetly.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I am not dead.” I stood up and challenged her.
“Oh really?” She cocked her head at me playfully. “Could have fooled me.” She turned away and started walking away.
I looked around and really took in my current situation. Was it possible that I was dead? Am I in Heaven?
I saw the raven headed beauty walking away from me and decided I’d rather not be alone.
“Hey wait, don’t leave me here.” I chased after her.
“That would be a first.” She sneered turning around to address me.
“What?” My mouth popped open.
“You, chasing after me.” She winked at me.
“Funny.” I scowled.
I caught up to her and we just walked. Although we walked for a while we still didn’t seem to end up anywhere. The world around us was vast and seemed to be filled with nothing but the white hard surface under our feet.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I had so many things I wanted to ask her and yet I was too cowardly to ask them. My mind had been plagued since the day she left. How horrible of a person I had been to her and yet here she was, acting like nothing ever happened.
“Ask it. I can hear your thoughts.” She said out of nowhere.
“How?” I asked.
“You can do some interesting things once you pass on.” She says absentmindedly.
She never turned to look at me but she didn’t need to. I could hear the sadness in her voice. Her tone pierced through me like a knife.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Why what?”
“Why did you do it?” I finished my sentence.
“Do what?” She turned and looked at me with those big old blue doe eyes just staring at me.
“Don’t play dumb.” I shook my head. “Why did you…” I couldn’t finish the thought. The memories of that day flooded to my mind for the first time since I told Stella about her. I tear rolled down my cheek and I quickly wiped it away. “Why did you kill yourself Olivia?”
She sighed and took a moment to collect her thoughts. She was so easy to read and yet I didn’t know what was written on those pages.
“We all do things that we regret. Mine just happened to be something I couldn’t take back. I couldn’t make it right. So I took it back the only way I knew how too.”
“What do you mean by that?”
A tear slid down her cheek as she turned away from me. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards me. “Olivia?” I scolded. “Answer me.” I eased my tone.
“You were ashamed of us. How do you think that made me feel?”
“I was never ashamed of us. I cared deeply about you.” I defended.
“But not enough to stop yourself from getting back with Leann.” She said coldly.
“I’ll admit to not being the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to Leann but I would have never wanted you to end things the way you did.”
“How would you have preferred it end?” She said.
For once I didn’t have a response.
“Would you rather had a child with me and let it ruin your relationship and your life?” She yelled. “I didn’t want that for you. Granted I could have done adoption or something else but I didn’t. I was a terrified 16 year old girl who was hopelessly in love with a guy who knocked her up then got back with his ex. I was an emotional wreck. I couldn’t cope with life anymore so… I ended it.”
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just told me.” I sighed.
“I tried.” She yelled.
“You didn’t just out right tell me. I am a guy, I am stupid!” I yelled back at her.
“Damn right you’re stupid. You fuck up everything beautiful you touch!”
My mouth dropped open. Meredith had told me that exact same quote months prior. It was true. I did fuck up everything beautiful I touched. And now I had a second mother of one of my children out there, somewhere.
I sat down and digested everything in. I was having a conversation with my dead ex-girlfriend about her demise. Is all this really happening?
“Am I really dead?” I wondered out loud.
She plopped down in front of me and just looked at me intently. “Not yet.” She smiled.
“I guess there is nothing I can do you change fate huh?” I pulled my feet up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my knees pulling them against my chest. I felt so almost at peace.
“No can change their fate. We all have to live with the cards we are dealt.”
“I don’t want to. I never believed in that whole fate thing. We carve our own paths.” I huffed.
“Really?” She smiled amusedly over at me. “Then how did you end up here if this was the path you carved for yourself?”
She was right. I wouldn’t have thought myself here even if it meant that I would get to see Olivia once more.
“I just want to be back where I belong.” I hung my head.
“Do you think she would take you back?” The question shyly comes off her lips.
“She has to.” I said without a shadow of doubt in my voice. “We’ve been through so much together. We’ve fought so hard to be together. I don’t think she would give up now. “
“You fucked up pretty badly Alex. You’re asking a lot from her.” I knew what she was saying was right, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to hear them. The last thing I wanted to hear was someone else remind of me how badly I screwed up.
“I love her Olivia. Possibly more than I ever loved Leann. She means everything to me. I have to try.”
“Stand up.” She rises to her feet and motions for me to do the same.
I comply and stand up with her. The once open space that we sat in has now morphed into a small white room with a blink of an eye. I have this uneasy, unsettling feeling. Never once has the scenery changed like this throughout our entire conversation. My eyes roam the room to find Olivia. She’s standing near the corner of the room near a table facing into the corner. She doesn’t say a word.
I walk around the room studying every corner. It seems strange and familiar but I’ve never been here before. The smell of bleach soaks into me. It makes me light headed.
“This might hurt.” Olivia’s voice fills the room.
I look towards her and everything felt like slow motion. In her hand was a gun. The same one that Leann had used before.
“Good bye Alex.” She whispers sweetly with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Olivia…” I gasp. I wasn’t sure if I could die again but I wasn’t ready to find out. “… no!” I yelled.
Before I could blink an eye I heard the clap of the hammer hit the gun sending a bullet shooting out of the barrel that hit me square in the chest. The force sent me backwards, lifting me up off my feet and shooting backwards onto my back.
I laid there gasping for air. The force alone had knocked the wind out of me. I struggled to breath. Darkness swept over me, my eyes got heavy. I felt my blood moving slower and slower through my veins. I couldn’t stop the eerie death like sleep from consuming me.
I looked up towards the sky and a pair of blue eyes stared back down at me. A sad smile swept across her face.
“You don’t belong here.” She whispered. “Make things right.”
My last thought before I died was “That crazy bitch shot me.”