when you were my father

between

Opening my eyes, I'm no longer in the broken car. I'm not even on the asphalt road. Blinking to make sure I'm not dreaming, I see that I'm laying on a soft material, like fancy feathered pillows. I appear to be alone, in a giant void of nothing. I stand up, and notice someone standing far away. Running towards them, I realize who it is.

"DAD!" I yell, running faster to see him.

"Kami?!" He cries, looking me head to toe. "What... what are you doing here? No, no... you... oh baby." He pulls me in for a hug, crying.

"Daddy, I don't think I died."

"What do you mean, you have to have died to be here."

"Oh? Well, where are we?"

"This is The Middle."

"The middle of what?"

"Past and future. Time and time. Life, and death." The words roll off his tongue, with ease and comfort in them, but a certain sharpness.

"So this is like where you go after you die?"

"Pretty much, yes. It's where you go before you pass on."

"But you died almost two months ago, why haven't you passed on yet?"

"There are certain... things... that one must do before completely leaving life. And I haven't completely finished all of them."

"Oh, what sort of things?"

"It's complicated to tell someone, you only can know once you're dead." This brings a large smile to his gloomy face, confusing me.

"What?"

"You're not dead after all, if you were you'd already know all of this."

"Oh, well I didn't think I was dead."

"Then... how did you get here?"

"When you crashed your car, I held onto you and then woke up here."

"You can't have been in that crashed car, you were at school."

"Oh..." This Brian doesn't know about the live memories. How to explain? "Well... do you remember when you were eight years old, your dad had a shed in the backyard? You weren't allowed inside, but one day you went in anyway. Inside there were all of these rabbits and chemicals, the rabbits weren't okay. Your-"

"My dad walked in and hit me until I cried in pain harder than I ever had." He finishes, causing me to stare blankly at him.

It wasn't what I had expected, but it sadly made sense. His eight year old face appeared before my eyes, showing pain and deep hurt. Blinking back tears of empty sympathy I try to smile. My dad's face had turns into a deep frown, I want to help his broken soul, but I have to continue with my explanation.

"Then, when you were maybe 10 or something you were at the hospital with your dad. He was visiting a sick friend. You got lost and ended up in an empty hotel room. There was a man in there, he tried to talk to you but you couldn't speak or understand Spanish, which was all he knew. The man wasn't really a man, well he was but he wasn't alive. He was a ghost, which scared you. Do you remember this?"

He shakes his head, but I can tell what I'm saying is causing something to stir inside him. "You don't remember it?"

"No, I don't. I don't remember the first one either, just the part that I said and that they fit together." I try to meet his eyes with mine, but he just stares blankly with no emotion.

"Alright, okay, when you were 12 there was a girl who wrote to you through a notebook you left on your counter. Every day when you came home from school there would be a new message. This, again, scared you. You thought that it was the man at the hospital coming back to haunt you." I don't even know if my last sentence is true, but it just came out without me needing to think. "Do you remember this?"