"Mr. Flack? I am sorry to disturb you, but you need to wake up. We have work to do and a deadline to do it by." Vincent opened his eyes but closed them again after being blinded by the...fluorescent lights? Using all of his willpower, Vincent opened his eyes to see that he was actually in a small, whitewashed lounge area. He tried to sit up but fell over from the pain in his chest. "Am I...am I dead?" he asked the voice. Or was he asking himself? "No, your body is unconscious and will be for a while." Vincent decided that if he was talking to himself, he had a rather effeminate inner voice. A blond secretary-ish looking woman then leaned over him on his couch. "Sir. Now." Vince sat up and, ignoring the pain, walked with the woman to another room.
"So...this isn't eternity?" Vincent asked. "Well...no. Who would want it to be?" the woman retorted as she sat down at her white desk in the equally whitewashed office. She gestured for Vincent to sit on one of the large, white, overstuffed chairs in the office. As he did so he saw a white plastic name tag on the desk that just said "Sophia" on it. "So... Ms. Sophia? Why exactly am I here?" The woman looked up at him. "Why do you think you are here?" Vincent decided that he didn't like this woman's attitude much. "Well, I attempted suicide which is considered unfaithful and you're not the nicest woman in the world so I thought I was in Hell." Sophia sighed and got up.
"It IS considered unfaithful. However, someone cried out to the powers that be to save your life. Yet we cannot do that without denying your previous wish. So we have to let you decide." She paused, allowing him to take this in. "I choose-" "Hold on, Mr. Flack. In order to decide fairly, you will need to look back on your past, glimpse the present and see into your future." Vincent couldn't help but be a little excited about this. He would get to see what he was in for and prepare for it. But one thing was bothering him.
"Um, while this all sounds very cool, do the powers that be realize that I'm gay? As in, I am a flaming homosexual who takes it up the shitter, or at least I would have if I had lived long enough to marry, and the very thing that fundamentalist Christians despise. I'm-" "Are you quite finished? Listen, do you really think the powers that be would waste their time hating a person for liking someone with the same parts?" Vincent thought for a moment before shaking his head. "Exactly. Now, we need to start. Are you prepared?" "Um...for what exactly?" Sophia sighed, crossed to her desk, and withdrew a ring of keys. "Just come with me and I'll show you what to be prepared for."
After walking down countless white hallways, they arrived at a door which Sophia unlocked and led him into. "Oh, sweet, reliving every miserable day in an Imax. Remind me again why I couldn't just decide to not continue my life and proceed with whatever comes next?" Vincent asked. "Because you don't know what you may miss," Sophia retorted. "And you don't know what you are missing now. You'll be waking up from time to time between memories. So sit down and tell me where you want to start." Vincent sighed, rather hating how much like Sophia he sounded."I don't care. I just want to get this over with." Sophia shook her head sadly. "Fine." she whispered as she walked out into the hall and pressed a button to start his record.
As per Vincent's luck, it started on his most cringe worthy memory; his fifth birthday. His mother had invited a few kids from the block, as well as every kid in his preschool class. All of them. Including the bullies. Because "Maybe this way, you can learn to be friends," she had suggested. For awhile, he had thought it was working. And then, the bullies inevitably got bored and stole tiny Vincent's glasses. And, after watching him stumble for a few minutes, they got bored again and started spinning him and shoving him from person to person. He begged them to stop which, of course, just prolonged his torment. Just when he thought no one would ever help him, a boy from his class who lived across the street grabbed Vincent, stopped him from spinning, and slipped a pair of glasses on his face. "Are you okay?" he asked. Vincent attempted to answer but then threw up on the ground in front of them both. The film ended abruptly but he remembered how it had ended up.
"So...who was it?" Sophia asked. Vincent jumped, he hadn't heard her come in. "What?" "Who was the person in the memory that you were closest to?" "...my best friend, Blake." "That's unusual. Normally, if a person doesn't choose where to start, the machine would pick a first memory of a family member or a partner...is there something between you and-" "N-NO!" Vincent yelled, blushing. "Okay...then why would he be the closest to you?" Vincent didn't have an answer. "He was the one who found me right after my attempt. I tried to kill myself because of my family. Maybe that's why he was the one." "Maybe...so, what happened in the memory to make you cry?" Sophia asked.
Vincent hadn't realized he was crying but, sure enough, his face was wet with tears. "It's just... Blake was my best friend. I had other friends at school before then, of course, but none of them were as close to me as he was. And I didn't even write him a note or explain why I had done it. I just took the pills and...I was selfish." Sophia pulled a handkerchief from her pocket . "You weren't selfish. You were scared and I can't blame you. Your parents, the two people who were supposed to love you unconditionally, turned on you in an instant. At the time, it probably seemed like the only way out. Right?" "Yeah. Still, I wish I had been thinking more, that I could've explained, even just told him how good of a friend he was to me." "Wishing won't fix what you've already done. Only how you act from here on out." "You're right... so, what now?" "Now, you are going to your school for an hour or so to observe your classmates." "How?" "Close your eyes and think of it."
When Vincent opened his eyes, there he sat at his desk in study hall. Had he been dreaming? Yes, surely. There was no...whatever she was named. Sophia. He looked at Blake across the room and smiled. When the bell rang, he ran to where Blake was. "Blake! I had the worst dream just now," Vincent said. But Blake didn't hear him. "Blake? Dude, why are you ignoring me?" He felt someone tap his shoulder and turned around. He immediately regretted doing so as he felt the tears start to fall again. "I'm so sorry Vincent. Right now, he just can't see you. Things will just have to be that way for a while." Though her expression didn't show it, Sophia truly did feel sorry for both boys. They were so close and yet so separated.
