Gift of a Lifetime

III

Afterwards, I had travelled to many places. One moment I was on a swing set watching the sunset, then I was playing a board game with Lindsey, chess, I think -I went to many places. Places of peace and happiness. It could be a memory or a place I had never seen before.

I began playing around with it -having fun and laughing to myself, completely unaware of the tragedy that was happening back in the waking world- when I saw a person. I was in a dead grass field, the sun taking its time to rise, when I saw her. Her hair was shoulder-length and brown, wearing clothes that I couldn't remember of. I was confused because I didn't create her -this was like a lucid dream, I'm supposed to be the host. When she turned around, I couldn't see a face, but the way her body was built showed me that it was a man. His features were blurred, with only smudges of color to indicate what was what.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. I couldn't hear myself, I could only understand that I was talking.

"Your life is gone. It is too late," He replied.

I didn't think of myself as dead. I forgot I even existed before that. But when he said it, that was when it all came and smacked me in the face. I was dead. I was never going to see Lindsey or my mother ever again. And I had no idea what would come next.

"What do you say I give you another chance?"

I stood there, blinking, not knowing what to do or say.

"You can do that?"

"There is things that I can do that your young mind cannot even think of, boy."

Suddenly I was scared. What was he going to do?

"It will come with a cost, but I can promise you that it will be worth it."

". . .What's the cost?"

"The burden," He told me. "The burden of remembering."

"Remembering what?"

I couldn't see his eyes, but if he did, he would be staring at me with them wide open. "And they will know. All of them."

"What does that mean?"

I can't remember what was said afterwards, but I remember shaking his hand. Sometimes I begin to think that that day I had made a deal with the devil.

When I touched his hand, a bright light blinded me. A loud ringing sound screamed in my ears.

I also cannot recall what had happened directly afterwards, but I'll never forget it. That day -or night- had changed my life forever.