Afterlove

No Goodbyes - Part 1

     Shane woke up in silence. He opened his eyes and they focused on the surroundings. He saw an empty white space. Pure bright, white light illuminated the space. It was overwhelming bright and somewhat blinding. Shane shielded his eyes from the light with his hand. He looked around. It was hard to tell if it was a room or not as there were no contour lines or shadows, just white solitude. Shane yelled, "What's going on?" He waited but received no response. He quickly turned around, hoping to see someone standing behind him. "Hello!" he yelled questioningly. "Is anyone there?" Shane felt a wave of never felt before loneliness. He was alone, but where?
     Seeking an answer, Shane looked at himself. He saw that he was covered in blood and the left side of his body had multiple deep gashes and wounds. On his left arm the skin and muscle had been stripped away and you could see down to the bone. Despite all the injury, Shane felt no pain. He couldn't believe it. He felt around his body, touching all of the textures of skin and muscle tissue, expecting a sharp pain to come but nothing happened. Shane actually felt the best he ever had physically. How did I get like this? What did they do to me? he thought. Then it hit him. Appearing in his head like multiple flashes of lightning, it all came back to him. Looking in the mirror, leaving the apartment, getting into his car, driving, Jersey, the Chevy Tahoe coming at him. All his memory of earlier that day came back to him in a flurry of thought. But it didn't make sense. Why couldn't he remember anything after the Tahoe? He visualized the scenario again.
     It took a brief moment for Shane to piece the evidence together. The Tahoe came at him in the intersection. He saw it veer towards him out the passenger window, which was on his left. The left side of his body was severely injured and barely hanging together. It clicked. He had been in a car accident.  Now he was here.
    "Help! Please! Is anybody out there?" Shane yelled frantically into the pure white emptiness. Shane was becoming worried and scared, yet he didn't know what he was scared and worried of. It just didn't make sense. He held out his left arm to look at the injury again. While inspecting his arm, he glimpsed at the white surface he was standing on. His arm hadn't casted a shadow onto the floor. This isn't possible, he thought. He began waving his arm around, hoping for a shadow to appear. When he got tired of trying that he lifted his right leg up. Nothing. No shadow, just the white.
     Shane wasn't a genius but you don't need to be one to know that all things have shadows. Am I not- Oh my god, I don't exist. That exact thought raced through his head. Then he realized that he had to exist to even think that he didn't. An even worse thought popped into his head.
     "I'm dead," he let out just loud enough to be audible. Hearing it out loud made it sound even worse. He dropped to the floor on his knees. His hands reached for his eyes as he started sobbing. The tears came like an unexpected tsunami that hit him out of nowhere. He was dead and there was no way out. The thought of that morning raced through his mind at light speed. Then another thing hit him: Jersey. He would never see her again. It was like a second tsunami hit Shane. The tears were pouring like a spring shower and they were unstoppable. Deep sadness encased him. He would never see his best friend again. And then he realized that it wasn't only Jersey he'd never see again, but that he'd never see his parents or any of his hometown friends again. The worst thing was that he didn't get to say goodbye to any of them. He didn't get to tell them that he loved them before he died. There were no farewells given to the few people he loved.
     Shane closed his eyes. He kept them closed for a while hoping that the tears would stop their persistent flow. Shane was starting to get dizzy and he felt a headache form although he didn't feel any pain.. The headache felt more like a blockage in his brain. He opened his eyes, wishing that he'd be back in Toronto, but he was still in the white void. A severe feeling of loneliness clogged his mind as he rethought how he'd never see his loved ones again.
      But what if they don't miss me? he thought. After all he hadn't spoken to his loved ones in a while. What if they don't care? What if they don't cry? What if they never even loved me and they don't care that I can't see them again? It all raced through his head. He was thinking the worst because he didn't have a reason not to. That's something Shane had always done: imagine the worst case scenario. But he had reason to trust that the ones he loved had loved him back and would be overwhelmed with grief at the news of his death.
    He buried his face in his hands again and let the tears flow. There was no point in stopping it. He let the sadness flow out of him. He let all his feelings out. He sat on the ground crying for what felt like forever. He thought that maybe his tears would run out. That maybe he'd cry them all out, but they kept coming and so did the sadness. It was so overwhelming and it plunged him into what felt like an empty whole. He felt a pitch black void grow inside him. Then he heard a voice.
     "Stand up. Come with me," the voice said. Shane was so sad that he tuned out the voice, thinking that it was just his own conscience. But the voice repeated itself. "Come with me." Shane realized that the voice definitely wasn't in his head, so he stood up. Shane used the sleeve of the t-shirt he was wearing to dry his eyes. He had stopped crying after he had heard the voice, even though he was still very distraught.
     "Ok," Shane declared, although his voice was unsteady and shaky as a side effect of his grief. "I'm ready to come with you."