The world was black. 

A darkness that expanded for miles, engulfing me it's suffocating sea of shadows. 

Death.

That's right, I died. I died and came to this place.

But where is 'this place?'

Perhaps it's a place of judgement that will determine whether I go to heaven or hell.

Or perhaps this is what death is, an empty void.

I don't care anymore, I just want to sleep.

I just want to sleep.

I just want to...

As if determined to go against my desires, the world responded to my silent pleas. A blinding white light enveloped the darkness around me, sucking it away like a vacuum.

I tried raising my hands to shield my eyes from the light, but found I did not have hands, nor did I have a body.

I was nothing, yet everything.

An entity without a being.

I existed, but at the same time, I did not.

This was my fate.

There was no heaven or hell, no God or Satan, no eternal slumber, just this vast space of never ending white.

And then there was me, a single consciousness floating about.

~.~.~.~.~

It was quiet, there was no noise in this place.

There was no passage of time either. Seconds or years, how long had I been here? How much time had gone by since my death.

I could have felt frustrated, sad, angry, bored, or lonely. But I wasn't. I was beyond emotions. I guess entities can't feel.

With nothing but my own mind to keep my company, I was left with was nothing but my thoughts, my memories which I would replay over and over again.

Letting my mind wander, I was brought back to my past. Where had I gone wrong in life?

I guess it had all started from when I was a kid.

I had never thought about the future, only living in the present, thinking that I could take in everything that happened to me as it came.

I never really tried in anything.

If something was too hard, I gave up. If someone was better than me I thought there was no point in trying, it's not like I would ever be able to reach their level.

I dropped out of university because it was too much work. Listening to the stories of people who became rich without needing a post-secondary degree, I thought I could do it too without trying. That seemed a lot easier than studying for years just to get a piece of paper.

That's when the arguments with my parents started. They wanted me to go back to university, but I didn't want to. They didn't understand me. As the years went by our relationship only got worse, and it eventually led to them kicking me out.

I lost all connection with them after that.

Things only went downhill from there. I couldn't hold a job, I couldn't make money.

But even then, I continued to blame others for my struggles. My parents didn't understand me, my bosses didn't understand me. Nobody understood me!

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was all their faults that nothing was going right!

The accident happened when I had finally reached my lowest point, having just been evicted by my landlord for not being able to pay rent.

I couldn't take it anymore. I broke down in the middle of the street, and then, as I helplessly watched that truck growing closer, that's when I finally realized what had gone wrong.

It wasn't everyone else's fault.

It was my fault, my fault for never trying, my fault for never changing.

I screwed up my own life.

Being here now, in this vast empty space, I wished that I could have the chance to do it all over again. I knew what I did wrong and how I could change it.

If I could, I would work hard, accomplish great things, make my existence worthwhile.

But it was no use, I was dead now, and nothing was changing that.

I startled from my thoughts as a rippling wave suddenly overcame me.

I could feel. I still had no body, yet I could feel something.

But that wasn't all, there was more.

Noise.

Coming from nowhere but sounding all around me.

I can hear.

A ringing noise so loud that it was painful.

Yet I love it, the first sound that I've heard since coming here.

I focused on the sound, letting it draw me in closer, but soon the ringing started to fade. I desperately tried to reach out and grab hold of it, keeping it within my grasp.

It was the only something in this vast nothingness, and I couldn't let this something go.

Despite my efforts, the ringing soon faded back into the nothing that it came from.

Just as I was about to despair from losing my something, another noise took the ringing's place.

I couldn't quite tell what it was at first, it was faint and distant, as though my ears were clogged. But as it grew louder however, a gush of nostalgia overcame me.

Voices.

They were muffled and hard to put together, like an radio with poor reception, but it was voices.

I focused on them, letting myself be taken in.

As they changed and became more distinctive, so did the world around me. The whiteness began to fade with blurry colours coming into focus.

Then, with the blink of my eyes, everything changed. The low quality instantly transformed into a stunning HD.

The first image I saw after awakening was the face of a beautiful young woman; tired blue eyes heavy with sleep as her eyelids drooped, begging for rest. But the woman was refusing her body's demand as she stared down at me with a sweet, loving smile spread across her face. Strands of her chestnut brown hair clung to her sweaty face.

Was I...alive?

I could have sworn that I died, but then again, with our level of technology there's a possibility that I was saved.

Then...who was this lady? The nurse maybe.

She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was gibberish. I'm not sure what language she was speaking, but it clearly wasn't English. I'm highly certain that English is a requirement to work in a hospital.

I needed to talk to someone, I had to find out what was going on. Howlone was I put, how much damage I had taken?

I went to speak, but all I could utter was something along the lines of "uhh, aah."

The vibrations of sound in my vocal cords felt odd, as though unused.

I instant snapped my mouth closed. What was going on, why couldn't I speak? Had I been in a coma or something for so long that my vocal cords were rusty?

Yes, that had to be the case.

Without warning, the world began to shift and I found myself being lifted up, a fact that greatly worried me. I had been hit hard by the truck, so there was a high chance that my spine had been damaged, leaving my body in a paralyzed state.

Now that's a fate worse than death.

But I couldn't jump to conclusions so soon, I had only just woken up and had yet to receive an explanation of what was going on. I would have to wait and see what my injuries were like first before I started to get depressed.

The woman left my sight and soon a man came into view.

The doctor? He didn't really look like one though, having no surgical mask or white coat.

Like the woman, he had been sweating, but to much less of an extent. Beads of sweat could be seen where his sandy brown hair met his forehead, but unlike the woman, he didn't look like he had just run a marathon.

Tears pricked the corners of the man's green eyes, a variety of emotions could be seen on his face all at once. Worry, relief, and happiness.

Had my recovery meant that much to him? Strange, but I guess his job revolved around saving lives.

Seeing him I had the faintest glimmer of hope that he would be able to tell me what was going on, but unfortunately he spoke to me in the same odd language as the woman.

My annoyance started to grow as I had never been a very patient person. All I wanted was answers which nobody seemed to be able to give me.

The man turned his head and began talking to someone else, I wasn't even aware that there was another person in the room.

I couldn't lift my head, so I could only move my eyes in the direction that he was looking.

There was a second woman, her age evident from the grey which flecked her hair and the wrinkles adorning her face. She was washing her bloodied hands off in a basin of water with a rag as she replied to whatever the man had said.

I went back to watching the man, then froze.

Wait...something didn't seem right.

I did a double take, bringing my focus back to the woman. She was washing her hands, something that should have been normal, but it wasn't. She wasn't washing them in a sink and instead had them dunked inside a wooden basin, held together with a strip of metal.

That wasn't normal, that definitely wasn't normal.

For the first time since I woke up, I finally took in my surroundings, letting my gaze dart frantically around the room I was in.

The ceiling was made of planks of dark brown wood, it was slanted with thick wooden beams holding everything in place. The walls were white and made of plaster.

This was the complete opposite of the sterile white rooms of a hospital, in fact, it didn't even look like a normal house.

Where the hell was I?