It was a day like any other for Hector, driving to work for another closing shift at the hardware store. As it was October, and starting to get colder, his boss had told him and his coworkers to switch to the winter uniform, which was good, as he would've switched without permission had it gotten much colder, and probably gotten yelled at for breaking dress code. It was time to make the final left turn into the parking lot, but the traffic was dense, so he went when there was a smaller gap between cars than he was usually comfortable with, but he was almost late, and the gap should have been long enough. Unfortunately for Hector however, his car stalled out in the middle of the turn. He panicked, rapidly trying to press the gas pedal, anything to try to get moving. But it was too late. Hector was just barely able to brace for impact before the pickup he had tried to cross in front of rammed into him, causing the world to go black, and Hector to fall unconscious.

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It was some time before Hector awoke. Or perhaps 'awoke' isn't the right word. He couldn't perceive anything but darkness all around him, so being 'awake' didn't seem likely.

"Perhaps I'm dreaming" said Hector, out loud, to himself.

But that didn't make sense to him. He was far too lucid for that to be the case. He could remember the details of the accident perfectly. More than perfectly, in fact, the clarity of his memories was much better than it usually was.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"That's... Unusual"

It was uncanny, it was as if he could perfectly relive the moment, the emotions he was feeling, the feeling of his foot against the gas pedal, the slight warmth coming from the heating vent, even the bird shit on his windshield.

"I suppose a traumatic moment will do that to you"

But Hector didn't feel too affected by the accident. Sure, it was scary, but he had been in accidents before, and this one had been similar. The realization of impending catastrophe, the frantic attempts to stop it, and the feeling of helplessness as the disaster keeps happening despite one's best efforts. He had felt these things before when he had rear-ended someone, and several more times during close calls.

Yet he could not remember these with nearly as much clarity. Or, actually, now that he thought back on them, he could.

Experimentally, he thought back to the movie he had watched last week. He found he could recall it perfectly, line by line, as if it were playing out in his head.

"This is impossible. There's no way my brain should be able to store all of this information"

But it was possible. It was possible through a possibility Hector had not been willing to consider up until now.

Hector was dead. He had died in the accident.

A tear came to Hector's eye as he thought of all of the family and friends he had left behind, Who he would never see again, if this was the afterlife, just an endless void in which one can stir on their regrets and not much more. And so Hector did something he had not done in a long time.

He wept.