Chapter 1

"Hmm...where am I?" Kyle’s consciousness returned slowly and bit by bit his mind started forming coherent thoughts and he found himself floating without sound or sight in stasis.

Incapable of moving and without any perception of the world around him or the passing of time he could only conclude to be in space however even that assumption seemed highly improbable given the lack of starlight in this dark world.

"Right, I was walking home and something happened" Forcing his memory, he struggled to recollect how he arrived at this place. "The tief! I stopped him but he shot me and then...Then what? Am I dead or in a coma? I heard people can be awake while in a coma but I don't hear voices or any noise for that matter."

Without senses or moving ability he could only float in a timeless vacuum lost in thoughts and fighting the doubts that his situation presented.

"To think I put myself at risk helping that woman retrieve her purse only for her to run away and leave me bleeding to death on the dirty sidewalk." Kyle couldn't help but question his own intelligence when remembering his actions.

"That's it, I definitely won’t play the hero ever again. Well if I am even alive that is..."

After what seemed an eternity but could only be a few minutes he started falling asleep or at least he assumed it was sleep since his last black-out didn't seem to have killed him.

After an undetermined amount of time, he comes to find himself awake and in the same situation as before.

This routine repeated itself innumerable times, with the only reason he didn't lose his mind being that the short intervals of consciousness were insignificant, not enough to damage his sanity with despair.

At those moments he spent all his time remembering his life. The few loving memories of his parents. The tough years in foster care. The work at the public library and most of all the many books which he used to read at his job at any given opportunity.

Despite the circumstances of his life, Kyle was a great student with a good chance of getting a college scholarship given his grades. His eidetic memory allowed him to remember all images that he ever saw and he took advantage of that by putting all his studies in graphics.

Unfortunately, all his hopes and hard work come to nothing and all that remained was a bleak reality of emptiness.

Until change arrived.

One day after waking up he started noticing something different in his world. "Noises, I can hear something! Thank god there is something here besides me."

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This insignificant low noise would probably pass unnoticed in his everyday life but at this moment it represented hope. Hope that he was not alone. That he was not dead.

Despite his relief, he couldn't distinguish whatever originated the sound or its nature, only that they were sporadical and somehow comforting.

Time passed and he could stay awake longer periods of time and he finally learned what the sounds were. "Voices, I am hearing voices but they don't seem to speak English or any language I ever heard before".

The most frequent voice was that of a woman which he recognized as the first noise that he heard many cycles of unconsciousness ago. It was a sweet and calming voice that most of the time only hummed to herself.

But there were more voices occasionally, especially of another woman, which seem older and weaker, and of a man with a deep vibrance to it.

Kyle assumed that the man and younger women were a couple given the way they speak sweetly to one another and the close proximity of the origins of their voices.

They seemed happy and he wondered if his parents were once the same. Wondered if he would have one day even the chance to fall in love given his circumstances.

Time passed and Kyle become better at hearing and differentiating the sounds. The sound of a chair being dragged. The water falling. The footsteps of people walking. Of plates and tableware being moved.

He realized that there was a whole world existing around him, but strangely he couldn't hear electronics or cars around nor could he interact with anyone.

"Could I have become a ghost?" He couldn’t help but imagine. "I shouldn't be in a coma since this place doesn’t sound like a hospital and I don't have any family left to take care of me". While Kyle wondered about his situation a change occurred in the conversation between the voices of the two women.

The sound of a door opening and closing rang loud and a male deep voice sounded hushed and worried announcing the arrival of the younger women’s lover. His footsteps echoed back and forward on a wooden floor in a nervous rhythm.

The young female voice sounded again. This time resigned and sad at whatever her lover told them and the man's footsteps stopped at this moment followed by a series of hushed words with growing enthusiasm.

Whatever was worrying the couple seemed to have led them to a decision as for the following hours a great deal of noises sounded around the house.

Steps up and down the stairs at fast speeds and heavy objects being dragged on the floor were always accompanied by the hurried voices of the trio.

Later, new sounds never before listened to were heard by Kyle. An animal, horses, and what seemed to be the noise of a carriage rolling on uneven stone.

"Okay, if I am a ghost I am probably attached to these people otherwise I would still be in the house and not in the streets. But carriages? Where are they? Is it some Amish town in the US? Or am I even in America anymore?”

For a while, only the sound of horses was heard until the silence was broken by screams. From the three people with whom Kyle was already familiar and a couple of strange new voices.

These newcomers were filled with rage and only spoke in angry screams. They seem to be yelling at the familiar group of three, demanding something.

The familiar man with a deep voice responded in a slow and careful manner seemly trying to appease the strangers but after a series of back and forward which only grew up more tense all talk ceased.

The sound of metal hitting each other reverberated at the vacuum and suddenly an explosion happened, the younger woman’s scream of terror that followed surpassed even the previous detonation and this time Kyle’s world of nothingness trembled and pain overwhelm his mind.

What happened next was lost to him. Only the pain remained for eternity. No more sleep. No more voices. No more explosions. Only pain.