My eyes sting as a cold breeze whips around me, I shiver from the chill despite it being well into summer.

My name is Xavier Lenton and as of midnight, I turn twenty-six, in that same moment I plan on killing myself.

Don’t try to talk me out of it because despite my situation I am well aware of the consequences I’ve long ago made up my mind to do this.

I suppose I could tell you why I’m doing this while I await midnight.

Everything started around eight years ago, I’d just started my second semester in college when I received a call from an unknown number. The area code was from my home town so out of instinct I answered despite expecting a telemarketer or something similar.

Even now I still feel sick to my stomach remembering that unfamiliar voice utter my name.

At the time I could barely hear the man after the words ‘car crash’ my mind went blank and my grip on the phone threatened to shatter the screen.

Naturally, I dropped everything and rushed home.

By the time I got to the hospital, my parents were dead and my younger sister was in a coma.

We were never well off to begin with and it was only because of several loans that I was able to pay for my tuition in the first place. With my new circumstances, I had to drop out, it took most of the settlement money to pay off those loans.

For two cruel years, I would hop from job to job trying to keep my sister's medical fees from drowning us hoping that when she did recover I could give her the life our parents wanted for her.

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Then 2008 rolled around, we lost our home and even more money was taken from my sister.

She died not long after.

I was 21 alone and depressed so I said fuck it and scraped together what I could from my savings and manage through some miracle to get a business degree.

Life was hard but I managed, I would spend the next six years working my way up a corporate ladder until I became the personal assistant of the head of my company.

I was walked out of the building in handcuffs the apparent mastermind behind one of the largest embezzlement schemes in the country.

Millions of dollars had vanished into thin air and by all accounts, I would be facing life in prison.

After two months in prison and I was released upon discovery that my boss had framed me this entire time.

He received a month in jail and a fine of a hundred thousand dollars.

I was still considered an ex-felon and would likely never work a real job again.

I know I have options for things like release programs, therapy, and a lawyer.

But I’m done. I quit. I’ve put in too much effort and received so fucking little I can’t muster the effort to keep this facade going.

I glance at my watch.

Eleven fifty-nine.

I take a step.

I don’t feel the ground as I land.

Harsh orange light assaults me and despite my best efforts, I am forced back into consciousness. I struggle to open my eyes but power through the debris caking them expecting to see a shocked nurse and a jungle worth of vine-like cables keeping me alive.

My body aches and I’m drenched in sweat and even breathing is uncomfortable as my eyes slowly adjust. I don’t see a hospital room, I see a near-endless ocean of sand.

My body is sticky with caked-on blood and my ribs feel like a pile of broken glass, cuts of various sizes dot my arms and legs hints of crimson poking through my tattered clothes.

Where the fuck am I and why aren’t I dead?