Burning.

Shock.

Melancholy.

So many feelings all at the same time. It was like a strange cacophony of pain, euphoria, confusion, and frustration. It was like falling down a set of stairs, an element in your life that you have seen and felt thousands-no, hundreds of thousands-of times suddenly is all around you and you can do nothing to escape the pain. The confusion may have been the greatest boon-or the worst curse-upon Dave.

Confusion.

What was happening to him? He remembers...oh.

He is drowning.

Tied down into the water, after he was mercilessly pulled down by a random rock and a piece of rope. Down into the depths of the water....actually, it wasn't even that deep, only a meter or so above him. The water was clear enough that he could see the outside, clear enough that he could see the sky, clear enough that he could see....

Him.

The Stranger.

The reason he was in his predicament.

The reason his life was being cut short.

The reason his wife and son, who was to begin school later this year, were both no more.

He had no idea why. Why the stranger had done this to him.

He hated the stranger. Dave's own face contorted when he thought of all the terrible things he wished he could do to the man standing on the dock. He trembled from his own anger, from all that which he would never see again, from all the things his family would never see again. Or maybe the trembling came from the utter lack of oxygen he had.

His body is already past the point of chest convulsions, past the point of reflexes that have been honed through eons of evolution trying to save him. He began to be past the point of pain. Or rather, the point of physical pain, the emotional pain only doubled back for another round of sucker-punches.

His mind was beginning to fade, but as it did, he gave the last of his energy toward reflection. Toward seeing-really toward attempting to see-where he had gone wrong.

He was born only 30 years ago, far too recently. Though, he should consider himself lucky, his son only had 6 and his wife only 28. He graduated high school with flying colours, but in college that spirit left him and he only just managed to graduate. Both were, of course, only a few minutes of his hometown somewhere in the midwest of America, so he was able to be home when his father became sick. Maybe the worry was why he felt so lost during his college days. It's funny, really, how his father still managed to outlive him, with all that life threw at him.

He began working in accounting at a sizable firm in "the big city," where he met his wife. She was made for him and he for her. It was quite picturesque, almost movie like, how they met and fell in love, how he needed her father's approval, and how he proposed to her. And now....now he had inadvertently dragged her into this.

He was lying.

Lying to himself.

He did have some idea as to why things went the way they did and why he ended up where he is. You see, everybody knows about the glamour of "the big city," but nobody tells you of the dangers, of the crimes that are beyond comprehension, of the places to avoid. And he, like everyone else, had to learn.

But there was one thing he didn't learn about soon enough...

There is a small cafe, it looks quite run down. Nobody ever goes there, except for a mysterious mafia of some sort. It was like a mafia beyond the mafia, the type that you never see and that doesn't play around. This group meets at the cafe every Sunday at exactly 10:25am, no sooner, no later.

Dave didn't know this. He had overslept, partially due to him forgetting to set his alarm, and partially due to him spending quite a bit of time reorganizing the presentation he had spent over a month on, which had suddenly became his son's latest art project.

Another spike of pain shot through him, almost entirely muted. The world was almost entirely black. He knew what this was, this was the fabled "reliving you life" moment, the seconds before death in which every thing you ever did comes back to you. Though it felt more like he was forcing himself to reflect, rather than the moment simply coming to him.

Where wa- he?

Oh, he was wa-king to work as fast as he could w-hout spilling any of the work he had precariously re-ganized. He needed some coffee, fa-. H- wa-ked int- the nearest c-fe. A-d h-

With a last spike of rage, he faded into black.

Somewhere.

...

He was somewhere.

The soul of someone was somewhere at some point in time or another, maybe it was nowhere, maybe it was everywhere.

-e saw a group of well dressed men sitting inside. They all suddenly looked at him with something that seemed a mix of confusion and-

...

Wait...

No!

He was certain that he is dead now.

He tried to talk, cry, scream...laugh, but all he could do was finish the story he was telling himself. The story of his life. Like some sort of last mercy. He was scared, what would happen if he finished? Would he fade into nothing? There was nobody around him, so he certainly isn't somewhere with someone. He had to-

-annoyance. One of the men simply looked to a less-well-dressed man and nodded. The man...the stranger walked to him in an unstoppable gait. Either way, Dave ran. He ran to work as fast as he could, and-

No, please.

Please don't.

But the more he distracted himself from finishing the story, the more he wanted...needed to finish it. And he suddenly knew. Knew that he needed exactly three-hundred and sixteen more words to finish it.

-thought he had escaped the man. A foolish thought, he now knew, but since the man hadn't shown up at his work place the entire day, he didn't think the man knew who or where he was. But the man did know, and one day he did strike.

Dave came home, a week and a half or so after the incident, and saw that food was prepared for him (likely cool by this point). That was his arrangement with his wife, Dave would work and provide money, while she stayed home and looked after their son. So she would often be in bed quite early, leaving some food out for Dave to enjoy. And enjoy it he did, especially since it was oddly warm.

Since it wasn't all too late he decided to go check in on his son and see if he was sleeping.

He was, despite the fact that he can sometimes be quite the handful for both Dave and his wife. He leaned down to give his son a quick kiss on the cheek, he was already a school kid (well, almost), and it made Dave proud. What didn't make him proud was the fact that his son's blanket was wet. So he decided to turn the lights on.

It wasn't urine.

And his son wasn't asleep.

Screaming, he ran to his and his wife's bedroom. This was beyond a prank, no amount of makeup could make a gash that deep in someone. Arriving at the bedroom, he saw the man again, now in the act of literally shooting Dave's wife. And he felt woozy.

The food.

Then he collapsed and awoke again on the dock.

The stranger gave some short one-liner and pushed very sizable rock over the edge. Dave had no time to think or prepare, before he saw the rock and was pulled-

It knew this would be his last word. The last thing the dispersing soul thought or felt. Another spike of utter hatred followed by a feeling of it simply giving up. Goodbye.

-...

Something pulled at him.

It was odd, it was not some otherworldly tug, it was simply a feeling of something glass-like snaring around him. Like some sort of fish made of quartz. And once the fish reassured itself that it had indeed caught something, it yanked at him as hard as it could.

Nothing.

Author's Note

So yeah, I will now try something that isn't just fully made up on the spot. I will actually think before I write. And I hope it will turn out good. (Also, this is toooootally not another story I stole from my dreams. Whaaaat? That would be craaaaazy.)