Chapter One

What happens when we die? Well that's the big mystery. No one knows. For some, we go to heaven and hell, for others we get brought back as an animal. It all depends on who you talk to. We learned in my Psychology class that the afterlife, whatever it may bring, is full of mysterious beliefs and can be scary once you think about it. I personally love thinking about who I'd be in another life. Would I be an artist, a teacher, a unicorn, or maybe an astronaut? If there is an afterlife, who did my mom come back as? Where did she go?

My mom died when I was very young and I hardly remember her but the parts I do remember about her is that she loved music. She would sing me to sleep every night with her amazing voice and her fancy little guitar. My mom was going to be a big music star until she got in this big accident at work. The building she worked at was just collateral damage due to the next door building blowing up from a major gas explosion. From then forward I was an orphan. I never knew my father so they put me in the system. And here I am. Just a regular human being in college.

"Myra?!"The loud sound coming from my laptop wakes me up from zoning out, which I tend to do a lot recently. I was in a zoom meeting with my psychology professor, Mrs. Smith. She's cool but she seems a little uptight and she's really strict on deadlines, but she's really easy to talk to about my personal life.

"Yes, sorry" I responded in a very self critical tone. Mrs. Smith knows I've been having a hard time focusing lately so she doesn't push for much out of me but she still tries to get me to participate with the rest of the college freshmen in my class.

"Myra, I would like to set up a meeting with you tomorrow night. How about coming to my class at seven", when she says '"class"', she means her zoom classroom. We don't have physical classes anymore due to the pandemic that has been out for quite some time now, "and we will discuss what we can do to help you focus better in class. How does that sound?" I really don't want to talk about it but my grades are so bad I will fail by the end of the semester if I don't bring them up. All my other classes aren't as bad because they don't expect much out of me so they just give me good grades on everything so they don't have to grade my papers. I told her it was fine and we ended the zoom meeting. I proceed to stare off into space until I drifted off into a deep sleep.

*****

I could hear the branches outside scarping against the widow of my bedroom as the wind grew stronger every minute then would slow down for a short period of time. The light underneath my bedroom door would flicker on and off and the house would shake uncontrollably. You would think it's a earthquake or something with how bad the house shook but in reality it's just a really bad wind storm with light showers and the occasional thunder clap.

My door open just enough for me to see two tough looking guys standing in my doorway. One looked to be taller than the other and they had similar shadow shapes. I couldn't make out what they looked like because the bright light behind them made them look like dark shadows in the night.

I was feeling woozy the moment I sat up in bed. My head felt heavy and like it was on fire. My limbs felt numb to the touch and my eyes were really heavy like they would be when you're extremely sleepy. I tried to stand up but the heavy feeling of my body made me very wobbly and I fell to my knees. The two tall gentleman walked closer to me and then there was nothing. Nothing but just blackness. I could feel myself getting picked up and then I felt nothing.