I was never much of a believer in anything supernatural or paranormal.

It had nothing to do with upbringing since my parents were both Catholics. They'd raised Ennis and me in the church, but it had mostly consisted of baptisms and holidays. They hadn't been overly religious, but if asked, they'd both have said they believe in God.

I never had, not really. Maybe once I'd believed in the concept of a general higher power. Then I went to Iraq. The deaths I saw, the sheer incomprehensible darkness that man had towards one another, well, it made what belief I'd possessed falter.

Maybe that was why I couldn't understand what was happening.

At one point, I thought I saw a bright light, something along the lines of a tunnel, like the kind of images people talked about when they died. Then, in a flash, it was gone, replaced by only darkness and flashing lights, different colors, each blinking long enough to capture my attention, making me turn my head towards it before being captivated by another.

“Honor?”

I turned my head towards the voice, the image of Bruce materializing out of the darkness. The smile he’d always used to win me over flashed across his face as he seemed to float towards me, hand outstretched, welcoming.

“Come to Vegas,” Bruce said.

I frowned at him, and just like that, he disappeared. It was like his entire being broke apart into tiny particles that blew away as if he'd been made of pure dust that sparkled and shone as it flew around me in a whirlwind of tiny colors.

“Who are you?”

Another voice, one I couldn’t make out. Far away, yet close at the same time. I felt a pressure on my shoulders, and then it was gone. I was floating in an ocean of nothingness, my legs kicking out slowly. I remembered videos of astronauts in space and how they floated about their space stations in zero gravity and wondered if this was how they felt.

Was this what death was like? Was I in space?

“Honor?”

I looked around, swimming to adjust the rest of my body toward where the sound was coming from. I saw Bruce again, but he was younger now, the boy I'd first met before sixth grade. He was barely eleven then, with his ruffled hair, Pacman t-shirt, and high-tops, sitting on his BMX as he looked at me.

I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He was looking past me at someone else, and before I could turn my head to see who, a little girl ran past me. Dressed in jeans, and a ridiculous green shirt and braids, I instantly recognized my middle school self the first day I'd met Bruce.

“That is so cool,” she – I – squealed as she grabbed Bruce’s bike. “Can I ride it?”

I smiled. I remembered the first day I tried the bike, Bruce running beside me as I raced down our street, the wind in my face, my eyes closed as I enjoyed the feeling of flying. We had spent the entire day together. The first of many days together.

I felt a small ache on the right side of my knee, and I looked down to see something glowing there, a reminder of a day Bruce and I had snuck out after dark and had tried to ride the bike down the hill behind our houses. I'd fallen, I remembered, scraping my knee against a rock, the blood coming from the wound scaring both of us, but not enough to run home and face our parents. Bruce had tried to stop the bleeding as best as he could, and I'd done everything I could not to scream bloody murder.

I smiled. We'd been so innocent then, the only worries in our lives being what our parents would do if they caught us outside when we weren’t supposed to be.

“You should get one,” child-Bruce told the little girl by his side. “Then we can race!”

I grinned.

“Grow up, Bruce!”

I almost laughed as I heard the snarky tone that was my go-to voice for the first two years of high school. I saw the teenager I'd been then, my long hair tied back in a ponytail, kicking at Bruce as he tried to shoot at me with a water gun.

“Come on, Honor!” he teased. “Show me what you’re made of.”

I remembered how much I'd held back from hurting Bruce that day, my feelings for him mixed and perplexing. The boy who was sometimes charming and sometimes a complete ass. I'd fallen for him hard even though we'd both agreed to keep things casual for a while – so what we had didn't go against his “one-month policy.”

“One girl for one month,” Bruce had told me once. “That’s all the energy I have.”

I'd hated that about him, how he made me feel special while at the same time assuring me that he had no intentions of making something long-term work.

Then he'd made it official on my sixteenth birthday, moving us from a casual friendship to an exclusive couple.

Except now I wondered how much of his original attitude had always been beneath the surface, hovering in the background. How much of it was still there.

The teenagers disappeared, disintegrating in the same cloud of smoke that had taken him before, and for a few minutes, I was surrounded by nothing but darkness. I floated about uneasily, my eyes waiting for the next set of images, memories to fill in the blankness about me. I felt pressure on my shoulders again, as if someone was trying to shake me awake, and I shook it off. In the distance, I heard gunfire, loud and threatening, and a shiver ran through me. Something exploded farther away, and suddenly I felt hands grab me by the arms, pulling at me, my body moving through the empty space around me as if on their own.

“We need to find shelter,” I heard a man's voice say, and I quickly looked about to locate the source of the voice.

To my right, something flickered into view, hazy at first, a figure I couldn’t recognize. A man. I squinted for a better look, but he quickly disappeared as the hands on my arms loosened.

I was floating again.

“Go slow.”

My voice this time.

I watched as my bedroom assembled itself around me. I watched the teenager in my bed, under the covers, with Bruce on top of me. I remembered that night clearly, the first time we'd slept together, a week before senior prom. My parents had been visiting my aunt in Connecticut, and Bruce had come over to spend the night.

Despite the awkwardness, despite the initial pain, it had been a good night. Many of my friends told me that the first time was never good, but my first time had been okay. The touch of his hand, the heat between us, the way his lips had caressed me. For the first time since we'd become a couple, I felt a true connection between the two of us. It made the wrong between us better.

“Marry me.”

He'd proposed the next morning, two high school kids sitting at the kitchen table in our underwear, sipping coffee as we smiled at each other. It had been a strange proposal, sudden, out of the blue, and we'd laughed it off as us being too young, but Bruce had continued to make comments about our future as if it'd been set. When he proposed for real a little over a year later, I'd accepted without a second thought.

My father had been against it, voicing his opinion about Bruce loud and clear – sometimes in front of Bruce – but eventually, I'd made him come around enough to at least be civil to my fiancé.

Not that I would've changed my mind. I could be stubborn when it suited me.

The scene from my past disintegrated, and I was left alone again with my thoughts, floating in my endless nothingness, wondering when it would end. There was more gunfire, another explosion, but this time, no hands pulled me.

Without warning, the darkness around me begin to dissipate, replaced with bright colors of white and blue and yellow. I saw images I couldn’t make out, flashing quickly, randomly, appearing and disappearing just as fast.

An old woman with grandchildren sitting in a circle around her as they smiled at her.

A man walked into a hospital room, and my heart fluttered.

Bruce standing by my side, his smile sad, his face aged.

The images became sensations. Sounds.

Someone held my hand and squeezed.

A sweet and gentle kiss.

A soft and loving touch.

A hug.

A scream.

A baby’s cry.

A child’s laugh.

It was all so sudden, so overwhelming that I could barely breathe.

The hands were on my shoulders again, pulling, this time, more desperately, and I lashed out. Hands grabbed my wrists and pinned my arms down. Someone hissed at me to calm down. I tried to move again, and the hands tightened.

I was being shoved, as if a force had taken my entire body and was pushing it toward something. I felt the friction of the air against my body as the force picked up speed, and then suddenly, it was like I was being catapulted through the darkness, unable to stop myself. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Then, just as quickly as it started, it stopped.

I opened my eyes.