Gone

by Adam Light

  The weight of the agony was more than anyone could take.

  There were flashing lights all around him. Voices were yelling for him to stay calm. How could he be calm? He was being smashed to death. Several pedestrians holding cups of coffee looked on in awe from the sidewalk in front of Starbucks.

  “Please, God!” He pleaded voicelessly “Help me!”

  If God was listening, he was not answering Greg’s prayers.

  Metal screeched on metal, and the pressure on him weakened considerably, and instantly. Ice water cascaded down his spine. The voices grew louder and a man’s face hovered into his field of vision briefly. The stranger looked away at someone beside him, who it was, Greg could not see. The man shook his head slowly. There was pity and sorrow in the man’s almond eyes.

  “No, no, no! I’m not ready!” he tried to call out.

  Everything faded away, and Greg was back in his room. Unsure if the scene that had played out before him was from a past that was real or a future imagined, Greg watched in horror as the room around him faded into a gray landscape of evaporating shapes and patterns. As he lay pinned to the bed that was now the only still-recognizable feature of his disintegrating room, there was only one thing of which he was now certain: he was gone.

  ***