Metal crushed. Pain ripped through me. I felt the darkness of death creep over me. Tori suddenly stopped screeching. The music in the car went silent. Everything seemed to die at that moment, including me.
It was cold. I felt as if I was alone. I knew I was out of the car because I felt myself floating. I wasn’t touching anything. My feet didn’t touch any type of ground. I was just in air.

I opened my eyes. Blinding light hurt my eyes but I kept them open. I floated away from everything. Little yellow lights blinked around me.
I could hear soft whispers.

“Hayden,” I heard. It was Tori’s voice. She whispered my name over and over again. She was calling for me but I could say that I was okay. I wasn’t sure if she or I would be just fine. I wasn’t sure if I was even alive anymore.
It was a mystery of where I was. Gray skies hovered overhead. I was on a desolate city street. Cars were parked on either side. Some were on the cracked side walk and others were parked crooked.

Town houses lined the streets and broken power lines lay on the sidewalk. Fog drifted close to the ground. I didn’t know whether or not to walk somewhere or to just stay still.

I heard a whisper. I didn’t recognize it but I followed it. It was unclear what it said but I walked towards the sound. I felt drawn to it, like gravity drawing an apple to the ground.

It got louder and louder as I turned onto different streets that looked just the same as the last one. Each house and each car seemed the same. I didn’t know why I followed the whisper. I think secretly I hoped that from it I would get answers. I didn’t know what answers I wanted. I didn’t even know which questions to ask.

I could finally make out the whisper. “Hayden,” it said. It called my name repeatedly. I walked faster and faster until I was running down the street.

Then, I stopped dead in my tracks. A translucent wall of black smoke blocked my path as I turned down another street. My heart sped up as it seemed to move closer to me. My head started to spin. My vision blurred and I got dizzy. The smoke got more immense and spread throughout the street. I became blinded by the smoke.

The smoke surrounded me and swallowed me whole.