Episode I - Death
It had been three weeks since Max had seen Melissa. He had gone to visit his family in Vermont during his winter break. He called her occasionally, but they were both usually too busy to have a real conversation. The conversations mostly consisted of such phrases as, "I'm too busy to talk right now, but I can't wait to see you" or "I love you". Little else was ever said between them during that winter vacation.
Max always wanted to tell Melissa about everything that he was doing. Whenever they talked, he would always begin to tell her about his day. He started to detail all of the main activities that he and his family did. She would always interrupt him, saying, "I want to hear about it later. When I can hear all of it." As he drove to her house where they both lived in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, he thought about all his experiences that he would share with her. She would laugh or say, "Oh, how cute" to each and every one of them. Her responses would be generic if she were uninterested in hearing his stories, but she would always act interested. For some reason, he loved to tell her, regardless of what she thought. Perhaps it was because she was the only person that would listen to him. He had few friends and his parents were never home. His brother Richard was more interested in girls and school work than anything else. He felt alone, except for her.
He parked across the street from her house. Her house always looked beautiful in winter. Ebensburg had snow pretty often, and today her house was covered. He walked across the street quickly, making sure that no cars were coming. His excitement was rising quickly. He felt almost nervous, but knew there was nothing to be nervous about. The moment he rang the doorbell, he realised that he had forgotten the roses he bought for her. Max hated to make mistakes like that. He felt that it would look incredibly foolish if he had to tell her to wait at the door for a moment while he went to get the flowers from his car. He knew that she always took a while to come to the door, and he had only rung the doorbell once. He decided to run to get the flowers and hope to return before she reached the door.
He darted towards his car, this time not looking. He reached his car and opened the passenger door quickly. He snatched the flowers out of the seat and looked at them briefly to make sure that they still looked fine. They did. He slammed the door behind him as he ran as fast as he could across the pavement. But he never reached the other side. The last thing he saw was Melissa opening the door with a horrified look upon her face.
A yellow sports car was hurtling down the road at nearly 100 kilometres per hour. It was a convertible with its top down. Max was hit, hard, while the driver tried to slam on his brakes. He was killed instantly. His body travelled over the hood very quickly and shattered the glass of the windshield. The driver shielded his face from the flying shards and the car swerved off of the road and screeched to a halt in Melissa's front yard. Max's body had fallen off of the car remained on the street as a pool of blood formed around it.
Max stood up. He looked down. He was extremely shocked to find himself looking at what was left of his body. He did not know how he could be standing next to his own body. "Is that me ?" he asked himself. He looked at his hand and saw that it was slightly transparent. He started to look at Melissa's house, but everything faded away.
He found himself standing on a ground that he could not even see. Everything was white. He looked forward and he could see white forever. He turned around and looked in all directions. Everything was white. He looked at himself. He was still slightly transparent. He decided to get a better look at himself. His clothes were transparent, matching his skin. He noticed that there was blood on his clothes but not on his skin. In fact, his body was completely the way it was right before he was hit. He sat down on the ground. It was cold. He touched his leg. His body was still completely solid. It just appeared transparent. "So, I guess I'm dead," Max murmured. He tried to come to terms with it, but he was still in shock about everything that happened. He was feeling only one emotion at the time. Surprise.
As he sat there on the cold ground, looking out at the white expanse, he began to feel curious about the details of what happened. Questions entered his mind. Why was the driver speeding so much ? What did Melissa see ? How could he have been so foolish to cross without looking ? Suddenly, the ground beneath him became an image of his body being taken into an ambulance. It was a bird's eye view. It began to zoom out and he was able to see the entire section of the street where the accident had occurred and Melissa's yard. He saw Melissa kneeling on the ground, still near her door, staring at him. Her eyes poured out tears but she was silent. The driver of the convertible was now being carried to the ambulance. "This doesn't even help," Max muttered. "I can't see the past. That's what I really want to see." Immediately after saying that, he realised how thankful he was to be able to see what he could. He was surprised at how little he was disgusted by all of the blood and how mutilated his body was. He concluded that if it had been someone else's body, he would have been extremely disgusted. Suddenly, about four or five police cars arrived at the scene. They sped into the picture. Policemen started to emerge from their vehicles quickly and started questioning everyone nearby. They were taking notes. Max could not hear what they were saying. "I can't hear !" he yelled. He strained to hear, but no sound came out.
The image below him faded away to return back to the white ground that he had been sitting on originally. Feelings of frustration and sadness welled up in Max's eyes and tears started to fall down his face. He wanted to see Melissa again. He wanted to see his family again. He did not want to spend eternity in this white nothingness. He heard the sound of a door slam behind him. He turned around to see an ordinary wooden door with a brass doorknob about ten feet away from him. "That wasn't there before," he thought. He stood up and walked over to it. He looked behind the door but found that there was nothing behind it. It was just a door leading nowhere, he concluded. But when he opened it, inside was pure darkness. He looked at the black gateway before him.
He did not hesitate. He went inside.
--Herr Schroeder
