20th January 2050

Immersed in the flood of my imagination, I stared dazedly up at the fan. The heat of the summer swept through the French doors, crawled through the air and crept over my skin; as I lay in white sheeted bed. My heart felt as though it had stopped completely but the anguish I felt may just have numbed it. I had just lost my wife to cancer. It was the most painful experience of my life and I have never truly recovered. I often lay here and think, sometimes nothing occupies my mind at all.

Having spent twenty-four hours in the same position-without any food- had left me weak and smelling of the alcohol I had spilt over myself when I first fell here.

I wasn't an alcoholic because I was not addicted to drink. I simply relied on it temporarily, due to the grief I felt for the loss of my wife.

I slowly held my chin between my thumb and index finger, smoothing the rough hair on my chin. I preyed for the first time in my life:

Hey, big guy, listen I need your help. You gotta do something to get me out of this! I feel like when she died-

I could not speak. My voice was lost to a thousand tears. I do not recall the length of time in which I continued to cry, but at the time it felt as if it would never end.

With a dry throat and clogged nostrils I began again. "God!" I said aloud.

-God forgive me, I cannot live without her! When she died, when she died…I died.

I thought. I willed the message reach that elusive ghost in the sky as I floundered like a mad man off of the bed. I had not realised how weak I was until I fell to my knees, almost abruptly after slipping off of the bed.

I groaned (More in frustration, than pain) as I hit the floor.

"Damn it!" I shouted.

I used the bed as a support and lifted myself up onto my feet. I stood still for a moment-and let the patches of dizziness attack my vision- before I stumbled to the other side of the bed, towards the door. I knew I ought to eat something and so, once I entered the corridor outside my room, I limped weakly to the left. At the end of the corridor stood an open door. From within I could tell the light was on. The light left the threshold and occupied the surrounding walls. This helped me too see, for the corridor was dark due to the lack of windows it had.

As I approached, more and more of the contents of the room came within sight. I saw the oak counter in the centre of the room and the black and white tiles on the wall. Beneath them was the shiny black kitchen surface, which at certain points held, several kitchen utensils. The kitchen could have been no more then seven feet wide and twelve feet long, on the right was the oven and at fridge (which stood closest to the door).

Then as if by a miracle, or as though I were dreaming I saw a beautiful woman standing in front of the oven. My heart stopped as I stood in the threshold of the door, staring at her. Then she turned, with her perfect smile and big blue eyes, and said "Morning sweetheart, I am just making breakfast for you. But it's to eat in bed!" She laughed and at once returned her attention to the frying pan, her long wavy blonde hair floated in the air. I could smell the bacon, I could feel her here. But somehow I knew something was wrong. Different. Something was different.

All too soon I turned away without thinking. I mean she had inadvertently told me to return to the room. To my mind I was just following her command. However, as I turned to gaze at her-as I walked away-I saw an empty kitchen.

"Goodbye again!" I mumbled to myself as I returned to the kitchen.

I looked in the fridge. There was hardly anything there! A yogurt on top shelf and a couple of dead leaves of lettuce in the fruit tray. Brilliant, I thought. No food. I ate the yogurt without even checking the sell by date. It tasted magnificent to my taste buds. But hardly satisfying. I closed the fridge door and began to hunt the cupboards.

Then I saw the box of Thornton's chocolates on the oak table and began to feel a stabbing pain in my chest. They were Matilda's. I couldn't bring myself to eat the chocolates I had bought my wife for our anniversary, just a week before she died. She had not told me she had cancer. She decided it was best not to because, she said, I would have wanted to save her and that it was out of my control. She was right. I had always been a fighter. I was an ex-homicide detective for goodness sake! I would have wanted to save her. To me the cancer would have been a criminal waiting to attack it's next victim and it would have been as though I had seen into the future-that is if she had told me-and known it would attack. To me there was nothing better, then trying to save a life but cancer was a criminal I could never prevent from striking it's next victim nor could I destroy it after it murdered my only love.

These facts began to compel the anger to swell up within me and I began to cry with anguish. I could not bare life without her anymore! It just wasn't right! At once I ran to the bathroom, though small it occupied a bath, toilet and sink. Above the sink was a mirror and I glared at my reflection. My dark brown eyes, my long wavy hair and my handsome face. They were invisible to me. None of it mattered anymore.

Moments later I was in the kitchen clutching a knife, holding it to the bulbous veins on my wrist. This was it. In a moment it could be over. I could be in control. Foolish as the thought was, I could not see through the blinding mist of grief.

Tears flooded my eyes as I felt the cold metal of the knife against my flesh.

"God help me!" I cried.

Then suddenly a loud noise, resembling thunder, shot through my ears. Fear struck me. But I dropped the knife and ran out of my flat, and towards it. As though it beckoned me, as though by instinct I needed to be where ever it was.