My short time on Earth before the trip had been spent like many others. I grew up in California, an hour south of Los Angeles. My adolescence wasn't all that interesting. The only unique thing about me was overtly active imagination and the strange ability to somehow always get sunburns underneath my eyes. The cause of it was most likely the due to the rushed technique that I had used to apply sunscreen onto my face. As expected of my appearance, my father sought to it that I had been incessantly given new nicknames. My mother didn't approve.

Speaking of my parents, their lives weren't incredibly interesting either. My father worked as a medical malpractice lawyer. He was often busy taking the calls of god knows what outside while smoking his signature cigarette. Some gray box I never bothered to learn the name of. He was the type of man to always seek fun in any circumstance and drove to acquire the attention of the room. Often using jokes as the crux of his conversations. My mother was kind and was exemplary at parenting. She knew how to comfort me and how to correct me when I do wrong. After I grew old enough so that I could be trusted to take the bus home to and from school, my mother grew busy earning her teaching license. Overall, they were good people. 

The day of the accident was like any other. I woke up, got ready too fast for the time I had allotted, and got to school early. Most of my day had been spent either zoning out or trying to finish my AP Gov paper. My teacher had assigned it a month prior; however, I had waited for the day before to start. I was too busy thriving within the land of my imagination. I enjoyed imagining myself as a character of my favorite series. I wondered how I would've acted in certain situations or people I could've befriended. 

One of my favorite stories to envision myself within was the world of Naruto. It was one of the few anime that I had actually watched. My cousin introduced me to it one day while I was at my aunt's house. I was hooked. I was absolutely infatuated with the world. The cool, flashy jutsus, the well-developed and harshly set setting, and especially the foolish, blonde-haired main character Naruto.

The school day ended without a hitch. I did my usual running to my car to outpace the school traffic and scadaddled home. I had to prepare for my friends that were about to come over. It was the only time they could since my parents were out of state for a fundraising event over in Reno. My friends were set to arrive around 9:00 p.m.

As I was preparing my house and hiding anything of noteworthy value, I had been overtaken by an intense yearning for sleep. I thought nothing of it as I had spent all of last night raising my Mauga level in Overwatch 2. Unable to bear the weight any longer. I decided to quickly take a nap. After all, I still had roughly 3 hours before my friends arrived. Not like they were arriving on time anyway…

I sluggishly went up into my room to lay down my head. Ever so slowly, my familiar sensation of drifting thoughts pervaded through me. As though my very existence was being swept away my cold ocean water. Right at the moment of complete and utter darkness, a feeling of extreme, harrowing pain overtook me. If I could think of anything besides the pain in that very moment, I would have likened it to an experienced lumberjack splitting my skull with his well-used, dull axe. Not that I had yet experienced that before.

My mind was racing. The red-hot stabbing pain was never-ending. It needed to stop. I had to stop it. The thought of doing something to myself to stop the pain slowly crept into my mind. Like water slowly seeping into the house during a strong storm. Right as I was about to do something that I would regret, the pain disappeared as quickly as it came. With it, so did I.

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Hi everyone. I'm GreatGhoul, I guess. This is my first chapter published. I'll see if I write more.