This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. Being dead. There was no bright lights, no tunnel, no long lost family members to greet me, no dead friends to beckon me on to a better life than the one I was leaving behind. It was blackness. More than blackness, it was an absence of color. A darkness complete. There was nothing. That is what I told the paranormal researchers from Tucson University when they came to the hospital to question me about my Near Death Experience. The truth. They didn’t like it. Crestfallen faces, half-moon frowns, doubtful eyes. They left me alone after that. 

They say that time slows down and your life flashes before your eyes in the seconds before you think you are about to die. Not true, at least not for me. Don’t get me wrong, time did slow down, but it was not to see a montage of my life up until that point. Time slowed down and I saw not the life I had lived but the life I had not lived. The places I had never seen, the children I never had, the things I’ll never know, the man I would never become. I saw the stars brighter than I have ever seen them, the whole cosmos seemed to stretch out for eternity as the wind roared past my ears and a feeling of insignificance and regret pounded into my body harder than the ground rushing up to meet me. Thing was, two days earlier, I was already dead.

This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. Being alive. I took another drink of the ice cold Guinness my roommate had bought for me. I savored the thick bittersweet taste it left in my mouth and raised the bottle to my lips again.                                                                                                                                                  

Faron walked into the room. I was sitting on the bottom bunk bed. Faron sat down next to me on the bed and dropped her head forward, her long auburn hair falling past her face and over her knees. She raised her head and looked at me. She didn’t say anything,  just sat there with her gray blue eyes boring into my face. I knew she wanted me to look at her. I took a large swallow of Guinness instead. “I’ve been thinking of home a lot lately,” she said, still staring at the side of my face. I instantly tensed up. This wasn’t the first time she had mentioned going back home and I was beginning to get sick of hearing it. In the monotonous tone of voice I had been using when still partly sober I told her we were having a blast in Tucson. She sighed with frustration and spouted “You’re having a blast, I am getting tired of partying every…single…day.” My mood began to darken. I pushed it away. “This whole idea to leave and travel the country was your idea in the first place,” I replied and began beating an unopened pack of cigarettes against my palm. “You wanted to see new places, meet new people, and party every…single…day.” The last three words were punctuated by three loud claps of the cigarette pack against my hand. I picked up my beer. The half bottle left was drained in several large gulps.