I didn’t know what to know after hearing those words. As I was helping Mark to across the street to a safer place, I tried to do simple maths in my head, trying to calculate the months and the dates; all to no avail. I was simply too tired to do anything else. The past events escalated too quickly, even my psychopathic brain couldn’t make full sense of it.

“Are you alright?” an officer asked as he approached us. I didn’t know what I said cause the next thing I remembered was the officer dropping dead on the pathway. Someone had shot him directly on the head. It was immediate chaos. As people were screaming and running for their life, I stood face to face with the murderer, trying to make out who it was. I never knew who it was cause he shot me before I could do anything else. I didn’t die but I woke up in a hospital bed next to Mark.

“Whaaa?” I asked the nurse that was standing at the door. “Shhhh,” she replied. “Relax. You have been shot but it didn’t hit anything important. You’ll live to see another day,” she said. The meds that were flowing into me helped me to fall asleep that night if you can still call it a night. I could have had a wonderful dream if it wasn’t for the terrible nightmare I had about going to hell. It was not that horrible but it made me thought that I was actually dead. I wasn’t surprised that I went to hell but it was different than what the bible said it would be.

It was around midday that I woke up. It was disappointing to me as I was enjoying my short stay in hell. Instead of being hot, it was actually cold, with beautiful sceneries and mansions. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have mistaken it for heaven. I looked to my right to find that Mark is still sleeping. For a moment I thought he was dead but then his chest started rising and falling. “What I poor fellow,” I said to myself and I meant it. He’s not even 30 yet and he already went through so much and part of it is because of me.