Haunting Grey

I opened my eyes to white. Machines beeped all around me. I felt groggy and my head throbbed, but I knew I was back in the hospital again.

Or was I dead?

I didn't know what to believe—Natalie was pulling me one way, her explanation sounded sincere and true. But my life—the actual one where I was alive and breathing—was mine.

As much as I loved Nat, I couldn't go with her.

But where was here, exactly? Was it all in my head, as she told me. Or was I actually alive, while she was dead?

Natalie was dead, that much I knew to be true.

She was a ghost, and only I could see her.

We'd been connected all our lives, of course she would still be with me. Both she and my father had said the same thing: she wanted to know that I was okay before she could move on. And I was, relatively speaking, okay. And she could move on, but something was clearly stopping her.

Was she afraid of what was ahead for her?

I'd never believed in an afterlife, not until she appeared to me the first time. Then things started to make more sense.

This was her afterlife.

I was her afterlife.

She was so bound to me that she would never leave. And she would never find peace if I didn't find the person responsible for her death.

She'd done so much for me when she was alive, and now I had the chance to give her the only thing she yearned for.

Answers.