Alan: I do not own some of the characters mentioned in this story. Enjoy!

David woke with a start. His thoughts were jumbled. He vaguely remembered the alley, the men, the yelling, then the ear-splitting gunshot. He moved his hand to a fresh hole, the size of a dime, in his grey jacket. The tunnel, the light? Yes! He remembered, he touched the light. David sat up. He never had 20/20 eyesight, but the world around him looked uncannily blurry. Sounds seemed muted. The only thing in focus was himself and a circle in the ground, about 3 feet in diameter. He looked around and noticed a boy about his age sitting on the nearby dumpster. "About time," the boy said.

He looked weary, like a babysitter who had to deal with a two-year-old with imsomnia. "I'm Nick." Nick was dressed in a leather jacket, a white dress shirt, and a tie. "David," David groggily muttered. Nick wrote that on a piece of paper and handed it to him. "In case you forget." David wondered why he would ever forget his name. "Where am I" He asked. "Manhattan," Nick replied. "When?" "Nine months after" David hated vague responses. "After what?" Nick stopped walking and turned around. "After when you think we are."

"I'm dead," David's hand again crept towards the hole in his jacket. The skin underneath was smooth and untouched. "Sorry." Nick tried to look sympathetic, but David guessed he was not the first to go through this routine. "What happened?" Davids memory was still not straight. "From what I can tell, you got mugged." David was having trouble walking. The ground seemed to be made of some thick goop that sucked him in. "Where are we going?" He was starting to get a little fed up with Nick's odd answers. "Look at the skyline. Anything new?" Another vague answer. David scanned the urban horizon of New York. It was all the same except for the-"Oh My God." The twin towers stood tall and erect. Unlike the rest of the distant buildings, the World Trade Center was in perfect focus. David was so intoxicated he didn't see the school bus until it was a foot away. It was an old school bus with chipped yellow paint. In the driver seat sat a boy who looked about nine, but expression told otherwise. he looked like he, and may well have, hadn't smiled for years. "All aboard," He said