This Place Only

Prologue

Prologue

I was told that I would not remember any of this. It was promised, unconditionally, that everything would be permanently erased from my mind.

Yet here I am with full recall.

If you’re looking for solid, indisputable evidence of my journey, you’ll be disappointed. So far as I can tell, there is no way to prove any of it. The only person who could possibly confirm this bizarre series of events no longer exists. I wonder now if he ever did to begin with. I suppose that some of the things I witnessed (if explored in detail) might lend credence to my tale, but certainly any dream of the future might one day prove real, however fantastic. There lies the murky realm of mystics and seers.

I will start this narrative only minutes before my world was destroyed. My wife, Lauren, and I had been married exactly ten years that September 10th.  Although we both had to be at work on this special day, I managed to leave my office early and did everything I could to create a romantic evening for the two of us. Early that next morning, a limo would have taken us to the airport, depositing us on a plane bound for Lake Tahoe. The glorious trip would have lasted an entire week. We had not been on a vacation together since our honeymoon.

If you’ve ever held your one, true love in your arms, you might turn the page and come along with me. You would understand. If you’ve even dreamed that you touched, however briefly, the hand of that person who might one day change your life and anchor you to reality, you might also come along. For where I go is the opposite side of such tenderness. To the deepest of wells where there is no way back up and the walls are curved and polished smooth and all is darkness.

Lauren was the only light guiding me back from these impossible depths.