It was late afternoon in Brandermill and the harsh May sun was starting to set. A group of three men were sitting outside a small restaurant eating and drinking as they talked and laughed without regard for the people around them.

In the group, a rather handsome, blonde man who wearing a white t-shirt that accented his muscles slammed the table as he spoke with some bitter anger:

“And you know what the worst part was Simon, I was about to buy a house and was planning to propose to her there.”

Simon couldn’t help but laugh, while Charles acted the adult and spoke with a reassuring tone:

“Stop thinking about it Sil. She never really felt like the one. Just think of it as an opportunity to not settle and find someone who truly belongs with you.”

Charles’ words made sense to Silver, but he was not in the mood to pay attention to him as he turned to the chuckling Simon and spoke with anger:

“What so funny you bastard. I remember you after you got dumped by that Eliz girl.”

Simon simply waved his hand dismissively as he spoke in between chuckles:

“Right, I remember when Eliz dumped me as I was about to propose to her at my newly bought house, oh wait, that was your dumbass’ story. Haha.”

Silver simply snorted and put his attention to downing his beer. Charles also chuckled slightly but kept it under control. He then turned to Simon and spoke:

“Alright guys. I’ll head out now. Tomorrow is Saturday, so we can get together at my office and go over the books then finalize everything.”

Simon wiped his teary eyes while replying:

“That sounds good. I have to finish the paperwork on the sale of my bank tomorrow as well. I’ll get to your office around noon. Hey Silver, can you get there earlier tomorrow and do the audit.”

Silver who seemingly hasn’t recovered from his anger responded with a simple nod before getting back to drinking. Seeing this, Simon immediately stood up and brought out his phone as he spoke:

“Alright then gents. I’ll see you tomorrow. Anyway, am too drunk to drive, so get a taxi.”

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After a short ride in a taxi, Simon arrived in well-lit neighborhood with numerous big houses peppered erratically all over the place. The taxi stopped in front of a relatively small mansion with a tall, stone fence.

Simon paid the man and then walked unsteadily through the gates and to his house. This house was somewhat older than the other houses around it and seemingly smaller. However, it was still a mansion with three stories and a masonry façade that made it look like a castle.

Simon looked at the mansion with some sadness evident in his face. He really never expected to set foot in his family’s ancestral home ever again since he had sold it a year after inheriting it some four years ago.

And yet, here he is walking through its rustic and luxurious doors and gazing at those pairs of marble stairs that seemingly sprouted out of the ground on either side of the voyeur. Simon did not know if it was the alcohol or the nostalgia, but e couldn’t help but feel a burning sensation in his heart.

He trudged forward towards the area between the two staircases with tears in his eyes. There was a mahogany double door with intricate, silver patterns, sandwiched in-between them. Simon pushed the door and felt around for a light switch which he eventually found.

What greeted him was a rather expansive study with a large desk in the middle surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of books adorning the walls. Simon looked at the study as he failed to ebb the tears that flowed from his eyes.

This was his father’s and grandfather’s study. He remembered doing his homework next to his father when he was young, he remembered bringing his father teaching him how to write a check on that same desk, or his mother standing over him as he rearranged the books he brought down into their spots.

He never realized how much of his life was tied to this house until he had to sell it. And now, here he was through an unlikely event standing in that very house as its owner. Simon was at a loss of what he was feeling. He knew that this possibly couldn’t be, but he also knew that this was all he ever wanted.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful and terrifying phenomenon, as Simon felt his heart and mind creak while caught in between his inability to believe that this is real and his sincere wish that it is. He immediately walked to the side of the study where a small cabinet topped with a myriad of liquors sat.

Simon immediately reached for the whiskey, which also happened to be the one with the most liquid in it and then trotted unsteadily towards the desk while taking large swigs straight from the bottle.

He proceeded to sit on the office chair behind the desk with the whiskey in his hand. He couldn’t help but chuckle drunkenly at the fact that whiskey was with him every time he feels lost.

However, as he continued drinking from the bottle, his thoughts got more and more disordered, until he could no longer feel himself. Eventually, the bottle slipped from his hand, and his head slumped down on the desk.

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This was all Simon wanted, a slight reprieve from the onslaught of fear, suspicion, hope and hopelessness that was assailing his mind.

However, As Simon hit his head against the desk, he felt mind sober up before immediately being overwhelmed by an eerie sensation, like what you would feel at the peak of a roller-coaster right before the fall.

Simon immediately tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. He just felt that indescribable sensation while surrounded by darkness. And then the fall came.

He felt himself fall, in darkness, and in astonishing speeds. He immediately tried to grab onto something, anything, but he couldn’t feel his hand, in fact, he couldn’t feel whatsoever, except that he was falling.

Fear gripped his heart but was soon replaced by anxiety as he continued falling for minutes, and then the minutes turned to hours. At this point, the feeling of falling did not lessen, but Simon was no longer trying to fight it.

At first, Simon simply prayed, and then he begged, and then he got angry, but this was all within the first hour of falling. By the second hour, Simon simply gave in as his descent into oblivion continued.

He could not understand what happened, but he suspected that he must have died from alcohol poising, or perhaps he pulled the trigger and ate that iron pill, either way, he was convinced that this was death.

It was slightly underwhelming, but this was death. And honestly, he didn’t mind it too much since there was no hell. He only felt that it was somewhat bland since he only had one feeling which was falling.

However, as he was settling comfortably into his afterlife and the sensation of eternal descent, he immediately felt the feeling disappear. This slight change immediately alarmed Simon and wrenched him from whatever thoughts he was having, however, before he could fully analyze what this meant, now that his eternal afterlife was nothing but darkness where he felt nothing, two images popped out in front of him.

The images slightly blurry, as if he was looking through a layer of water, however, he could still make out the scenes In the two images. He was immediately at a loss as he had no idea what to make of what he was seeing.

Sitting in front of Simon where two images of himself. However, one of him was holding a gun to his head while the other him was passed out with his head resting on the desk in the study. Simon was truly flabbergasted. The prospect of two of him almost drove insane, and now there were three of him with one of them watching the other two?

“What the fuck is going on.” Was what Simon wanted to scream, however, he couldn’t do anything except look alternatingly between the two images of himself. A few minutes of being at a loss for words, both literally and figuratively, Simon noticed something.

The two images of himself were not truly stationary, rather, they were moving at a very slow rate as he noticed his index finger twitch slightly as if trying to squeeze the trigger.

Simon was immediately overtaken by a sense of urgency and fear that trumped his feelings f confusion. He instinctively reached towards the image of himself holding the gun and then felt that exact same feeling of falling, except he fell towards his gun holding self.

A split second later, Simon felt his vision change. He was staring at a wall, but he didn’t have the time to wonder as he immediately moved his right hand quickly from. He then felt a cold feeling disappear from his temple as he turned and stared at the gun in his hand with an incredulous look.

“What the fuck is going on.”

This time, Simon was able to scream as his voice reverberated throughout the dark office. Simon immediately put the gun on the coffee table in front of him and scrambled for his phone that was in his pocket.

The date on the phone showed that he didn’t in fact go back to the past, and that everything he experienced in the last day was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. However, a small part of him could not accept this explanation. He immediately sat back down on the sofa as he continued staring blankly at his phone.

He was not a believer in the supernatural, but he had no explanation for anything that happened to him. He, who was trying to kill himself, found himself in the past, but just when he was settling in to his past life, his mind suddenly left his body and he fell for an hour through empty space before somehow ending up back in the future.

Simon could not understand what to feel or belief, but he was sure that there was more to this than he understood. He immediately closed his eyes and tried to replicate that feeling of falling.

Lo and behold, he immediately felt himself falling for a few seconds before finding himself standing in front of two blurry screens except this time, one of him was not holding a gun, but rather sitting on the sofa with his eyes closed and a constipated look on his face.

Simon finally felt like he understood what was going on, except, he had no idea how this was possible, or if it was temporary. However, he couldn’t risk being stuck in this state of non-being, or in that awe full reality where he had nothing and no one.

He immediately willed himself into the picture where he was passed out and felt his vision blur before noticing the marble floor. He had a terrible feeling immediately take over him as the drunkenness kicked in all at once, but he still pulled his head off the desk and stared at the door across from him.

He was still drunk to the point of barely keeping his head up without a feeling of wooziness flashing through his entire body, however, he still laughed out with a sense of relief and accomplishment.

He was not dead, and he was not back to the dreadful life, so he immediately felt a mix of relief and happiness overwhelm him. He immediately put his back of the desk and promptly passed out with a contented smile on his face.