“There!” Alan yelled, pointing at a dark shape towering above us in the rain.

Lightning stroked the clouds above us with skeletal fingers, revealing the Jacobsen’s abandoned barn.

Once inside, I rubbed my arms trying to work some warmth back into them. “I’m sorry I asked you out here, I thought it would be…” Romantic, I finished mentally.

Alan opened his mouth to reply. A blinding flash of white light filled the room accompanied by a deafening crack that swallowed Alan’s words and threw us into the air.

My vison came back first- all bright swirling lights amidst a blurry sea of darkness. Hot sharp pain coursed up and down my legs and back. The smell of burning wood choked the air.

Through the blurriness I could see Alan kneeling above me, crying for me.

I was dying. I had to tell him now before it was too late.

Swallowing painfully, I slowly glanced up at him. I ran a soot covered, pale hand across his face as a mother would do to her child, or a lover to another. Sadly I choked out, “Hold me…”