Nick slowly opened his eyes, blinking at the light shining against his face. Once he was focused he stared at his own reflection in a large mirror, curiously looking over his every feature. He looked the same now as he did before he had died, the only difference being that there was no such thing as highlighting in the afterlife so his hair had grown in a dark blonde, which he couldn’t say he disliked. It complimented him, made him look older. 

‘As old as I’m ever going to get,’ he thought bitterly. 

Something new in the reflection caught Nick’s eye and he glanced behind him, shocked to find himself in an entirely new location once he’d turned. He glanced around for a sign, trying to figure out where he’d ended up. 

“NEXT!” a loud shout called out and Nick saw a woman behind a desk, waving him over towards her. 

“Um, hi,” he spoke, approaching the tall oak desk that nearly hit him mid-chest, “What is this place?”

“The library,” the woman answered testily as if he should have already known and Nick could hear a bit of a Caribbean accent in her voice. 

“So, what am I in line for if this is the library?” he laughed, glancing around to see that he was the only person in the entire room aside from his friend manning the desk.

“Well you can’t very well just go around looking at whatever you want!” she threw her dark hair over her shoulder dramatically and crossed her arms firmly across her chest.

“I’m really not that into books actually, I don’t want to go looking around!” Nick assured her, not wanting this woman to get upset over nothing.

Suddenly she laughed. A loud, raucous laugh that Nick felt vibrating in his ear drums, “This isn’t a library of books, silly child. This is a library of memories!”

“Memories…but, how did I even get here in the first place?” Nick questioned curiously, scratching his forehead. 

“You asked to come here,” she told him with a shrug.

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes you did! You said to yourself that you wanted to remember, so here you are. Don’t think that your thoughts are your own anymore. Someone can always hear what you’re thinking and see what you’re doing and will try and get you what you need.”

“I do need them!” Nick stressed, “So where are they and how do I get them back?”

“You follow me,” she instructed, leading Nick behind the desk and through a door which lead down a long, bright, hallway.

Nick followed along behind her, taking a moment to look the woman over. She wore a long skirt with many different vivid colours and a peasant top, and her long hair hung down her back in braids almost to her hips. He thought it was odd to find a person like her to be running a place like this. He would have half expected it to be angels or something sitting behind the desks…of course he would have preferred if they were the Victoria’s Secret kind.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked aloud, reading the labels on the doors as they passed them. 

“We need to get to C, don’t we?” 

“What do I call you?”

“Flora,” the woman answered, pulling him down yet another hallway where the doors suddenly were labelled with last names beginning with the letter C, “This is you,” she announced, stopping in front of a door. 

“So what happens now? I just get them and go?”

Flora sighed and looked at Nick critically, wondering how she could explain the seriousness of what he was about to do, “When you died we went through your memories and picked out the ones we deemed too upsetting to bring along to the afterlife with you. All your mistakes, regrets, pain, and heartaches, all of it was taken to keep you happy now that you’ve moved on from your earth life. If you go in that room and you get your memories you’re going to have them forever. All of that pain – physical and emotional, all of your hurts will come back to you. If you make the decision to go in that room you’re making the decision to let everyone else be happy while you may suffer internally with the knowledge of what you’ve done in the past or what was done to you.”

Nick didn’t want to spend his eternity with regrets, and he sighed, running a hand through his hair, “My biggest regret will be not helping Brian get closure.”

“Don’t do this for someone else, only do it for you,” Flora warned him.

“Brian’s closure is my justice,” he explained, “I need to know what happened that night so I can help Brian find out who killed me.”

“Don’t think that your memories hold the key to that answer! Things might not be all that you think they are! Besides, that’s what the police are for, you shouldn’t meddle.”

“They’re not doing their job though! I’m the only person that truly knows the answers! Hasn’t anyone else been in this kind of position before?”

“Of course,” she nodded, still fiddling with the room key, “Any time there’s a sudden development in a police investigation years after the case has gone cold it’s usually because of things like this. Someone decides that their family has gone through too much and they send information to the other side.”

“I don’t want my family to go through any more than they already have. They deserve answers, I deserve answers. It would be different if I had given you those memories but I didn’t, they were taken from me before I got the chance to say I didn’t need them,” Nick argued, tempted to just grab the key from the woman so he could see what was on the other side of that door. 

“Okay,” Flora nodded, knowing he was going to want this no matter how she put it, “I just want you to realize Nick that when you go in there you might not find what you’re looking for. The answers you think are held in your memories may have never happened in the first place.”

“I know they’re there, I can feel it,” Nick whispered, holding a hand firmly over his heart. 

Flora reached out and unlocked the door, both of them shielding their eyes at the initial brightness that spilled out from the opening. She grabbed Nick’s arm and lead him in, both of them stopping in front of a small box that looked very much like a safety deposit box. 

“That’s it?” Nick asked curiously and the older woman nodded.

“I need you to decide…what do you want back? Do you want everything or just a particular moment in time?”

“I want it all,” commanded the blonde strongly, “I can’t risk missing a single detail.”

Flora nodded and gave Nick a small key, pressing the warm metal into the palm of his hand, “All you need to do is open the box and everything will come back to you. I will warn you though that you’ll relive all of those moments, and how they physically felt…including the reason you’re standing here in front of me. It might be very painful for you to experience.”

“I need to do this,” he retorted, staring straight down at the box as Flora left him alone in the room to experience the missing pieces of his life all over again. 

Flora’s final words had shaken him slightly and Nick faltered while reaching for the box. He was afraid to experience his death. He knew the details from reading the articles in Brian’s office but he could never remember that happening to him. He didn’t know what was done to him during the days he was missing, and he was terrified to know what it felt like to die. He wasn’t at all sure if the clues and secrets he so desperately desired would be found in the small box, but if anything he would be able to give Brian some sort of indication of what he’d gone through during his final days. He didn’t want to let Brian down, he was far more worried about knowing Brian’s life was happy and fulfilled. 

Taking a deep breath Nick reached out and put the key in the lock, as he let all of the air out of his lungs he shut his eyes and turned the key, ready to find out the truth no matter what the cost.