I wait hastily for a glimpse of my future.

My breath comes in shallow waves, chest rising and falling in panicked peaks. Sweat clings to the palms of my hands, glues the fabric of my shirt onto my back. I pace through a sterile white facility. Enclosed in this building is nothing more, nothing less than a vision of how I die. A vision of the entryway to beyond, the opening to infinity, the scene in which I gasp my last breath of air and cough my soul out of my body.

Few others bother to look at what lies ahead. I do now because I cannot ensnare the curiosity that runs rampant in my mind like a frightened creature.

I do not hesitate when my name is called forth.

The concoction is smeared across my eyelids by gloved hands, a clear, smooth oil that chills every bit of skin it comes in contact with. It weighs down on my eyes with a heaviness it shouldn't have.

I'm out before I can even let my mind loose to wander.

I feel my body falling, sliding, my hands scrabbling for purchase on weathered, decayed soil. I'm helpless until the incline spits me up onto level ground. I groan. My eyes beam open to a tangled mass of deep green leaves and gnarled vines- a forest. Bright orchids bloom across the terrain like ships dotting a harbor.

I push my way through the thickly woven greenery, headed nowhere. Gradually, gradually, the trees grow more sparse, until I happen upon a small clearing framed by curling ferns.

At the center of the clearing sits a cobblestone well, a clock perched on its edges, hands prodding ten and two. As I inch closer and closer to the structure, it flickers and glimmers like a mirage. Grisly scenes of death shimmer in its place- a neck tightly gripped by a fraying rope, a spatter of blood on a windshield, a knife swimming in a young man's chest. The gruesome succession of images flies by faster, faster, until at last it stops at a single picture.

I squint, stare, gape at the portrait that appears. A crimson fire rages, devours a forest of trees, turning all to blackened stumps. A corpse lies in front, its skin badly burned and charred. And beside it- the cobblestone well that had been sitting in front of me not seconds ago.

My eyes shoot open in the spotless white facility. I collapse to the ground, my future no longer a mystery.