Brett always thought white was supposed to mean purity, innocence. There's a reason they chose that color for wedding dresses, right? Baptisms? But inside this snow storm, he didn't feel wholesome, holy. He sort of felt like... nothing at all. That's really what white is, right?

Absence?

The cold has gone. Now he doesn't feel much of anything. He reaches out his hand and tries to touch whatever there was. But his fingers closed around air. No, that's wrong. His hand wasn't there at all. He tried to reach his face, to feel his nose, his mouth, his eyes. But he didn't have a hand, and he didn't have any of the rest of it, either. It was like he was just an essence, what he supposed it would feel like if there was an afterlife, a heaven.

Maybe he was dead.

There was no fear in this thought, only wonder. No anxiety, no dread.

He was just beginning to enjoy the possibility when he heard a voice. 

"Brett? Brett? Are you there?" He recognized it as the last person he heard talking before he fell into this abyss. 

Lauren.

He almost didn't want to answer her. If he was dead and in his own personal infinity, her presence felt like an intrusion. But what if she was lost, scared? He could never enjoy his own peace when he felt like someone else was struggling. 

"Yes."

"What is this?"

"I don't know."

"I can't see you."

"No." It was a pleasure, to be nothing at all. His physical presence felt like a burden he'd escaped. He didn't want to go back to being something, to a body, with all of its inconveniences like hair that wouldn't stop growing, the indignity of all of its needs--the need to eat, to excrete, to sleep and wake up and keep going on and on and on. 

He'd let go of all of that, and he didn't want it back.

But Lauren persisted.

"Come toward my voice," she said.

"I can't." 

There was no way to navigate in nothing. He was nowhere, he was everywhere.

"Then I'll come to you," she insisted.

He was going to say there was no point, that she should just relax, just exist.

Strangely, though, he saw a figure in the distance. She was a blurry silhouette in the distance, with legs, with feet that moved her through space, toward him. She was just as he remembered her, a slight figure with hair that floated around her, flowing as if there was a wind. She came close enough that he could make out her features, smooth and delicate.

She had a shadow.

In this place where there was no darkness, there was her, trailing the evidence of a body, of a life that hadn't been left behind in his dusty apartment.

They were alive. 

Another noise sliced through the space between them. If he had hands, he would have covered his ears, so terrible it was. A hungry, insatiable growl. And then he realized he did have hands and they were covering his ears, and he had a head and it was pounding in excruciating pain.

His perspective broadened, and he became aware of a third figure, one twice Lauren's height and width. It was bulky and black and so, so angry. It was a bear.

Brett remembered childhood nightmares of such a bear, covered in a stinking, matted fur. It had eyes black as midnight and teeth that gleamed like white hot fire. He knew it wanted something from him, but it was not his flesh. It was the thing that made him, him. When he was little, he gave no thought to souls or consciousness, but that's what the bear wanted. It wanted his every little emotion. But mostly it wanted his darkness. The things he was most ashamed of, the fleeting thoughts that he pretended not to have because they were ugly and wrong. Those were the things the bear wanted. And that's how Brett survived the bear. He dropped each humiliation like breadcrumbs and snuck away as the bear snuffled through the underbrush, gobbling them while Brett escaped.

This was that same bear.

There were only three things in this strange new world.

Him. 

And Lauren.

And the bear. 

Lauren was getting closer. She saw the bear and let loose a scream, then covered her mouth, stopped her progress toward Brett. Her eyes grew and her shoulders slumped. The bear, stirred by her terror, turned toward her, lowering his front haunches to the ground and preparing to charge. 

There was nothing else for Brett to do.

He clapped his hands and shouted for the bear's attention.

"Hey! Remember me?" His voice stung the air with its high pitch.

The bear paused, turned its head, and sniffed the air. Its nostrils flared as though it recognized the scent of Brett's regrets. 

"Come," Brett whispered.

The bear obliged.

Sickness gripped Brett, and he opened his mouth and spilled his guts. It was vile, it was bile, it was everything that happened since that awful night, the one he missed the stars. 

It was enough.

The bear came.