Before Your Eyes

By L.J. Lewis

A man finds himself nearing middle age, bearing a lot of scars from several unhappy relationships. Having lived a less than normal life, he has become increasingly paranoid, spending a lot of time analyzing situations before acting. The one time he fails to do that, he finds himself in a world where nothing makes sense. Sick and shaken by a nightmare, he is locked out of his hotel room. 

The memory of a nightmare plagues him as he moves toward a simple goal – returning to the lobby to get a key to his room. The impossibly slow elevator opens to reveal the woman who broke his heart. But she is not the last spirit from his past to haunt him in his illness. Forced to face the memories that he had tried to forget, he is finally forced to face what he has become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.J. Lewis
• Release date: Jan 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393985013

Book preview

Chapter I

HAVING FINALLY REACHED the top of the stairs, I felt compelled to look behind me to make sure I wasn’t being followed. It was a habit I had developed over the years. Perhaps some would call me paranoid, but to me it was one more way of protecting myself. Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I should be oblivious to the people around me. That was a lesson I had learned the hard way over the years.

Confident that no one was there, I exited the stairway to the hotel’s hallway. Slight annoyance went through me as I passed the elevator on the right. The slight breeze from the stairwell caused the small paper sign taped over the elevator buttons to flap, reminding me why I was annoyed. How in the world a hotel could stay open without working elevators was beyond me. The ominous echoing of the door slamming caught me by surprise; I had not realized that it would be so loud. I must have twitched a little because the messenger bag hanging off my shoulder bounced against my leg. As I reached down to steady it, I couldn’t help but smile, remembering the look on my ex-girlfriend’s face when she had given it to me. There had been a time when Miranda had really cared about me or had really made me believe she cared. Too bad she had ended up being a shallow woman whose sole interest was herself. She had been so promising in the beginning. By the time the relationship had ended, she was easily one of the worst things that had ever happened to me. The misery I had felt because of her had followed me for nearly two decades. To this day, I couldn’t find it in myself to trust any woman.

With a shrug, I pulled out the hotel room key. Looking between the number on the small envelope and the room numbers, I mentally counted the number of doors from the stairs. It was a quirk I had developed over the years, but it had proven to be useful. Traveling as much as I did, I always looked for ways to automate my actions – it is much easier to remember to look for the seventh door on the right than to memorize a set of room numbers. I wouldn’t need to be in the room long. Not this time. This would amount to little more than a quick look around, because I had a lot of things that I needed to do before dusk.

I smiled as I thought about how this trip was going to go. I had been planning it for several months, which was really unusual for me. I had always been more spontaneous. Then again, this trip was special. It was worth all of the planning I had put into it, because it would finally see the end of something that had been plaguing me for most of my life. Everyone has dreams. One way or the other, I was here to finally resolve a dream that had haunted me for most of