Darren felt something grip him with an intensity he had never felt before, like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. He squirmed where he was but the claws refused to release him. In the distance he saw a bright white light that slowly approached him. When the light finally arrived, it engulfed him for a short time, then flickered out of existence back to the pitch black he was in before. He struggled again, this time intensely. The grip released him and he had a feeling of falling. 

Darren's eyes batted in the smoke of the nearby fire. For a second, everything was blurry. The area focused to reveal he was in a gas station, lying on his side. The building was burning around him. A few feet from him his laptop case was sitting on the ground, blood and embers lay on it. Darren stood and wandered over to it. Opening it he saw that the computer was broken clean in half. Beside the broken laptop sat the usual 100 card MtG deck that had won countless Friday Night Magic events. Darren removed it and put it in his pocket with shaky hands. A small chunk of the roof of the station fell inward next to him, an ember landed on his shoulder with a tinge of pain. When Darren brushed the ember off, he was surprised to see it had not burned him.

Walking over to where he had stood up, he searched the room, in one corner lay a body face-down. Darren approached it and rolled it over, revealing its face. It was him.