It was a warm, sunny day in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere meaning that Sam Malone was on a boat cruising aimlessly in a vast ocean or lake or some kind of body of water. The water was calm and tranquil with a brilliant teal color. He looked up at the turqouise sky with white clouds so puffy you could compare them to cotton candy. He looks back down at the water to find a family of dolphins emerge from the bottom of the sea and flip in unison to the flow of the water. He is amazed by this and yells for Diane to come check it out. He calls for her two or three times and she still hasn't come out. He hates to leave the awesome scene of the dolphins but he was getting annoyed and decided to go inside and look for her.
When he takes a step in, he is taken aback by the writings on the wall. They were painted purple and he figured Diane wrote those words herself. On the wall on the left, it was just her name itself; the wall straight ahead had a plus sign on it; the wall on the right said his name. That was when he turned himself around to find the most puzzling of all, a big question mark written in black. That scared him the most. He runs out of the boat screaming for her only to find that the water turned rough and gray with sharks now swimming in circles where the dolphins once joyfully somersaulted. Sam stood shell shocked as one of the sharks lunged out of the murky waves with his jaws wide open, hungerly trying to gnaw at Sam.
That was when he shot straight up out of bed and instintively threw the covers of his body. The sheets hit Diane in the face and woke up her up. Shit, Sam thought to himself, I really didn't need that right now.
"What's the big idea, Sam?" Diane asked annoyed.
"I just had a bad dream that's all," he said rubbing his temples with his index fingers.
"Are you okay?" She asks rubbing his tummy.
"Yeah," he says giving her a reassuring kiss before she turns over again trying to go back to sleep.
Sam lets out a sigh of relief. He hated having bad dreams because Diane would have to go into Dr. Crane mode and try to analyze the hell out of them. Even Carla would do that to him, the big supernatural creep that she is. Sam was never interested in new age or psychiatry. He likes to think logically about life and thought that crap was what it was, crap. A bad dream was a bad dream and nothing else. That's what he told himself as he rolled back over and tried to sleep again.
Next thing he knows, he's in a locker room just like he was in often during his Red Sox days. He was all alone and naked as a jaybird. It was cool seeing his body, he was proud of the way he took care of it. He was still no slacker when it came to fitness and excercise. He walks over to the sinks to check himself out in the mirror. Oh yeah, Sam Malone was still a stud with all his great hair and stuff. All of a sudden he sees two faces of himself in the mirror, one still smiling at himself and the other one staring holes directly back at himself. The serious one spoke in a tone that was out of this world, thunderous, baritone that wasn't his.
"What happened to you?"