When María was Forgotten, she found herself not quite dead, but certainly not among the living. She had never thought such a fate would befall her. Being Forgotten, after all, was something that happened to those people. 

The world around her had transformed into a dulled, watered down version of the New York she had grown up in. It was as though an artist had painted over the city with a shadowy palette and broad, cluttered brushstrokes. The vibrant neon signs plastered on the towering buildings around her had been reduced to nothing more than black and white lights. Streets that should have been cluttered with frantic, speeding drivers now lay barren. Perhaps the most unsettling thing of all was the rotting stillness. No angry shouting between pedestrians and drivers, nor the incessant honking of cars, simply the hushed symphony of misplaced souls. When the ethereal silhouettes of those still in the real world began to coalesce around her, she knew she was in the In-Between.