The Girl in the Garden

Epilogue

Beep... beep... beep...

It was a sound Alice was getting used to. It was all the company she ever had anymore, apart from the nurses who came to check on her every day, but they weren't really there for the conversation. They would check charts and machines, clean her, replace her sheets, but none of them talked to her.

All she could do was stand and watch, and that was what she was determined to do. She didn't need sleep anymore, so all day and night, she watched the bed that held her body. Not that it was hers anymore. That disfigured, charred mass of flesh wasn't Alice Everett. That's what she told herself anyway.

After the accident, she woke up in the hospital and was surprised to discover she felt no pain. When she stood up, she left her body behind and ceased to have any claim over it anymore. The power inside it that kept it alive was... something else, and she wasn't about to let it use her body to do any more harm.

So for weeks, she watched, until the night she realized that watching could never be enough. There was lightning that night, a lot of it, and it made the one hand that was left on her body twitch.

"Oh no," she said, even though nobody could hear her now.

She watched as her body slowly started to rise from the bed. Its hand pulled the bandages away from its face, revealing a half-burned mess with no lips, eyelids, or ear on the right side.

It swung its legs over the edge of the bed, one of which now ended in a stump at the knee, and tried to stand up. With only one foot, her body couldn't stand, so it tumbled to the floor, setting the monitors into a state of alarm.

A nurse came rushing into her room and declared, "Ms. Everett! You're awake!"

Roused by her cries, the nurse's colleagues came rushing into Alice's room. Two orderlies attempted to help Alice's body get back into bed, not realizing the real Alice was standing behind them.

"Get out of here!" She screamed at the hospital staff, but they couldn't hear her. "Run away, please!"

A doctor examined Alice's body when she saw it lock eyes with her. Its half mouth smiled a wicked smile as fiery sparks began to break out all over its scarred flesh.

"Doctor, she's on fire!" An orderly shouted as he leaped away.

The flames started small, but soon Alice's broken body was stitched back together from the Inferno. Half of her face was reformed in the shape of a flaming demon. Her missing arm and leg became limbs of fire and smoke.

There was so much happening then that Alice couldn't keep track. As the demon who had hijacked her body stood up tall, the staff around her fled. The demon walked forward into the hallway, and the flames spread with it. It stopped, framed by the doorway, and turned its fiery eye toward Alice. "Coming?" It asked.

Alice followed the demon with nothing left for her to do but keep watching. As they walked through the hallway, patients and nurses leaped away from the flames. Fire alarms were ringing, and sprinklers were attempting and failing to douse the flames, and the demon was smiling at the chaos it caused.

When they made it out of the hospital, Alice watched the demon sniff the air. It looked frustrated at first, sniffing in every direction, then it seemed to find something in the wind that excited it.

"What are you looking for?" She asked.

"You'll see." Although the thing spoke with her voice, there was another voice alongside it, a sinister second voice that she knew from her past.

The demon leaped into the air then, propelling itself like a rocket into the distance. At first, Alice assumed that was all the watching she'd be able to do. She had no way of knowing where the demon was going or how to follow. Still, she was surprised to find that all she needed to do was think about being with the demon, and then she wasn't standing outside the burning hospital anymore.