A Dance With Death

|| Chapter 3 - Invisible ||

"Can't anybody see me?!" I yell at people as I walk through the corridors. "Why aren't you answering me?!"

My whole world is spinning. I can't understand anything. One second I'm completely fine and the next, I see my own self - or a doppelganger - on a hospital bed, completely bandaged, with an oxygen mask and many bruises on his face and hands. I tried yelling at him - or myself - but nothing happened. And now, I'm roaming around in the corridors, unsure of what to do.

Before yelling and shouting at random people, I was examining the man on the bed. He looked exactly like me, except his face was damaged with cuts and scratches. There were tubes attached to him. Even his hands were injured. I looked down at my hands and found nothing. I was completely fine. I tried looking at my reflection on the glass door, but I only found the image of the whole room with the man on the bed; I wasn't visible on it.

I can't help but think that I'm a ghost, that the person on the bed is me - the dead me. But I remember that the heart monitor was steadily beeping, so I had to be alive.

Or maybe this is another dream. Another clear, vivid dream; like the one with Niall.

"You must be Zayn Malik," I hear a soft feminine voice behind me. I turned around to find a young girl sitting on the staircase from where I previously climbed down.

In an instant, the atmosphere around me changes. The air is now cold and dry. Something doesn't feel right.

"I've heard about you," the girl continues.

The girl seems to be around twenty. She looks like an ordinary girl but she is abnormally thin. Her cheeks are hollow, her face seems weak but her expression is firm. She has short dark hair, barely touching her shoulders and she has really pale skin. She is wearing a brown leather jacket over a green t-shirt with worn out jeans. She is attractive in an odd sort of way.

And she can see me.

"It's completely normal to be scared and confused right now." She stands up. I can't help but notice how skinny she is, like a skeleton. "I've seen people reacting worse than the way you're reacting."

"Reacting?" I ask. "Reacting to what?"

"For starters: finding your own body on a hospital bed, all damaged, while you actually feel alive," she says.

"I don't actually feel alive," I point out.

"Ah yes," she says. "That emptiness feels strange. But you'll get used to it."

She knows what's going on, I say to myself. Is she here to help me?

The girl starts climbing down the steps, walking towards me, bringing the air of uneasiness even closer to me.

"Who are you?" I say as I step back, placing my hand in between us. The girl stops. "Why are you the only person that can see me?"

I am, somehow, very calm. A normal person would freak out after seeing what I've seen. But I know I'm not normal. Not now anyway.

She gives a faint smile. "I generally don't answer any of your questions, because as it is, you're dealing with a lot. You've seen a lot in your lifetime, Zayn. You've done enough. You've suffered enough. I know that it will be hard to let go. But that's what life is." She says the words as if she's said it a thousand times before.

"Excuse me?"

She looks down as she shifts the weight of her body to her toes. Then looking up, she raises an eyebrow at me. I see pity in her eyes.

"I think you already know." She gives me a sad smile.

I just stare at her for a moment because it takes me a while to realise what she's talking about - death. I'm dead.