The Girl from the Void

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A/n: Don't forget to vote, comment, share, all that jazz!

"He's going into shock!" A voice said. I couldn't see anything but a swirl of colors before my eyes. The world looked so pretty when it was like this. Near-death experiences are the most fun when you know that it's the last one you'll ever have. 

"Someone get him oxygen."

"Clear!"

Wind rushed up my nose, ice cold and intense. Shocks hit my chest as they tried to bring me back from the dead. Doctors are horrible like that. Nobody ever asks the patient if they want to be alive anymore. I'd rather die than keep on the way that I am. My eyelids fluttered shut as I gave into the darkness that was overtaking my mind. 

"We're losing him!"

I slipped away and promised myself that I would never wake up.

***

"Who are you?" a female voice rang through my head. I opened my eyes, finding myself on a sidewalk in the middle of a city. "What are you doing on the ground?"

I sat up, looking around, unable to understand what was happening. "How did I get here?" She held out her hand to me, offering it to pull me up. Not wanting to take her hand for fear of what she was capable of, I stood up on my own. "Where are we?"

"We're in Los Angeles, obviously." She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms. "Why are you on the floor? Did you OD or something?"

"OD?" I echoed. I felt a horrible pain in my head at those words. For some reason, they meant something to me. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew that it had to be something important. One of the buildings in front of me began to melt, turning completely into liquid before my eyes. "Are you seeing that?"

The mysterious girl flickered. It was as though she were made of pixels. I wondered to myself if I'd ended up in some sort of video game world. Is it possible that the sleep that I fell into at the hospital was induced? 

Suddenly, every building in the area began to melt before my eyes. They all turned to liquid. The only thing that was staying there was the mysterious girl. As the buildings became liquid, another world started building itself. A golden casino materialized around us. The sounds of whirling slot machines playing their music, roulette wheels clicking over and over again, and of chips being slammed down on poker tables filled my ears. "How did we get here?" I asked the girl. Despite all of the running machines, we were the only two people in this building. 

"I'm Claudette. You must be new here to ask all of these questions." She began walking away from me. When I didn't follow after her, she began, "Follow me, please."

I started after her, not knowing where she was leading me or how long it would be. "Where are you taking me?"

"Long ago, this world was created. The world changes with its own free will. If it wants us to be somewhere, it will put us there." She gestured to the casino around us. "For example, this place was created for us to give you a different environment."

"How can you trust a force like that?" I looked at her with concern. A world that changes all the time? That's absolute madness! "You just let this kind of shit happen without even questioning it? What kind of person are you?"

"Maybe what you see isn't what's real." She looked up. "Our perception of reality defines who we become, Ronnie."

"How do you know my name?"

"I know the names of all the souls in the void."

"The void? Is that what you call this place?" I looked around the empty but moving casino, wondering why anyone would think of something so full as a void. "Does anyone else live here?"

Claudette shrugged. "The void keeps what the void wants. There might be other people that we just can't perceive. Maybe they just don't exist in our version of reality."

"You think that everyone had their own version of reality? How does anyone know what's going on?" Before she could answer, Claudette disappeared. I looked around. "Claudette?" I called, wondering what could've happened to her. How could I know what's real in a place like this?

****

"He's fading out!"

"Give him some oxygen!" A doctor put a mask over my face, pouring pure oxygen into my lungs. "Is he breathing?"

"His heart rate is slowing down!"

The hospital is so noisy. How can anybody get any kind of peace when everybody is always talking so much? How can we just rest and focus on getting better in a place like this?