DEATH FLOWER

Chapter 1

MORANA'S POV

6 YEARS AGO

"So Ms. Anderson. What exactly are you feeling right now?" The top psychiatrist of Mental Orbe looked at me with expectant eyes giving me her professional yet gentle smile. After a long period of silence I finally found the strength to make sentences out of words and bring them to the open vacuum.

"There's a tight knot in my chest and a way tighter noose around my neck" I said with a quivering voice.

"That sounds like a very concerning matter. What may be the reason for this suffocating sensation?" Period.

"Sometimes I-" I hesitated. I have been to therapy several times. There is no escaping this problem. I knew this wasn't going to be any different. Because it's not them who are the problem but me. Still the psychiatrist's reassured glance kept me going. "Sometimes I feel like I get sucked out of my own body. Like every single bit of my soul gets drawn out and I find myself at an unfamiliar yet familiar site"

"That seems like quite the experience. What do you encounter there?"
"Its different every time. Different things happen and I feel like I'm the extra in someone else's story. The story of how their life thread gets cut."

"Can you explain what exactly do you mean by this?"
"I see the protagonist of that story dying right before my eyes but-"
"But?"
"There is only one thing that remains same throughout every experience"
"And what is that?"

"A man."
"A man?"
"Yes. A man dressed in black every single time. Looking right at the scene as if he were death himself. The only person who seems out of place just like me."

PRESENT

Aghh

Why do I feel so stiff and drained of energy? I asked myself as pangs of pain went through my entire body.

More importantly why is it so dark? Am I dead? Is this hell? I winced with pain when suddenly my eyes smashed open. My vision blurred and cleared multiple times until it refocused and all I saw was a white ceiling looking back at me. My back felt the cold concrete floor that rested below me. My head experienced a severe headache as if it was about to explode into a million tiny pieces. And damn it was painful. What was happening? No. More importantly why was this happening? I couldn't decipher. Still too caught up in the pain and distress to look around, I just lay there blinking like a baby who just woke up after a good nights sleep. The only difference being that this wasn't really comfortable or refreshing. My body felt numb for some odd reason.

"Now that was a long nap. Done or do you wanna sleep more?" My mundane thoughts were brought to a dead halt by a thick british accent, making me jolt up both physically and mentally.

I thought I had been completely deprived of energy to get up but those words and accent. Ok screw that. The thought of who was the owner of that accent made me jolt up only to find the expectant 6 ft 3 inches man standing leisurly nearby. I observed my surroundings like the sole survivor of world war. White washed walls. A white tiled floor. Black bars. Clattering and- Wait what? Black Bars? What the fuck.

I looked around to find myself in a cell as all the past events settled back into my mind.

Oh fuck

3 HOURS AGO

"I've been trying to say this for ages. I like you. Go out with me." I stared blankly at the nincompoop who approached me just to throw bunch of bullshit out of his mouth.

Believe me when I say that life is all about encountering an awful lot of shit with chunks of normalcy. Because that's how life has been for me in the 25 years of mortality.