Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

Chapter One *rewritten*

My life ended like this:

I was riding my bike to school, with the biting mid-November wind blowing back my curly black hair and the piercing cold seeping through my green jacket into my skin, making me shiver. Leaves crunched under the bike's wheels as I flew down the sidewalk, past bare trees and frost-covered lawns. Winter had come early, without warning, and without scientific explanation from the weathermen on my television. My mom told me Jack Frost had arrived. I knew it was something else.

A sharp wave of cold ran up my fingers to my chest, making my heart burn and bringing my attention back to riding my bike. Ahead was an intersection I needed to cross in order to get to school. I slowed my pedaling, and immediately began to feel colder.

"Hi! Cold this morning, isn't it?" The crossing guard asked cheerfully from behind a thick scarf. I rubbed my chest: my heart still ached from that last chill.

"Yeah," I said, and ribbons of white cloud danced off my tongue and into the frosty air. The traffic light turned yellow, and I prepared myself to walk across the road, but suddenly I couldn't move. The strong wind beat against my jacket, and the cold froze my bones. My toes began to burn as if they were on fire. The skin on my hands began to split, crack, and bleed. I looked up, at the crossing guard. Her lips were moving, but I couldn't hear her. I couldn't hear anything. Slowly, I fell to the ground, like a snowflake falling from the sky. My back pressed into the sidewalk, and I began to melt. Above me, the sky was a melancholy grey, with black dots spreading across the scene like spilled ink. The darkness, little by little, painted the world until all I could see was nothing.

_____

Then I could see. Above me, there was the grey sky, unadulterated by any ink. I stretched, winced when I felt how sore my muscles were. I sat up and looked around in a tired daze and was blinded by some bright, flashing lights. I turned my head away, looked down, and saw ... my body? 

My fatigued dissipated, and I shot up to my feet, but my body lay on the ground, still. I shook my head back and forth, hard. I blinked. Nothing changed. I knelt down and looked at my face closely. My brown eyes were glazed over, staring wide at the black nothing. I reached out and gently pressed a finger to my body's forehead, and it was ice cold. I heard shouts behind me, and I turned to see two figures running towards me as fast as the wind. I jumped to the side, out of their way, and they knelt down, hid the body from my view, and got to work. I looked to the right and realized that the bright lights I saw earlier were from an ambulance parked on the side of the road. 

And that's when it hit me. I looked back at the figures kneeling beside my body. They weren't rushing anymore. One stood, slowly, solemnly. The other had froze in place, with two fingers pressed against my neck. I looked down at my own hands. At a glance, they looked the same, but after focusing, I noticed that twisting threads of translucency were woven into my dark skin. I suddenly felt nauseous and sat down on the sidewalk, my brain numb.

What's going on?, I wondered, looking around at the cinematic scene surrounding me.

Naturally, at first I thought I was trapped in some horrific nightmare. However, after the ambulance had driven away and I sat alone, thinking in the bitter cold for almost an hour, I knew that this was reality, and I was ... dead.

Then does that make me a ghost? I looked down at my hands again. The shifting threads made my skin look like it was swirling, mixing in with the cold air around me. I felt light, as if I could jump into the sky and have the wind whisk me away to someplace warmer and happier. I smiled at the thought of leaving, but then I remembered: Ashley. My best friend. She and I had been inseparable since kindergarten, when we would build tall towers out of colorful wood blocks and try to knock the other person's tower down. As we got older, our games changed, but our bond strengthened. We had sleepovers every weekend and spent time together everyday after school exploring the woods behind her house or drawing in my room. By the time we were in middle school, we were more like sisters than friends. I would never be able to leave Ashley behind.