being nearly dead

Is that me?

She didn't understand why she was on the ground. Not at first anyway. She wasn't even sure it was the floor she was laid against, there was just pressure touching her back, not any feeling of material in particular. Slowly she opened her eyes and her vision was affronted by people surrounding her.

  She recognised two of them in high-visibility jackets, one was standing over her guiding the crowd to her right while the other was tasked with her left side. She furrowed her brows but couldn't feel herself doing so which began to confuse her. She played with her features for a few more moments before she assumed she should probably get up and investigate what had happened.

She lifted herself up gradually, feeling a settling weight in her stomach starting to grow deeper. She looked down before she could assess her surroundings to make out what was wrong with her. Her eyes widened at the sight of blood, and a very lot of it clotting in her belly.

  She touched the wound gingerly and slipped her fingers underneath her thin shirt to grope the lesion, feeling no pain from it. She narrowed her eyes as she wiped away the thick crimson to reveal a hole type of gash. She couldn't think where it came from or why it wasn't giving her a grievous time. She now took the opportunity to look around.

She first wanted to alert the officer that she was alright just very confused, but before she could she had noticed what the crowd was trying to get a look at. They were all clambering to see, with horrified faces, where she had been lying down. They weren't looking at her and her blood in the slightest.

  She pulled herself to her feet and went toward the closest officer who was now bringing around a yellow tape to cordon off the area which she found odd. Where was the ambulance sirens? If she was hurt, why haven't they called for her to be taken to the hospital or a medic in the least? She had the urge to look back down and did before she tried to flag down the officer.

She saw herself lying there. That can't be right, she thought as she bent down to assess the imposter flattened where she had been. She tilted her head slightly in some attempt to get a better look at the person. Wait, do I even look like that? the thought tremored through her head and rattled around for a few long moments. She tried to think of what she looked like. No memories came to surface, nothing of her quickly walking past a mirror or looking at a selfie on her phone, nothing.

Before she could panic about it she focused on what this unconscious girl looked like. She had wavy, dark reddish-brown hair in a messy bun with lengthy eyelashes. She couldn't see her eye colour as they were covered by her eyelids and she didn't want to disturb her yet without any relating information on her. Maybe they were twins? Maybe they were two completely differently people?

  She had tanned skin, smooth and careful with one or two small scars from insignificant past scratches or scrapes. Her cheekbones were high and her nose had a slight dent toward the base which you wouldn't notice at first glance. She owned few freckles and little to go on to be identified by memory.

She took a slow breath to calm herself down and stood up once more to talk to the officer. Again, before she could, she spotted something unusual. A young man, in dark clothes, was some way away from the crowd but still looking in her direction. He wasn't watching the unconscious girl like everyone else; he was watching her.

  Their eyes met and he didn't waver from her stare like she felt the urge to. He wore a casual black suit with a grey dress shirt, without a tie, the top button undone. He slightly narrowed his eyes as if identifying her then turned as if to tell her to follow him, then he simply walked away into a nearby back alley.

She looked back down a moment at the girl and snaked an arm around her bloody mid-section. She thought of talking to the officer again but decided that, with all the interruptions, she maybe wasn't supposed to. Besides, the only person who had noticed her was the strange man, so why not follow him? She remembered some far-off trail of words relating to: Don't talk to strangers, but she was too far gone at this point to follow that advice, wherever it had come from.

She attempted to weave through the now thickening crowd when she thought she'd accidentally bumped into a woman's handbag, when she turned to apologise she saw that her arm had floated through the material. Her arm completely dematerialised when confronted by the fabric. She filed it with her other burning questions, along with: why wasn't anyone freaking out that I'm bleeding so profusely? Why aren't I? Shouldn't I be panicking? And other gems.

She located the mouth of the alley and slipped through the open gate. She looked around for him and for a moment thought she'd imagined him, until she felt a presence behind her. "Ava?" a soft voice came, making her turn. He had a classically handsome face, dark curls of black hair and darker still eyes. As if the depths of blackest space made them and threw them away because they were too dark.

"Is that me?" she asked him, unaffected by his beauty, as his eyes considered her quickly. She looked him up and down as well and felt like she should be more afraid of him, more cautious of the stranger but found that she oddly wasn't. Why wasn't she? The mystery continues.

"Yes, Avaline, that's you..." he told her and took a step toward her which she countered, "I'm not going to hurt you."

"I don't think you are... I just don't know who you are," she surprised herself. She looked down at the blood spread across her stomach and now her arm as well. "What happened to me? Who is that girl?" she was calmer than she thought she should be.

"She's you... You were shot and left for dead," he didn't seem to be handling this the way she expected him to either. Shouldn't he be telling her to sit down and relax? Not to panic and attempt to comfort her?

She looked toward the mouth of the alley at the crowd covering the girl who he seemed to think was her. "I don't think so... wouldn't I be in more shock then? If I were dead, I mean?"
He looked in that direction then back at her, taking a silent step without her seeing. "It's not what many people expect it to be, death. It's not so painful and horrible. It can be, but that depends on what you did before."

Her attention snapped to him as he attempted another step forward. "And what did I do? Will it be painful and horrible?" she asked in less of a demand than she thought she must. This was all utterly strange. She wasn't even sure the name he'd addressed her by was her own, actual name.

"No... it's a little more complicated for you."
She nodded slowly. "Will I feel again?" she referred to her blood and looked back up at him to see him evaluate her. She didn't think to ask why she was different? What made her case complicated?

"Physically, perhaps, it depends. Emotionally, you're in shock, your previous personality will soon return to you for a short time," he explained.

She blinked a few times at his words. "Depend on what? How short and what happens after that?"

"Like I said, you're a complicated affair. Your physical feeling depends on how long you'll be in this plane for, your emotional will be erased when you're reborn and will be remoulded into something new for your new life."

"This plane? How many are there?" she tried to pinch her skin to feel something but no sensation occurred, not pain, nothing.

"Many... I can explain it all to you if you'll agree to come with me," he held out his hand to which she automatically hesitated at.

"And if I don't?"

"You'll stay here until you're ready."

"Here, where I've been killed?"

"Yes."

She looked down at his hand then briefly at the dispersing crowd. An ambulance had now come too late and a medic was draping a white sheet over the body she left behind. A stretcher was being taken out of the bright yellow ambulance and walked toward her. She looked away. "Where would you take me?"

"A safe place."

"Is this place not safe?"

"No, not for you," he urged his hand forward for her to take.

She felt her head swirl with different whispers of thoughts and she wasn't sure if any of them belonged to her former 'personality' or how quickly she'd be getting that back. How did time work when you were dead? She swallowed hard and laid her hand in his, looking up to meet his eyes before their surroundings disappeared around them to be replaced by another.