~What if you find your soulmate but he's already dead?~
Charlotte is a last year Psychology student, hating the dorm-life she moves into an apartment. She considers it a blessing that she got such a quiet and decent place in such a cheap rent. And...
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"Charlotte."
Alex's voice made her freeze. She was still at the floor, lamenting the loss of love for a man who was just a fragment of her imagination, a cruel joke of her brain.
But she wasn't aware before what lie she was living. She was aware of it now, and yet it didn't make him go away. She could still hear him. As her face snapped up, she found she could still see him.
He stood at the railing, pale and beautiful. He looked concerned, and he looked real.
Lie. All of it a lie. All of him a lie.
"Why are you crying? Charlotte?" he asked. "Are you still hurting from that night's injuries? Where were you yesterday? I waited for you, I kept on waiting for you but you never came back. Char?"
So many questions. She had answers to each one of them, yet there was no use in providing them because if she talked to him now, it would be like talking to herself.
He was growing agitated by her silence and took steps towards her. "Why are you not talking to me? Say something."
She shook her head, half looking up at him, half looking at the ground before her. "No. No, you're not real. You're not... no..."
He came up and crouched down before her. "What are you talking about, Char? You're not with the notion that I'm something you've been hallucinating, are you? Look at me. I'm real, I'm here. This is me—Alex."
But she was constantly shaking her head, her face was wet with her tears.
Alex's voice sounded broken as he spoke to her still, "You're the only one, Char, you're the only one who can see me, the only one for whom I still am. Please... please..."
Charlotte wiped away her tears stubbornly. She refused to look at him as she slowly got to her feet. It made him get furious.
"Bloody hell, Charlotte, I am right here, I do exist, you know it. Look at me!" he yelled.
The door slammed shut behind her making her jump. Wind picked up speed as though a storm was brewing up. Her hammock swayed crazily. Even the chair in front of the hammock slid forward, scraping violently against the floor. An owl somewhere hooted in urgency.
Charlotte whirled around, and pushing open the door she went back into her bedroom. The knocks began on the door as soon as she locked it shut. She told herself she was imagining everything. There was no Alex, no knocking on the door, no activity instigated by any supernatural presence. It was her mind that had come down with a sickness, happens to people.
Going over to the mattress she took the medicines Prof. Ian Flinn had given her. Then she sat with her pillow clutched tightly in her lap.
As the knocks dimmed down to nothingness soon, she lolled to the side, the medicines starting to show their effects.
