The whiteness around me is blinding, burning itself into my retinas like bleach even when I squeeze my eyes shut.
"Give it a minute. You'll adjust."
I look around to see Albert standing a little behind me. He looks radiant, the white light making his clothes and pale skin glow. He looks... well, he looks like an angel.
I find myself looking down at my own clothes, ripped jeans and scuffed converses, both hand-me-downs from my sister, and can't help but feel scruffy in comparison.
"You're safe." he says "Your physical body is at the hospital. Your sister Cherry is by your side." he lifts his hand and an image appears in the whiteness like a projector screen. It's Cherry, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulder, hiding her face as she looks down at the person whose hospital bed she's sat next to.
My bed.
She's holding my hand, smoothing my own hair back from my ghostly pale face.
"So this is really happening then?" I take a step closer to the image, trying to touch my sisters face, but it disappears, swirling and fading away like smoke. I look down, my eyes suddenly hot with tears "Will she be alright? Cherry, I mean? We're... we're all the other one has in the world."
"All the more reason for you to do whatever you can to get back to her then." Albert says matter of factly "She's going to keep fighting for you, so doesn't she deserve the same treatment back?"
"Who's this girl that I need to impersonate then?" I ask, tired of his riddles already "Haven't her family noticed that she's died?"
"She passed away in her sleep." Albert says, bowing his head as though in respect to the dead girl "It was meant to be an old lady that we took tonight, but as I said before, something went wrong. Interns, you know?"
I try to work out from his facial expression whether Albert is trying to be funny or not, but I can't quite tell.
"Hope Clara Boon." Albert breaks the silence, waving his hand in the air again, causing another image to appear in front of me. This time it's of a girl only a little taller than me with flowing red hair and smiling eyes
"If she lost a few pounds she could be beautiful." I say, and Albert shakes his head.
"This is going to be harder to drag you through than I was first told." he sighs "Hope is the same age as you, and to act like her you'll basically have to go against everything your brain will be telling you."
"Meaning?" I cross my arms.
"She's cheerful, happy, full of love for the people around her, and wakes up every morning grateful to be alive."
"That's ironic." I snort.
Albert just ignores me.
"If you go around in Hopes body acting as depressed and hopeless as you always have done in yours, then her family will realise that something isn't right and we'll have no choice but to abort the plan early." Albert continues "And if you don't fulfil your side of the bargain, then we will have no problem backing out of ours, so please trust me when I say it really is in your best interest to just play along and act the part until it starts feeling more natural."
"I'm fairly sure it'll never feel 'natural' to be inside of another girl's head." I mutter "But whatever."
Albert swipes his hand to the side like he's operating a massive iPad or something, and another picture forms in the brightness around us.
"The Boon family." Albert walks over to the image "Mimi, the matriarch." a slim, pretty woman with silky blonde hair "She has a heart of gold a and would do anything for her family, but she's definitely not one to be messed with. That's her husband, Rick." thickset and obviously strong with a mop of coppery curls and a kind face, he looks the total opposite of my own father "Ed, the only son. He's fourteen and from what I've heard he's going through a number of different phases at the moment, none of them leaving him in a particularly good mood for a lot of the time." tall and thin as a rake with blonde hair like his mothers, the boy looks innocent, but there's something behind his dark eyes that I can't quite work out just by seeing a picture of him... "And finally, Esther." Albert breaks me out of my thoughts, bringing up a picture of a very little girl who's beaming from ear to ear, her red curls cropped close to her scalp "She's seven, the baby of the family."
"She looks younger." I say, and Albert nods.
"She's been very sick for the last couple of years. They found a tumour so she had to go through course after course of chemotherapy which was almost too much for her body to handle in itself. It did its job though, only now they've found that because she started on the chemo so young, the drugs have damaged Esther's heart. She's had a pacemaker fitted to keep her out of the hospital, but she will need a transplant if she's ever going to recover fully and go on to live a normal life."
"And you call yourself an angel, letting a little girl like her go through shit like this." I shake my head "You should be ashamed."
"Believe me, if there was any way, any way at all, to prevent this kind of suffering in the world then I would be the first to jump at the opportunity to end all of the pain, but some things have to happen in order for everything else to play out correctly around them." Albert gives a sad sort of smile "It sucks, but what can you do? If you can't change it, then make what you can control as painless as possible for everyone involved. That's my motto anyway." he looks at me "Are you ready for stage two? I'll stay close enough to be with you in seconds if you need me during these next two months, and I'll keep checking up on you even if you're fine, just to see how you're progressing."
I blow out a breath.
"Okay." I nod "I mean no, I'm not ready, but I don't think I ever will be."
Albert takes a step towards me, closing the gap between us and lifting his hand to cup one side of my face. His palm is cool, and I can feel my face flushing beneath his touch.
"What... what're you doing?"
"Just relax." his breath smells of peppermint "I'm transferring you into Hopes body. In a few seconds you'll start to feel yourself falling, but don't fight it. That's vitally important. You mustn't fight..."
And so I don't. I just let myself fall, not knowing who or what or where I'll find myself being when I open my eyes again...
YOU ARE READING
Still Life
Fiksi Remaja"Choose to believe as much or as little of what you're about to read as you wish, but it's my story of how the cold embrace of death, finally taught me how to live." Lila Fort is a lost cause. At seventeen years old, she spends her days bullying her...
