Him:
I remember everything about that night, every second of it seems to be embedded in my brain, I can never shake off the feeling that found its way into my bones and shock them as hard as it could.
My phone had died sometime in the afternoon, I went to my friend's room and we decided to hang out and watch a movie with his roommate.
Halfway through the movie, we heard screaming and there was smoke in the corridor, we opened the door, and everyone was running in the hallway, the building was on fire.
I remember looking back at the building as I was standing outside, and I saw her, she was standing by her window combing her hair like nothing happened, like she didn't see the fire, or the people running from it, she looked at me with half-shut eyes, she smiled and stepped away from the window.
........
A year later I decided to revisit the place, it was abandoned, and the police had wires and tape surrounding it, but no kid would go there because it was hard to reach anyway.
I turned my camera on to film a video for my friends and say: hey remember how we almost died here, I don't know what I was thinking at the time.
I zoomed in on the house with my camera, and there she was, I saw her again, in a hallway. She leaned to her right side, frowned, then looked up at me, her eyes met my lens. That's when I knew, I knew she was alive and had been living in that place ever since the incident.
I ran towards the house and knocked on the door as hard as I could..
She opened and welcomed me with a smile on her face.
I walked in slowly and looked around, the stairs had caved in, the walls were black with ash and the curtains which were once a bright red now had a brown shade to them.
She was still smiling, not a word she said, I asked her: what are you doing here? Are you alone?
She said: I live here.
This is no place for the living I said
That's when her eyes swell up with tears, yet her smile remained..
what makes you think I'm alive?
I held her strongly with both my arms and shock her: what are you talking about? you need to leave this place, we have to go.
She was shocked that my hands would firmly grasp her fragile body, it seems that she hasn't felt a human touch in so long.
Then I saw it, a man coming from behind her, he was tall and had a grin on his face, a grin not his own, but one drawn onto his face, with a knife.
My head felt light and I fell to the ground, then sometime later I woke up in a room which used to be the boys common room, I saw all kinds of people, people with only half of their bodies, children dressed like the 19th century royalty, girls with long hair covering their faces, toys of different shapes and sizes, a man with an unusual hat and a body covered in burns. And her, she was wearing a strange looking crown of spikes around her head, it was gripping onto her face from every angle, but she was fine with it, she was dancing to some music, laughing and holding hands with her strange looking friends.
I couldn't move, the children were running around me in circles and the man with a creepy smile was sitting on my chest, he kept asking me to go to sleep.
Once I felt that weight was lifted from my chest, I could still hear their voices in my head but I saw no one, I knew I had to run to the front door and get out of there, I left her behind, I didn't care to look back, I was too frightened of what I might see, of her.
