expire

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The agonizingly laborious slide show of my memories continued, and the dread of what was coming filled me with jittery anticipation. My own head was a foggy cloud of unanswered questions, images of my family, and hazy confusion. Pressing my palms to my head, I knelt on the floor, and forced my eyes away from the screen, from the memories. But I couldn't. Some part of me, although utterly panicked, needed to see this. Why, I didn't know. But sometimes you just need to know, even when really you don't.

And then my dread was fulfilled; the reciprocal hospital room materialized on the screen, with the starch white bed, and the stiff white sheets, and the white floor tiles teamed with the white ceiling and the white-washed walls. It was all so...white, you know? White, but still, and scarily eerie. Knowing that I was there; had been there, perhaps only a few hours ago, and now the exact same scene was replaying before me. Creepy.

My mother, scarred, weary, and tired, was holding my hand, her own hospital gown blending with mine, her tears blending also as they glided all too jaggedly down her face, pooling in the scar-shaped craters the glass and molten metal of the car crash had left permanently on her face. The twins sat with their backs to me, on the other side of the bed, but I could tell from the hunched up way they were sitting, shoulders all shaky and restless, that their faces mirrored my Mother's. I took a deep breath, shaky and uncertain, and tried to steady my fleeting heart.

“Fascinating, isn't it.”

“Mmmmm...”. I answered out of habit, before suddenly realising someone was there, and I stood up and spun around to face them.

She looked just like me. Her skin, also, was translucent, with the same blueish glassy tinge mine had. She was thin, willowy, and her face was smooth and unblemished. Framed by long locks of thick, flowing hair of the same colour (and texture, it looked like) as her skin, her face was practically angelic, with slanted cheekbones and arched eyebrows. She was statuesque, like a glass sculpture, a white dress cascading around her like some kind of silky flower. But her eyes...they were like endless voids of nothingness. They had no pupils, or irises, so it was impossible to tell whether she was looking at me, or at the image behind me. But from her unconcentrated, calm and faraway expression, I think she was looking at the picture.

“W-who...”

“The way they show you this, just after you've died. It's like they're letting you in on the secret before you even know what's going on,”

What?

“I remember when I was like you, once,”

She swivelled her head, and from her focus on me and her posture I could tell that I had the attention of her empty, glassy eyes.

“I was petrified. I had just lost my whole family, after all...or, they lost me,” An overcast, unreadable expression swept over her face, eyebrows furrowed, as if in concentration. “But I'm over that now. Besides, they're gone. I'm not.”

The girl looked through me again, at the picture behind me, and smiled.

“They look like you,”

The words I'd been meaning to say died on my tongue, and all I could manage to say was, “Who?”

She smiled again, and rolled her transparent eyeballs jokily.

“They're your sisters, aren't they? Yes, I can see it now...Pity your hair changed colour. Blonde would've suited you.”

At this I was surprised, and I ran my own crystal-like hands through my hair; it had grown at least 5 inches, and felt like water running through my hands. But it, too, had lost it's blonde hue, just as my skin had lost it's pale pink pallor. It made me wonder whether my eyes were empty, like the girl's eyes. It scared me to think that I better resembled a statue now, rather than a human.

The girl laughed, and the sound was soft, and gentle. “Don't panic. Your hair is the least of your worries,”