Bloodstream

One

I don't think you ever realize how utterly terrible a situation is until you're in it. I once had a dream about the zombie apocalypse and when I awoke I realized how fast I had resided to giving up. Situations don't seem as scary in your mind because your thought process isn't prone to fear. It's the back of your mind, where your nerves connect, where your thoughts trail off and out of control, that's where the horror resides. That part of my mind was at work as of now. This situation I'm in, well, it sounds ridiculous. Something out of a scary movie or an urban legend.

I woke up on cold cement floor. There was a small pool of scarlet on the surface in front of me, and lifting myself up with my arms, I soon found that it was the pool of blood that had fell from my forehead.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes, then panic resonated through me like the roar of a plane. I looked around, and what I had observed was worse than I had hoped. I was in a cell, like a jail cell. The room it was in was small and dark, one torch, one cell down to the left of me posted on the stone wall, lightly casted shadows that I could barely see through.

There were eight cells all together. And, I wasn't the only one down here. There appeared to be a woman laying in the bench to the cell left of me and blonde curled in the corner of the cell across from me, her sobs muffled under her arms that wrapped around her face and propped on her knees.

Then, there was a girl in my cell, sitting against the outer bars and facing the wall behind me. She stared blankly into space. I knew immediately what she was. The way her whole body was like a faded shirt, the color almost milked from her completely. She appeared pale and faded, almost transparent. Her eyes were a drained grey, her lips chapped and her fingers blue.

I reverted my attention back to my bleeding head. The blood was getting in my eye and all over my clothes. I found it humorous how small cuts could bleed so much as I wiped the blood with the sleeve of my hoodie. Where was I? In jail? No, the atmosphere was to dark. A jail would have been more sterile and cold. Here, it was hot and dirt caked every surface. The air was hot and smoky smelling. It felt thick, like sitting underwater.

I looked around again, and then at the girl, the ghost, in my cell. "Hey, are you okay?"

She seemed to jump back, her eyes shooting to me and widening. She looked as if she had seen a ghost. Oh the irony.

"Y-you can see me?" She stuttered.

I nodded, "Yes I can." I always got that reaction from ghosts. They saw each other, but they hardly ever interacted with each other. They all appeared miserable. I guess I couldn't lame them, being dead and stuck on earth for God knows how long. Then here I was, all flesh and blood, and suddenly speaking to them. They all seemed so in awe of me, like they had never seen anything like me before. Then again, they probably haven't.

I see ghosts, I have red hair, really red, like blood. The doctor said it was a chemical imbalance in the womb? Drug related no doubt. Anyways, I have green eyes, which appear sometimes fluorescent. It depends on the lighting, which in this case, there was hardly any. I was a mess I suppose. No wonder they're always so shocked, maybe even frightened.

"Oh my god!" The girl leaned forward and got onto her knees. "What's your name?" She asked.

"Victoria. And yours?" I let myself smirk briefly. They always lit up like that when they realized I could see them.

"Um," she frowned and looked at the floor, "I can't remember."

I nodded, "That's normal. Ghosts usually don't remember much unless they see something to remind them."

She nodded.

"So where are we?" I asked, panic returning to my chest.

Her demeanor changed. Horror seemed to reach her grey eyes, her body backing back up against the bars again.