.

Darkness. Just deep purple darkness. Covering my body from foot to toe.

Keeping me under and making me fight for air. Where am I? What happened?

I force myself to find the light. To find my eyelids so I can be again. It takes all of my strength to wake up and when I do... the world seems to be an even darker place.

I gaze at the space before me, look around and scream at the top of my lungs.

Cold ice filling my lungs, terror sipping through my veins. My worst nightmare coming true and tearing me apart into tiny pieces.

___

Dead. Just a ghost now, a shadow of a being.

This is all that’s left of me.

How Fast it all ended, when I wasn’t even looking.

These were my first conscious thoughts when the shock had finally worn off.

It was strange to see my body lying in the morgue, half covered in a black bag. A death certificate lying on a table nearby. The ink on the paper still looked fresh. As if the body didn’t lie there too long. As if I just died... maybe that was true, I couldn’t tell, because I had no memory of actually dying.

___

I spend hours there. Just looking at myself. Staring as if that could change something. As if my stare alone could make that body move and set the spirit inside in motion. Like some of this actually made any sense. Like I still had a choice.

___

I lie on the floor of the morgue, drifting into unconsciousness and drifting back to it. Like my spirit wasn’t sure if it wanted to stay or leave. My soul somehow stuck in between. Trapped in a daze, stranded in a strange alternative of a life. I could feel my vibes getting stronger and weaker, always shifting, almost flowing in the air. Vibrating through time and space. It was really hard to grab onto something, anything that I could use as an anchor. Maybe there was no longer anything to hold on to.

___

I looked one last time at the body that was once mine. That belonged only to me, a body that would now lie in the ground and me... I would just... I make myself focus on this reality, on the world I was leaving behind. I needed to say goodbye, because somehow I felt as if that was the thing that was still keeping me from the final absence.

The simple realization of the fact that I was dead.

That I could no longer change anything.

As I came closer to myself, to the girl that was once me. I bent slightly to touch my own hand. To give that one last touch, a farewell. My faded fingers slipped through the stiff flash and my eyes started to water. Could ghosts cry? Was that even possible?

Was it just my imagination, or a basic memory of the person that I was?

As my spirit reaches her skin, I can feel a difference. I shift. The smallest of triggers.

My eyes turning wider as my silent voice gasps for air... this can’t be... it’s too late.

Yet my eyes can’t be wrong. This was really happening. The body was moving. It’s color returning ever so slowly, just a little blush on the cheeks. Eyelids parting. A small finger twitching, the one that I touched.

The room is still.

The silence shattering through my mind. My head feeling like it will explode at any moment... not possible. Too quiet. Too still. Dead.

But it’s happening, the body returning to life.

Just barely. And still, it does, just another short moment which seems like an eternity... a dark hole sucking me in, frozen just on the edge of dreams.

Stuck. Frozen. Never moving forward.

And when all seems to be lost the girl moves, takes a shallow, frantic breath.

She’s alive. This means that... I stare at her, feeling even stranger that before. If that was even imaginable. I come closer as she looks around panicked. Disorientated. Her eyes still empty. Not quite alive. She looks as if she’s searching for something. So desperate.

She looks up and finally notices me as if I was real too.

There’s a strange sensation in my... in my body. Yes, I could feel it. I feel her lungs as she inhales in deeply. I can hear her heartbeat as it pulsates through my ears. I feel her stare as her eyes burn through mine... as my eyes burn hers just the same .

I feel everything.

It’s time.

I can feel myself walking up to her, without making a single step. I get closer and reach her in just seconds. My fingers drifting to her. Touching her skin. My skin.

It’s over.

I’m back.

Because I was never dead in the first place. It was just a trick.

A plan that was meant for me, to stay alive when everything went wrong.

My back-up plan.

___

Some poisons were hard to find in the human body.

Almost untraceable, able to fool those around.

Desive the audience that the body was dead. When indeed it was only in deep slumber.

And now, I was back and it was time for payback.

You fooled me once sweetheart, shame on me.

You fooled me twice...

..............................................................................

”...tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin that on top of having no antidote tends to kill people as soon as they ingest it. By taking a dose of this poison, person’s heart rate and breathing supposedly will slow down to virtually nothing, making people believe that the person is actually dead...”

ps. it only works in spy movies ;)

We're spending a little quality one on one time together with a stroll through familiar halls. You're listening attentively, following me word for word, when suddenly I have to make us pause: there's something that we're about to stumble upon.

It's a body! just like us, human, lying prostrate. It's wrapped in black; a long sack with a dangling name tag. The name is blurred from water (or tears, who knows?). Regardless it's clear: there's a First, and a Last... just like we've got. Of course we'll have to roll the dead over, open up the bag, and see the face. But goodness! I'm already identifying that it's Me! The way the nose is projecting, the knobby knees, and the odd pointing of the feet...

But you are going to have to pull back the plastic for the final look all by yourself... because, because, I'm not really here... Pinch your arm and you'll now what I mean... it's you alone giving voice and credence to these meandering words... 

I write so that you might see something, and you did, didn't you? You let these imaged words take you deep into the back of your mind... leading right to the corpse. It seems then this dead body we find is perhaps... is not mine, but your's.

#YouFindaDeadBodyLikeYouWithYourNameTagOnIt

#Challenge

<font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="silver">01.04.2018</font>