Fateful Hindrance

5. Dead Girl Walking

Chapter 5

Dead Girl Walking

 

 

It was all a dream.

I was at home.  In my own room.  My own bed. 

I’d gone out with Drake and Jason for New Year’s Eve.

We came home at two in the morning and yet still didn’t go to sleep. 

We watched movies until we fell asleep in my bed around six.

And now I was waking up.

John didn’t come back.

He didn’t ask me to go home with him.

Juliet didn’t come back.

She didn’t stab me in the neck with a needle and inject something into me.

I didn’t die in John’s arms as the clock struck midnight.

I was at home.  In my own room.  My own bed.

It was all a dream.

But it wasn’t.

My eyelids felt heavy, my head felt heavy, every part of my body felt heavy.  I couldn’t move, and yet I knew that I was in a very comfortable bed, covered in soft sheets and buried in fluffy pillows.  The sound of a television on was coming from somewhere off in the distance and I could hear a shower going also.  Then there was the sound of a door opening, followed by footsteps. 

“The princess has yet to wake up,” a girl’s voice said, almost sounding snarky. 

“She’s still sleeping it off, Jamie.  Give it a rest already,” another sighed.    

Jamie.  I’d heard that name before.  Recently, within the last few weeks, I knew…

“I wonder if I should call Theo again, have him come and check her out.”  The bed dipped beside me and a hand touched my forehead.  “At least her temperature’s gone back up to normal.  Juliet didn’t think that it would affect her that way.  She was worried that she’d given her too much.”  That was the second girl.  She sounded a lot more pleasant. 

“And would have that been bad?  I still don’t know why we need the girl,” Jamie grumbled.

“Why do you keep calling her a girl?  She’s only three years younger than us.”

Jamie grumbled something else I couldn’t make out and walked away.  The other sighed then, staying for another minute to check my pulse.  I could feel my heart beating at a normal pace in my chest, unlike the last time I was conscious.   

I took that moment to take a deep breath, as deep as my body would let me.  I knew when I was able to move my body again, so I started with something simple.  I opened my eyes.

I was obviously in a hotel room with its cream colored walls, a scattering of prosaic pictures hanging on the walls, the table beside the bed, and the desk between two windows.  The room was open to a sitting room with a couch, which faced the television mounted on the wall.  Three suitcases were open in various places on the floor, two with girl clothes and the other obviously belonged to a guy. 

Being in a place that I didn’t know, I knew that, logically, I should have been freaked out.  I should have been screaming and running away as fast as I could.  Maybe it was shock, because I wasn’t.  I was completely calm, no accelerating heartbeat, no cold chills, no hyperventilation.  I was just…lying there.  Slowly, I sat up, careful not to make myself sick or anything.  I just felt hollow.