Black Roses {Skephalo}

White Roses [Day Twenty-eight]

-Zak's POV-

When I wake up, I'm encased in darkness. My surroundings are made of wood, encasing me from all sides. The shape of the box is weird, not a cube or rectangle.

It's a coffin, I'm in a coffin.

Wait-

I push the wood above me, which slides off with ease. They don't seem to have fastened it on yet.

The smell is awful, and I almost vomit on the spot. Rotting flesh and dead corpses, which seems strange until I take a look around. I'm in what looks like a warehouse, except it's filled with rows of coffins. This must be what a morgue looks like.

The other coffins must be filled with actually dead bodies, which would make sense as to why it smells that way it does. It takes all of my willpower not to throw up on the spot.

When I bring my hand to cover my mouth, I notice something tied to my left wrist. It's a label, with some neat handwriting on it. The label is attached to my hand with string, tied so tightly it's a miracle my blood circulation is still flowing. Guess that's not a concern with a seemingly dead body.

The note reads:

'Zak Carder 1430
Date of death: 25th January
Date of funeral: 31st January
Cause of death: Unknown'

Careful not to trip over any coffins, I make my way in near pitch-black to the entrance. Luckily for me, nobody seems to be here at this hour.

There's a row of lockers, each with a number on them. Behind me is a list of sanitary procedures for dealing with the possessions of dead corpses.

So my stuff must be in one of these, unless someone has come to collect it already.

Scanning rows of lockers, I check the numbers on each one. I come across one on the very top row, the number '1430' printed on the front. That must be my one.

I stretch as far as I can, but my fingers barely graze the door.

My god I hate being short...

After pulling up a chair in the corner of my room, I reach the lockers. There's no locks on the doors, which I find surprising. But I'm not complaining, as it means I can get my things.

Inside the locker are my bloodstained clothes from the day of my death, which I hadn't realised I wasn't wearing until now. I'm dressed in this white cloth, loosely tied around me like a toga.

I take it off to change back into my clothes, realising something. The marks are still over my heart, eight lines in a star. Just like they used to be.

Blood seeps from one of them, which had just started staining my cloth. I must've only started bleeding when I woke up. The fresh mark hurts, but I force myself to ignore it.

After changing back into my actual clothes, which are far better than the cloth even with my dried blood on it, I pull out my other possessions. My keys aren't among them, but my phone is.

It's turned off, and when I turn it on, it somehow still has battery. The date is displayed to me: January 28th, a minute after midnight precisely.

My fingers automatically move to my messages, but hover over the screen as I look through my contacts. I'm not sure who I should text, but Darryl probably isn't the answer. I have no idea what happened to him. So I go for the next best thing.

You
Vincent
00:02 am

Please don't freak out, I know how this looks. But I swear, it's me, and this is real.
00:02 am