FOUR: Second chance…in hell.

Ophelia.

I don't know how long I lay bleeding out in the now dark atmosphere for, but it was pitiful how no one had noticed my body yet.

No ambulance like I expected. No press taking photos or police officers marking X as the spot of a murder scene. No frightened screams.

Just hollow silence and crickets.

The next time my eyes fluttered open, I looked up. There was a bleak light shining above me, and like an alien spacecraft, it sucked my soul—an out-of-body experience.

I’d resigned to my ill fate at this point and with eyes shut, I just let myself get carried away by the wind, or maybe an unseen force but the pull was like a magnet on something metallic.

With my soul halfway through the air and a bit closer to the light, there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere.

Some dark energy suddenly swirled around me. A gasp left my lips sharply when it engulfed me as though trying to possess me. My lashes fluttered open and the sight before me had my bones frozen to the core.

What was this?

Lucifer?

Had I finally transcended to heaven? I couldn't even call those flaming blue eyes satan’s or the sharp jawline or half his face partially hidden with a steel mask and very thick dark hair falling over his eyes.

His intent stare sent chills through my spine and once I realized I was in his arms, practically hanging mid-air as if he’d spun me right out of gravity, my heart tripped in fright.

“Who..who are you?” I squirmed, trepidation flashing in my eyes.

I thought I would be dead and gone to hell, not dead and hanging mid-air and breathless with a beautiful devil.

He cocked his head sideways, hair falling same direction to shield his eyes. “Your damnation”

My heart skipped and my lips trembled. “Are you sending me to hell?”

“Not yet,” He rumbled lowly, aura too dark for me to grasp. “I can grant you a second chance only if you agree to play my games”

His hand flattened along my waistline and I flinched out of my mind when his touch burned and not in a good way, more like a deadly warning, and looking up at his face, his scowl had deepened.

I fidgeted. I needed to decide as it seemed he was growing impatient. A second chance? I could go back home and make everything right again, make Edna and Brandon pay.

Slowly my head shook, eyes welling with tears. “Please…” I begged.

“Took you long to decide.” He sounded colder now, his deep-rich bizarre accent gutting me.

“It’s only been a minute…”

The words hadn't fully left my tongue when a bluntly sharp object drove into my back. My pupils dilated, and my mind went blank with excruciating pain for a few seconds.

His lips curved into something slow and cruel. “It's only going to hurt for a while. You won't feel it once you are up”

Darkness dragged me under. Like a withered flower, my hands dropped to my side and I went limp against this god.

“Hey…”

“Is she…alive?”

“Alive? We are all dead here, she probably just passed out from shock”

“Shock? If we are ghosts…” There was a pause, then “Do ghosts feel shock?”

A snort followed in response.

Those voices were unfamiliar. My vision blurred for a second. Then something poked my side, probably a gentle kick. Blinking once, twice, the obsidian roofing came into clearer view.

“Where was I?” I thought out loud and gradually sat up.

Then a hand waved before my eyes, dragging my gaze to the strange face now staring down at me. My chest burped, a hiccup leaving my lips and I immediately clasped a hand over my mouth, eyes wide with mortification.

“Yeah, she’s alive”

Someone said from behind this strange lady with pixie cut hair and lots of ring piercings on her ears and nostrils.

“She seems like a rich girl” she finally spoke, her hand reaching up to touch my hair. “Silk hair”

I flinched and balked back like a tortoise retracting into its shell but not without swatting her hands off on impulse. “Don’t touch me. Who are you?”

The lady sighed, getting up to her feet with one hand scratching the back of her neck. “I told ya, rich kids and high egos”

Wait, where was this place? Where am I? Where was that beautiful devil? So many questions yet my head spun in circles without an answer.

I clasped my hair into my hands as I tried to get my thoughts straight. He said a second chance and I expected to be back in my body, finally breathing again and maybe getting rushed to the hospital—Not this.

This…slowly my gaze darted around me, finally taking in my environment. It was a dimly lit room with dark ashmarble walls, smooth and edged. The air here had a weird kind of stench, something thick and acidic. The lights flickered on and off, a subtle reminder of the unsteady bulb back in my hotel room.

The room was literally blanched, except there were people. About eighteen of them. Some crouched down against walls and rocked their legs, some sat on benches and stared at nothing in particular, and a few of them were dozing off.

Except for these two people still right in front of me. The chubby guy next to this lady waved at me, a slow smile swelling his cheeks.

The lady rolled her eyes with an insufferable snort when I just sat there staring dead at them.

“Let her be, Rick.” She turned away and moved back to the bench where she plumped herself back on, hands dragging up her face and remaining there.

The guy—Rick, walked away too without uttering another word to me and I watched him sit next to her, head falling backwards to rest on the wall with a soft thud.

What was wrong with the people here? Everyone was weird.

I swallowed and slowly rose to my feet, eyes falling to my body as I frantically ran a hand over myself to inspect for injuries. There were no stab wounds on my wrist, no broken skull, nor were my limbs crooked or broken.

And I had a heartbeat also, which was thumping hard against my chest.

Was I truly alive? Did he really grant me a second chance?

Looking over my shoulder, I noticed the floor-to-ceiling window for the first time. Through the spotless glass, the city was fogged over, dark without electricity.

My legs moved before I could stop myself. I needed to know where the hell I'd woken up in and who these strange people around me were.

Curiosity spiked in my blood and pressed extra pressure into my feet as I trudged towards the window with chin raised high in false confidence. The moment I leaned against the glass and glanced down, my legs froze with fear.

They looked tiny at first, like hordes of ants moving about until the fog cleared down there and those things became more visible.

They weren't humans.

Those were monsters with half-human bodies and deformed heads. One growled and its jaws elongated as though it were smiling.

My chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm, a series of hiccups after hiccups escaping my throat when one of those things looked up and our gazes locked.

I managed to force a foot back in an attempt to flee but only ended up tripping on my heels clumsily and the next minute my butt painstakingly hit the ground.

A glass-cracking scream immediately burst through my chest.