From the corner of the mirror I noticed a bag of what I thought were clothes and turned around. I approached the table slowly in case I fell again, and I definitely saw that there were clothes in the bag—with my name on a piece of paper that was placed on the bag.

Not thinking much of it, I just ripped open the bag and took the clothes out, but they were definitely not mine.

Well, let me rephrase that: The clothes were nothing I owned.

I had never seen the clothes in my entire life. But they were addressed to me, almost like someone knew I would be needing them.

I was getting tired of overthinking this whole situation, so I just put the clothes on. I felt like whoever brought me the clothes had to look long and hard to find pants that were long enough for me, since it’s damn near impossible to find pants for someone who was 6’6” in most shops. I was surprised that the jeans from the bag fit me perfectly.

I had no idea what they did with the clothes I originally wore, but I figured they were being used for evidence somewhere.

I found my phone and wallet in a separate bag close to where the clothes were and took them out. My phone was dead, so I couldn’t check the time or date that I was currently awake in. The TV hanging above what looked like an operating table was still on, displaying more news that I wasn’t paying attention to.

From where I stood, I was able to make out the date displayed on the screen—it was almost 10:30 at night, exactly one day after my attack.

My head throbbed from all the questions that started popping up after my revelation. I had to get out of this room, so I made my way to the exit door to my right and rushed out. I wanted so much to think that I was dreaming, but it felt all too real at this point—despite the fact that I miraculously rose from the dead a day after my death.

I had no idea what I would be walking into once I opened the door, but from the appearance of the silent hallway the best guess I had was that I was in fact in a hospital. I continued walking, looking into every other open door to see if there were any doctors or nurses inside tending to their patients. I didn’t think twice of what or who I was going to encounter once I did. I didn’t even think of the fact that the door was left unlocked in the first place.

But it didn’t matter then. The only thing that mattered to me was finding answers that could explain why and how I was still alive.

I walked much more warily as I passed other hallways, expecting to bump into at least one person, but the halls were quiet and void of people. I couldn’t hear anyone talking or walking around anywhere, besides echoing TVs in many of the rooms.

The hospital shouldn’t be closed, I thought to myself, looking up at the lights illuminating the halls. I always believed that hospitals were open 24/7. I was beginning to feel desperate to find at least one person—it didn’t matter if they were staff or a visitor—I just needed to see one other person who was here to help me get out of this labyrinth of a hospital.

I wasn’t even halfway through the next hall when I caught a whiff of something that I had never smelled before. And it smelled delicious, whatever it was that made this smell. It wasn’t like any food I had ever eaten, but it was doing something to my body and my mind that I had never experienced before. It was like I was hungry—starving, even—but it was much more, more intense than that. It was almost painful.

This strange hunger-like feeling forced me to kneel where I stood. I looked around in the hall, trying to track the scent before I could proceed down the hall.

It felt like something had taken over all of my other senses, and I didn’t understand what was going on with my body. Something inside of me was making me move to the scent like a parasite controlling its host, and I could tell as it grew stronger and hungrier that I was coming close to the source.

It was starting to scare the hell out of me, and something in the back of my mind told me to act fast because I was gonna do something seriously bad. I didn’t want this to happen, so I started to run for it down the opposite direction.

And it—whatever it was—did not like that at all.

The hunger grew stronger, and the more I tried to fight it the more it fought harder. I was growing hopeless as I ran down hall after hall, unable to find an elevator or flight of stairs to take so I could get out of that hospital. I had even started contemplating about jumping out of a window, thinking that I would still somehow live after falling several stories out of a hospital.

But then I thought about the possibility of me seriously injuring myself to the point where I would need medical attention. The hospital would then figure out that I was supposed to be dead and locked up in a morgue and not running for my life out of a hospital because there was something wrong with me. 

I didn’t want that to happen, obviously, so I decided to not jump out of a window. I was still very much tempted, though.

I paused the moment my ears picked up the sound of footsteps coming from far away, possibly the end of the hall. How I would know this was beyond my knowledge at the moment. The hunger forced me to back into a wall, seeing another hall was to my right and whoever was walking could have been approaching from there.

I slowly peaked my head around the corner to see who it could be, and it was someone I had never seen before. They had rich dark red hair, almost as if dyed, and the lipstick they wore almost matched their hair. They were also this weird hoodie-dress combo garment, and I thought it looked kinda cute and interesting.

The person noticed me and I immediately backed away from the corner.

“Hello?” I heard them call out. I tried to keep as much distance away from the other halls as I could, hoping that the hunger would go away fast.

“Constantine? Is that you?”

The moment I head my name, I suddenly recognized the person’s voice: They were Travis Hall, the person who reported my murder.

“That is you, right Constantine?” I could hear them walking faster and I tried to back away further.

But the feeling grew stronger and forced me to move forward. I couldn’t keep up the fight and felt my body rush around the corner and lunge at Travis.

I knocked them down and pinned them below me, but I noticed they weren’t fighting me off. They didn’t even look scared of me. They looked surprised, but in a way that made me think they didn’t expect to meet me like this.

“H-Hey, uh, Constantine?” Travis said, squirming a little under my grasp. “Could'ya ease the grabbing, just a little? I’m kinda sensitive."