I am sure I was dead.

With that nasty head injury and almost mutilated throat, there is no way I will be able to survive. There is just no way, yet this feeling my senses seem heightened more than ever, just like how I am utterly confident that I am floating beneath the waters. I could feel the freezing water enveloping my body, and I felt like a feeble leaf being carried away by the current.

It is a scary but liberating feeling. I wish I could go on like this. If this is the afterlife, it is not so bad. The quiet stillness underneath brings an odd combination of solace, thrill, and fear that I could not experience in my past life.

I stilled with the thought. I cannot believe I am just casually accepting the fact that my life is already a thing of the past. And yet, for someone like me who is supposed to be dead, why does it feel like my mind is still so much alive? Even in my death, my overactive mind does not plan to take a break. If my mind had been left blank, this death would probably have been much better. A soft laugh escaped my lips, then just as quickly, cold water filled my lungs. I gasp out for air, and the familiar painful and constricting feeling in my chest resurfaces that it smacks me awake to reality.

My eyes flew wide open, trying to regain my bearing, but I could not see or hear anything. For a moment, I cannot get a sense of my surroundings. But it seems like I am actually still alive! With that realization, a sudden burst of energy overwhelms my body, ultimately igniting all my senses alive –that newfound energy is enough for me to be able to break through the surface. Once I manage to escape from this, I am going to give Ariel a good beating!

But first, I need to survive! I' am still struggling to move my arms and legs, but I know I can make it. I just need that one push. When I tried to move my legs upward, I felt something strange with my body. I grasped my neck, trying to feel out my injury, but I couldn't trace anything or feel pain—not on my throat or my head. Just when I thought that my head had been smashed to the floor? What the hell is going on?

I cannot pinpoint it exactly, but there is just something different. And now that my vision is getting sharper, I noticed that the pool suddenly felt enormous than usual. The glowing, blue-tiled pool is gone; instead, there is only dark water everywhere I look.

And the more I swim towards the surface, the more I can smell and taste a strong scent of metal on the water. Something bumps to my shoulder that momentarily jolts me out of my confusion. When I look at my side, that is when I feel like all the water has finally gone inside my brain as my jaw slackens in disbelief and water starts filling my mouth. 

I bit back my scream as I gasped for breath. My heart hammers in a painful rhythm while my chest constrains with agony. I was too scared to move, and I felt my body falling back to the depths of water, but I knew I must move –or I would really end up dying!

Move, you idiot! I continuously chant inside my head as I wade forward. I couldn't dare to look back – not to the dead body of a woman with her body mangled beyond one could imagine nor to the black depths of the unknown that awaits below. The cold and still depths of water that I once thought felt comforting became frightening more than ever.

With a tears-stricken face and my mind slowly growing numb of pain and bewilderment, it felt like fate was not done playing tricks on me. Just a few meters away, heaps of bodies are floating just about everywhere in the water, and some are even profusely bleeding.

As soon as I broke out of the surface, I inhaled a gulp of air to fill up my deprived lungs. I wiped away the water in my eyes. I looked around in panic –hoping that what I was thinking was nothing but a cause of my overactive imagination. There is just no way, but when I saw my surroundings, I almost bawled my eyes out. A quiet sob escapes my lips, and tears once again blur my vision.

There are no panoramic city lights or the gorgeous blue waters of the infinity pool. Instead, there were heaps of floating corpses as far as my eyes could see, and I was literally swimming in their blood. These people's blood is tainting the lake. From a distance, mammoths of flames engulf the houses built near the lake, even swallowing the forest place from behind it. A loud cry echoes into the night that instantly sent a shiver down my spine – but then it suddenly started. It is as if I'm listening to harmonized wails from the underworld while they burn to death, shaking up the whole place. 

I violently shake my head. This is just a dream. Yes, I must be dreaming. Or this could be because of the lack of oxygen and my near-death experience that my mind is conjuring up things that almost felt real. If not, then did I get thrown in hell? I'm not a saint, but I don't think I had done terrible things while still alive that will earn me an express ticket to hell!

"Ha! I don't care anymore if this is hell or not…." I trailed off as I lifted my pale freezing hand drenched in blood. "But there's no way I'm going to stay in this place!"

As I wade towards the embankment, I've almost lost count of how many times I wanted to puke my guts out because of the decaying bodies littered like trash everywhere in the lake. All kinds of thought swirled inside my head and ignoring it proved to be a difficult task more than what I imagined it to be. I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the thoughts that I will never be able to reach the shore and that something will drag me back underwater. 

Amidst the sound of my labored breathing and splash of water, I heard a faint growl from behind me. When I tried to look back, out of nowhere, an arrow whizzed past me, nicking my cheeks and ultimately striking someone from behind who managed to sneak behind me without me noticing. 

At first, I couldn't quite see who it was because it was too dark, but when the moon chose to reveal itself, tired of hiding behind the dark clouds—I got a good view of the nightmare in front of me. The sight was all it took to keep me frozen in my tracks.

It was a corpse of a woman that looked like she just had crawled out of her grave. A moving corpse slowly heading towards me – a zombie?! 

Her eyeballs dangerously dangle out of its sockets while her skin melts like liquid ice cream exposing the flesh beneath. Her mouth opened as if in a silent scream, and some kind of black insects and worms were roaming and sucking the inside of her mouth. 

"What the freaking hell is this place?" I cried out in fear and frustration. I'm about to burst into tears…again! 

Her skeletal fingers tried to remove the arrow that struck her chest just as I clumsily tried to wade backward. At the same time, my eyes are transfixed to the gory sight. It seems that my body is about to give up on me at this moment. My heart that had been hammering loudly against my ribcage since earlier has finally lost its will to beat…Am I going to end up like her? Just what the hell is going on with this place?

"There's still another one here!" a sudden baritone voice shouts from a short distance. My heart soared upon hearing the man's voice for a while – I immediately thought there was still hope after all. He can help me get out of this place.  

However, as if suddenly alerted by a new presence, the corpse somewhat regained her strength and fluidly takes out the arrow in her chest. As soon as she's done, her head slightly tilted towards my direction while her dangling eyes zeroed in on me. That's when all the warning bells inside my head went off in a glaring and resounding sound.

Then, a sinister smile etched the woman's lips, exposing razor-sharp teeth while she was steadily advancing towards me. 

"Ha…. I'm going to be eaten alive, is that it?" I murmur in disbelief. It's as if being killed by my stalker is not enough. I will have to be eaten by a zombie too? And my body doesn't want to cooperate anymore. Should I just die a second time? 

Just when I'm about to resign to my fate, someone grabs me at the back of my collar and pulls me out of the water as if I'm nothing but a grain of rice before setting me aside inside the boat. Well, considering his build, he looks like a giant bear in the making – and a rugged thug at that. Am I really safe now?

"Woman! What the bloody hell are you doing? Do you have a death wish?!"

A loud and angry growl immediately cut me off from saying anything. My gaze bounces back in the direction of the sound. And that's when I realize that corpse is suddenly gaining momentum and just about ready to tear their throats apart.