If he hadn’t, he would have seen it twitch.

"No! You idiot! Turn around! Get back in your car! You’re gonna die," I screamed in his ear, even though I knew it was useless. I tried to pound his chest with my fists as I saw it picking itself up.

It was too late. His partner’s scream was too late. He turned around too late. He moved to jump back too late.

I could do nothing as I watched my corpse sink my teeth into his leg as fluorescent fungus dripped from the side of its mouth and the one good eye. The glowing plant-matter completely carpeted the other side of my face, where the flame had burned it.

His shrieks echoed in my ears, almost completely drowning out the sirens that were approaching. The woman in the car threw herself across the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, then locked the car. The man pleaded with her and cried. She cried too, but continued to close his window shut.

She did the right thing. The fungus was already making his veins glow under his khaki shorts. There was nothing she could do for him anymore.

He slammed his fist against the window a few times. It was enough to crack it, but three black, unmarked vans pulled up in front of them and cut his efforts short. Men in hazmat suits spilled out from the backs and restrained him and my body, and promptly threw each in the back of a separate van.

I flew into the one with my own body. I didn’t want to see what they were going to do with the woman and the rest of the people there.

My corpse panted like a wild beast and kept trying to push its way through the thick glass that separated us from the scientists. Glowing spit stained the clear surface and I noticed it was also dripping from the severed foot. It was replacing my blood.

They started the van and drove out of the city. They kept driving and driving, long enough for my corpse to calm down.

Finally, they stopped. All of them calmly filed out, but no one opened the back. I sat there in the dark, looking at what was left of my body. The fungus was the only source of light. It illuminated part of my face and shone like the milky way in my veins. I looked like a broken doll painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. It was hauntingly beautiful.

The illusion vanished when the top of the van opened and the hand of a crane picked up our glass box. They dropped us in a metal room that was big enough to fit the glass container perfectly.

As soon as the top closed above us, the metal doors opened, automatically opening the glass ones as well. A team of ten scientists marched in and collared my body, then dragged it out and into an examination room.

They named me Anabel after the cursed doll, then poked, prodded, probed, burned and poked me some more. I stayed by my own side through all of it, trying to make peace with what has become of me. All I could understand from their medical banter was positive, negative, affirmative, questionable, etc.

I didn’t know what was going on, but if it was for the good of others, I was fine with it.

"Subject Anabel ready for impregnation."

The surrounding air froze at the sound of those words. I stared with wide eyes as they strapped my body into a chair and then left the room. I couldn’t bear to watch what came next, so I ran away. I flew faster than a bullet out of there, ignoring everything that was happening in the other rooms on my way.

I am dead. And some things are better not brought into the afterlife.

I fled as far from my hometown as I could and settled to "haunt" some happy families, hoping it would bring me peace.

And for a time, it did. Until the infection spread and one after the other, they all fell to the fungus.

There was no escape and I was alone. Not one person who died in my presence ever joined me. A few saw me on their deathbeds and hailed me as an angel, but none of them lingered.

So, why did I?

I don’t know and I’m too numb to care anymore. The world is in carnage now. The only peace left is in lands forgotten by time where even wild animals refuse to enter.

There is nothing more to see, nothing more to hope for.

The only mystery I wish to solve right now is if I can at least enjoy a box of popcorn as I watch the world crumble before my eyes.