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Forest of the Dead ch 3

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~Chapter 3~



An electric jolt shot through her body and her heart leapt to life. It seemed to be singing with joy, even, for a melodical tone sounded at its every beat. White light stung her eyes even in their closed state. Her lungs went to work of their own accord, and she felt her chest rise and lower with breath. Warmth spread through her body, a wonderful feeling. She heard people cheering gleefully around her. She opened one eye just a little and through that slit of vision she saw all was white. The walls, the curtain, the sunlight out the window, and even the people and their clothes. Everything was marvelous, sterile white. She felt comforted by the presence of happily emotive people. They were not hollow shells and phantasms, nor malicious demons, they were real, live, in-the-flesh people.

The people soon filed out, only one woman remaining, who checked the various machines and papers in the room. "How you feeling, Miss Anastacci?"

Imogene, at first, didn't realize the woman was referring to her. "What?" She opened her eyes fully now, accepting the sunlight. She was in a hospital room. How she knew what a hospital room was, she couldn't tell, but she was in it.

"You been in a coma ever since the explosion and...and, well, you...died."

"Coma? Explosion?" Imogene tried to sit up, but pain shot through every inch of her body, and she realized that every inch of her body wasn't quite as encompassing as before. In fact...

"There was a gas leak that decimated your entire block."

"So that's how I died." Imogene sighed in relief. Just an explosion. No demons involved.

The nurse stopped and looked at Imogene with the strangest expression. "You're not acting surprised."

"No. I'm not. I already knew I was dead."

The nurse looked uncomfortable. "Uh. Yeah. Okay, I gotta...uh...look at other patients." She exited quickly. Imogene sighed again, feeling weary now that the high of being revived had passed. No sooner had the nurse left did the door swing open again and a group of unfamiliar people entered. These were not doctors, she could tell, as they had no scrubs.

The elderly people at front immediately threw their arms around Imogene, the woman in tears. "Oh, my Immi, I can't believe it! You've finally woken up!" They pulled away, the woman holding Imogene at arm's length to study her, at first ecstatic and then melting into sorrow. "Immi, my Immi...I'll never get used to seeing you like this..." A handsome young man and woman standing behind the elders, along with two children, were looking disturbed and a little revolted.

Imogene gave them all quizzical looks. "Who are you?"

The elder woman gasped and drew back as if bitten. "Immi, we're...we're your family!" She sounded hurt. "Don't you recognize us? At all?"

"I've forgotten everything. I only remember these past...Well, I don't know how many days it's been."

"How could you remember anything? You've been in a coma."

"I've been dead."



"So, Miss Anastacci--"

"Call me Imogene. 'Anastacci' is unfamiliar to me."

The psychiatrist raised a bow but his steely eyes and voice remained firm. He tapped the butt of his pencil on his clipboard as he spoke. "Miss Imogene. You claim you remember your death but nothing else."

"I claim nothing. What I've said is the truth." Imogene didn't sit back or relax. This man made her feel on-edge. Her 'parents' as they called themselves said he was a helper to the mentally imfirm, one who helps people deal with trauma. But he seemed more like a judge and jury, a surveyer, an appraiser who didn't like what he saw. He regarded Imogene coldly from behind half-moon glasses.

"From what your parents told me, this isn't how your normally talk."

"I'm sorry, but I don't remember how I normally talk."

"So what was death like?" He held the pencil at the ready now, poised and waiting to write.

"The dying or everything after that?"

"All of it. Start at what your earliest memory and work your way to the present." His eyes didn't look at the paper while he wrote, which meant he was either extraordinarily coordinated or had abysmal handwriting.

"Well...well...It started...It's hard to explain."

"Try your best."

"I remember...I was suddenly in the universe." She chided herself for the vague description. She didn't know how else to phrase what she had felt.

The psychiatrist's eyebrow came dowm again in a straight line. "We're always in the universe, Miss An--Miss Imogene."

"That's not what I mean. I was floating...I wasn't entirely connected to it. I mean...Right now, we're physical. You can feel the gravity of the ground, and you can touch the ground, and the air, and you can feel the sun. But I didn't feel any of it, I was just watching everything. I saw...I saw everything happen at once. The whole history." Her hands were waving in gestures as she tried to form her sentences.

"The history of the world?"

"No. Yes. But more. The history of the universe. I saw the...beginning. When it all exploded, and everything formed into suns and planets, and I saw everyone evolve."

"You've only been dead a minute."

"It all happened in a split second."

"I see. Then what happened?" He had stopped bothering to write anything down now. Maybe he had just been doodling the whole time.

"Then...I...I...moved...I can't even explain that, at all. I was just moving. But not in the physical way of going from one place to another...I was...shifting..."

"What an amazing imagination to not be able to even explain it."

Imogene's temper flared. "Imagination! This all happened!" she spat. "And if you're going to ask me about it and then tell me it's not real, then...then I'm leaving!" She made to roll away.

"No, wait, wait." He raised a hand in a 'stop' motion. "Stay. I'm sorry. Go on. It's just hard for me to believe." He sounded insincere. In fact, Imogene knew perfectly well he was insincere. But she had no one else to talk to and she was a little eager to get it all off her chest - even if it was to someone who didn't believe her.

She released her hand from the wheel, calming herself. "Of course. Anyway. Then I appeared someplace."

"Where?"

"He called it 'The Forest of the Dead'. The Keeper, I mean. Everyone wore gray robes unless they didn't have a body."

"Everyone? There were other people there?"

"Yes. No one had any memory, either, and they had all died somehow, but the Keeper wouldn't tell us. He was the only one allowed to see the corpses."

"What were some of their names?"

Imogene thought back to the people who she'd first seen and what the Keeper had called them. "Uhm...There was Carlie...Theodore...Will...and...and...Raine."

The psychiatrist's hand slackened for just a moment, his pencil tip plopping onto the clipboard in his other hand with a very small 'thip'. His lips tightened and his eyes turned even steelier. "What did they look like?"

"Carlie had reddish hair, and Theo was very blonde, and Will was tall and muscular, and Raine had dark hair and...and, well, she looked a little like you, actually. The same nose, the same chin...Different eyes, though. Green."

The psychiatrist was very silent, and soon the only sound was of the chirruping summer insects out the window. His eyes were distant and melancholy, and then they came to focus and slid sideways, going over to a desk in the corner and the photos thereupon...

His face softened and he sighed out (Imogene thought he had been holding his breath). "Oh, hah, you had me fooled. You really had me going there." He set his clipboard and pencil down and folded his shaking hands over his lap. Imogene looked at where he'd been staring. There were many photos of the psychiatrist and who she assumed was his family and pets. And there was a photo of a younger, smiling Raine. Her skin was more livid and glowing, alight with life itself, her eyes gleaming with a greater sparkle, her hair shining in the sunlight of the scene. A sharp contrast to the duller, deader Raine that Imogene had met.

"Miss Imogene, I think our session is over. I'll call your parents and they'll be here to pick you up soon." He stood and went behind her chair, grasping the handles firmly to quell the trembling in his fingers, pushing her out the door and down the hall. People passing in the corridors couldn't help but glance askew at her with the same shock and revulsion that her family members had. If she looked up at anyone, they quickly averted their gazes. Apparently people in the realm of the living were far more sensitive to even the smallest abnormalities. Imogene had stared unsurprised in the eyes of demons, dragons, and elk-gods, had passed unsuffering through multiple dimensions, had imploded and exploded before she even had a physical body. And yet these humans, just as unique and diverse as she, were put on edge by the very sight of her now.

"How did Raine die?" she said suddenly.

"That's really none of your business," the psychiatrist said through his teeth. "Here are your parents."

The elderly couple, Barbara and Simon Anastacci as Imogene had lately learned, had arrived in the lobby of the psychiatric building. They were not as excited to greet Imogene as they had been in the hospital, and only stood and nodded at her appearance. Barbara, overly emotive, wore a troubled frown, her eyes full of pain. Simon stood with his back straight, as if he were trying to keep his shoulders from sagging beneath a great weight. His thick eyebrows were drawn together in a grim scowl, not angry but contemplative. The psychiatrist was very much relieved to leave his chaired burden at their hands.

"I think I should speak with you both," he said. He looked at Imogene. "In private." She did not return his look, gazing ahead with as much pride as she could muster in her state. Simon's lower lip twitched, trying to frown. Barbara let her face fall further. "Yes...of course...Imogene, stay here..." The three then departed to a small office, Imogene remaining in the lobby. Alternating between wheels with her one hand, she pushed herself over to an out-of-the-way corner. People on the sofas and chairs tried not to look at her but inevitably their eyes strayed sideways at the girl in a wheelchair.

The glass-windowed office was soundproof to all but the finest ears, and Imogene counted herself among the more audibly sensitive. Even from across the lobby she could clearly hear the conversation between the Anastaccis and Dr. Bowman.

"What did she say?" Barbara asked.

"Now...This is very common among coma recoverees for them to tell of...odd dreams," Bowman said.

"God, she's crazy, isn't she?" grunted Simon, rubbing his forehead.

"Before I tell you anything, I must warn you that she will stick to her story. You might not believe a thing she says, but you still have to play along, okay? Whenever she mentions her 'death', just nod and act like you think she's recalling an actual memory. She doesn't know the difference, not yet, but she will, in time."

"What did she say? Oh, what has she said?!" Barbara's eyes were becoming glossy.

Bowman took in a deep breath. "She's under the impression that her death has lasted days, and that she can remember every part of it. She says she went someplace called 'The Forest of Death' and that...that she's met other people there."

"Other people? Maybe she remembers --"

"People she hasn't met. It was a ruse; I could tell. She mentioned...my own daughter. She described her, and at first I fell for it, but then I remembered I had a photo of Raine in the room."

Barbara sighed and dabbed her eyes with a cloth. Simon's expression became irritated. "So she's making things up? You said she believes what she says, but how can she if she's willingly lying?"

"Well, well, look at you, child. It doesn't look like life's treating you much better than death."

Imogene jumped at the sudden new voice beside her. She looked over at the chair next to her, once empty, that now had a woman seated in it. The woman sat slightly sideways, legs uncrossed, one foot and two fingers tapping. Her green eyes held a glow of their own and were staring with a strange excitement at Imogene.

"Do I know you?" she asked the woman.

"Do you mean if you knew me in your first life? No, absolutely not. I rather despise this realm and the form I have to take to visit, but for you, child -- I figured I'd make an exception. So no, you didn't know me before, but you did afterwards."

"Stop speaking in riddles and answer me straight."

"Straightly, child." The woman chuckled. "I was behind you, remember? In the summoning line."

"You!" Imogene's anger boiled up again. A few people looked over at her loud voice in mild surprise. She lowered her tone. "You tricked me."

"I didn't trick you. I offered you a chance to go to my realm, and you unwisely agreed. Whatever happened thereafter is not my fault."

"I was nearly eaten by a demon. I was in its mouth, its teeth already cutting into me. I'm lucky I was revived at that time."

"Revived? Oh, goodness...Heeheehee. You think you're alive? Didn't I tell you, child, that people would try to resurrect you -- with magic?" The demoness found this very funny, and started chuckling again. A few people sitting nearby positioned themselves in farther chairs.

"I was brought back by the hospital doctors after I briefly died," Imogene said firmly.

"You've been dancing on the edge of death for your entire coma, child. It's only recently they noticed you're flatlining. I know how humans work, as I was once among them. The doctors won't admit they let you die your first day here; it would hurt their reputation. You've been just alive enough for them to keep you here."

"Are I not alive now? I am warm and breathing." Imogene set her hand on the demon's to prove her point.

"Warm and breathing, yes, alive, not quite. Someone has magically brought you back. Have you had heightened senses? That's because you're still very spiritual. You're undead. Your signs of life may start to fade, soon."

"Back to my point. Why did you ask me to go your realm?"

The demon shrugged. "For the hell of it. Really. We are chaotic creatures and do things on a whim. I wanted to see what would happen."

Imogene glared. This demon's recklessness had cost her pain, sickness, and almost a second death, and now was shrugging it off like a small incident.

"Listen, you humans do things when you want something...Money, love, fame, whatever. We don't."

"Oh? Demons don't want money, love, and fame?" Imogene said sharply.

The demon laughed. "We don't buy anything, what's the use of money? And love...Have you ever heard of a demon loving another? No. As for fame...Yes, some do want to be famous, so they can be worshipped. And of course quite a few of them want world domination. Not to worry, child, as long as they're too chaotic to unite as am army there's no danger of that. I wasn't born a demon, so I don't want any of it, just fun. I do things for fun, when I feel like it. Nothing personal."

Imogene sighed, too tired to be angry anymore. "Alright. Fine. So why are you here?"

Another laugh and shrug. "For fun."

"They think I'm insane."

The demon sobered. "Yes. You better keep your experiences hush-hush, okay? Pretend you don't think it's real."

"But I do."

"Learn to lie."

The three older adults had emerged from the office now. Barbara looked at the demon woman curiously. "Who's this? A new friend?" she said. Her slow and purpose words gave the impression she was speaking to a toddler. Imogene refrained from glaring.

"Yahevabathshebaxas," the demoness said with a grin. All four of the others looked surprised and confused.

"Ya...yaheva..." Barbara tried to pronounce it.

"Ya-hev-a-bath-she-bax-as. It means 'the conquerer's beloved seventh daughter'."

"That...that's nice. Imogene, let's go home, okay?"

"Whose home?" Imogene replied.

"Yours is destroyed, remember? I mean...You don't...but..." the mother faltered. Simon sighed and rubbed his head again. This was going to be a long process of the family members getting used to each other again.
Second chapter: [link]

Same rating as those. Again, tell me of any mistakes you find. Critisism well-appreciated.
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