Snippet #2226

Music was still playing when Izzy opened her eyes. She felt nothing but the awkward temperature of the ground below her, and slowly the realization that she was lying face-down came to her. Gravity took effect as the feeling trickled down her spine, into her arms, and down her legs, reminding her that she had limbs.

"Jesus," Izzy whispered as she groggily liften herself to her knees. What happened last night? It must have been one hell of a high.

As the industrial-sized headphones around her neck blasted bass beats, she looked around the vast light-grey nothingness that enveloped her. A slight twitch of anxiety struck her before disappearing. Looking down to lift herself off the floor - if that was what one would call it - her eyes widened at the blood on the front of her shirt. In the middle of it was a large hole which gleamed with still blood.

It hit her like a brick. Lifting her hands through her hair and resting on her temples, Izzy shook her head and closed her eyes. She remembered walking the familiar route from the club, Neon, to her apartment. The music that played now was the same she had been listening to then.

In her memory a loud bang startled her even through her headphones, and pain seared through her back. As if in slow motion, Izzy watched the bullet exit her stomach, her own blood and flesh bursting out with it. Falling to the ground, an incapacitating pain clutched her insides as blood flowed from the hole. Lying face-down on the cold cement of the sidewalk, she groaned as loud as she could, hearing a few footsteps behind her.

She was losing conciousness already. Her vision blurred and her hearing waved from audible to not. Another loud bang made her jump even in her pain, and the flesh in her shoulder seemed to explode. A few moments, or perhaps hours, passed before the stranger walked past her, only their feet barely visible through her tunneling vision. Warm fluid was circling her on the sidewalk and falling from her open mouth. Falling in and out of conciousness for what felt like a decade, she wished herself to death.

Back in the territory of gray nothing, Izzy's arms fell limp to the ground as she stared a hole into it, hunched over and merely shaking her head. She knew she'd been dead. A very sure feeling made her adamant she'd died. After a few moments of shock, Izzy stood on shaky legs, wide eyes examining everything. She pushed away the feelings that might make her cry with another angry and violent shake of the head.

She'd died, and this was no heaven or hell. So where, she thought frantically, was this?