Snippet #3614

Leila didn't know how long she was crying for, but when she lifted her head, movement caught her eye. There were others here, she saw now, she wasn't alone. She still felt it, but technically, she was joined by five other teens. She could name all of them, she thought, if she tried. Matthew Arkwright, Rinni something, Steve something else. Christi Madone, Izzy Tadaka, Takada, something like that. They weren't people she knew well, but at least she recognised them, and none of them were really horrible. The only thing that was really worrying was that most of them seemed to have fared worse than her in the injuries department. Christi, shuffling towards the rest of them, had blood all over her legs and head. Matthew had escaped with only a cut on his head, as far as she could see, and both Izzy and Rinni looked uninjured from her disadvantage point on the floor.

She was distracted by Matt speaking. "What's going on?"

He was walking towards them, though seemed distracted, caught up in some memory. It was a good question, though. What was going on? Why wasn't she in Heaven, or Hell, or being reincarnated, or something? She didn't believe there was nothing after death, but what kind of afterlife was this? A seemingly random selection of near-strangers in some bizarre everlasting room? She groaned, tugging her collar up to hide her stab wounds, forgetting that her jumper would also be ripped through. "I don't know," she replied, watching Christi walk over to…what was that? A ballot box? How did that make sense? "But by the looks of things, we're all…dead."

She swallowed after saying it, the word casting shivers across her skin. She didn't want to be dead. There was a lot more she had wanted to do. She wanted to play in a concert. She wanted to wear a piece of clothing she had made herself. She wanted to see Noah and Dena grow up. She wanted to...