Reborn In The World Of The Undead

2. Another world

The stranger, a terribly scary individual whose voice echoed in my ears and had caused the unbearable pain in my neck. The searing pain had made me open my eyes wide in shock and fear. Only to find when I opened them that I was staring at the ceiling of my room.

I looked up and realized that I had been dreaming. It had all been just a very bad dream. A nightmare that no one could have ever imagined, and yet it seemed so real. It was so vivid. I felt as if I had been able to smell the rancid reek that emanated from those corpses, I could still hear the sound of their bones cracking, and I could still see the hulking figure of that man.

That place and that scary being had felt so real, too real. I still wasn't sure if I was actually in my room or not. Could I still be dreaming and this was not my room but part of the dream? I closed my eyes and opened them again, but I was still here staring up at the ceiling of my room. I looked around at my room, taking a long deep breath to prove to myself that I was saf. That I was in fact home in my own room and felt secure.

I sat up in bed taking another deep breath, but when I reached up to touch my forehead it was soaking wet I was sweating profusely. The gross part was that it wasn’t just my forehead, my whole body was bathed in it. My clothes were drenched in sweat and sticking to my body, it was as if I had taken a bath with my clothes on. The nightmare had been so vivid and scary that it didn't surprise me how much I had been sweating.

I tossed the covers back, getting out of bed then stripped out of my clothes and headed straight to the bathroom. It was two in the morning but all I wanted to do was freshen myself up and get the feeling of sweat off of my body. I had taken a bath and scrubbed at my skin, but after sweating so much I felt a strange sort of sickness and after that nightmare I couldn't go back to sleep.

After I had taken my bath I still felt dirty, so I decided to take a shower to rinse the rest of the sweat off me, hoping that the rest of it would wash away down the drain making me feel better. I stood under the shower spray, but I hadn't dared to close my eyes. I didn't know why but I felt that if I closed my eyes I would be back in that place again.

That hadn't made any sense, it had all been in my imagination. It had been a nightmare but I was awake now, right? I ran my hand over my body then brought it up to wash my face. I took a deep breath smelling my hand, but I was glad that I didn't smell like them. My body and mind felt lighter after taking a shower, I had managed to get rid of all that nonsense about that ridiculous dream from my head.

I dried my hair with the towel, took fresh clothes out of the bureau then started getting dressed. I stood in front of the mirror and was just about to put my top on when I froze the top fell from my hands. I looked closely at myself in the mirror as my hands went to the left side of my neck, making my jaw drop in surprise.

There was a strange red coloured mark on my neck that had a strange figure in it as well. This scar felt like the mark that the figure had given me, it was just like a burn mark but had the color of a red tattoo. I looked at my skin as I scratched at the red part, but it really was a tattoo. I went to the bathroom and took a wet washcloth, trying to wipe it away with water, but it would not leave my skin.

It really was a tattoo, but I had never gotten any kind of tattoo on my body. Ever. That meant that it hadn't been a dream, that it really had happened. But I was still in my room and I hadn’t smelled rotten like they had. I looked around my room again, more carefully this time as tiny beads of sweat began to roll down my face as another thought came to mind.

It had been a dream, it was definitely a dream. It had all happened there, but if it had been a dream then that meant that the strange figure came to me and cursed me in my dream. He had said that it was a boon that would turn into a curse, he had said that we would meet again soon. What the fuck was all this? Even if I believed this insanity, then what did it all mean? Why had I gotten this curse? Why me?

*****

A few hours after the nightmare I had my earphones in, listening to my favorite song as I completely ignored my surroundings. This was the five minutes of the day that I looked forward to, where I could sit at the bus station and just have time to myself. I stood there in the bus station like a ghost. Waiting for a bus was very boring, but when I was listening to my music I was happy.

A few minutes later I watched as the bus approached. I got up from the stand, but when I got on the bus I noticed that there were no empty seats so I ended up standing. It was already 8:30 in the morning and I wanted to reach my nursery school at the earliest possible time. I had been working at the nursery school for the last two years and I loved it, it was my favorite job.

Ever since I was a small child I had been living in an orphanage, so I knew the loneliness that these orphaned children felt. I had followed the rules of the orphanage then at the age of eighteen I had left to attend college, I had continued my studies until I had been able to teach the orphanage kids. This had become the best part of my life and I loved it. I was standing on the bus, listening to my music after a while the bus stopped at the next bus station allowing some other people to board.

The bus driver began driving again, only to slam on the brakes making everyone jolt forward and because I had been standing I had to grab onto a nearby seat to stop myself from falling. Everyone had become nervous and scared including me, none of us knew why the driver had stopped the bus so suddenly. Someone with trembling feet covered in a black sheet stepped on the bus, his back was almost half bent and he was not able to walk very well.

The entire bus was filled with people yet no one paid any attention to this old man. People often didn't hesitate to give up their seats for pregnant women or the elderly, but no one was paying attention to this elderly person. It was as if he was invisible.

I looked around at everyone. They were all behaving normally, but what was even stranger was the fact that this old man hadn't seemed to be expecting anyone to give up their seat for him. My eyes kept wandering to him, but I couldn't see his face due to the hood that was covering him even though he was only standing a short distance away from me.

After a while the bus came to where I wanted to get off. I made my way to the exit, but the same elderly man blocked my path. His back was turned to me, so he hadn't realized that I had been standing behind him. Just as I was about to ask him to let me by, he moved out of my way kindly giving me the space I needed to get past him.

I was very surprised to see this, despite his face being covered with the hood and having his back to me he had still known that I was coming and had moved with such speed that it was astounding, it was as if he was a young man not an elderly one.

I had passed him and was going down the stairs of the bus, but my eyes went back to him as I gave him a once over, but this time his face wasn't completely covered by the hood half of it had lifted up. I tried to see his face, but it seemed as if he didn't have one. All I could see inside the hood was darkness and nothing else.

How was that even possible? I saw that other people were standing around and they still looked normal. I stepped off the bus then stood there watching for a few seconds as it drove away. This had already been a very strange day, from the nightmare to everything that happened on that bus and I couldn't tear my mind away from that old man. Why had all those people been treating him as if he were invisible? How was it possible that he had only been visible to me? I stopped in front of the school and shook my head, slapping my face as I did so to try banish those thoughts from my mind. After that strange nightmare last night my mind had to be playing tricks on me in a strange way and I didnt like it. Now I had to put all that nonsense in the back of my head so that I could get to work. I took a long deep breath in then let it out, plastered a smile on my face then entered the school. Time passed quickly while I was playing with the children. I had realized that it was almost lunch time, the children had lunch two hours after the start of the school day.

I was sitting in the staff room with the other teachers as we discussed when the bus would arrive because today we were taking the children on a field trip to a nearby zoo. After a half an hour bus ride we arrived, four other teachers and myself took all the children and left for the zoo.

The bus stopped in front of the zoo and we all went in with the children. Due to being so busy with work I hadn't been here in a long time, I was enjoying it now. We were all sitting on the grass and there was a pond nearby. We made sure that the children were a safe enough distance away from it so that no accidents would happen.

A little girl was sitting on my lap. She talked nonstop, telling me about lions, bears, monkeys, and all the other animals. I had been listening very carefully to her doing my best to give her my full attention.

“Teacher, what animal is that?” She asked, seeming a little anxious to learn about the animal. I smiled as I looked at the animal she had been inquiring about, but my eyes widened in surprise when I saw it. The animal that the girl had been asking about wasn’t an animal. It was a black shadow and after looking carefully at it I felt as if it were the man that had been wearing the hood that I had seen on the bus. I lifted the little girl off my lap, placing her on the grass then got up and started to walk towards him. I wanted to know whether or not I was right in thinking that it was him.

“ARIA,” A teacher called me, just as I had taken a few steps towards it. I stopped and turned to look at her.

“Where are you going?” She asked, I noticed that she was holding my hand tightly, but I hadn't felt it at first. Why was she holding my hand?

“There is a person standing there and I was going to see him,” I said, but she looked confused.

“What kind of crazy things are you talking about? No one is standing there, there is only water. No one can stand on water,” she chided as I hurriedly looked in the direction I had been going only to find that she was right. There was nothing there but water. I stood a mere step away from it. That meant that I was going to walk into the water, but I couldn't swim, it would have led to my death.

I had heard how some people talked about this pond, saying that if someone drowned in it they never come back out. Sweat began forming on my brow, what the fuck was happening to me?

“Are you alright? Why are you sweating so much? I think that you are not feeling well. You can go home, if you want. We can take care of the children and get them back to school,” She advised me. I realized that I really should go home.

I thanked her and followed her orders, watching as they got all the children back on the bus then I began my walk back home. My house was far away from the zoo, I would have to take another bus to get home so I went to the bus station.

I kept glancing at my watch because I had been standing here for fifteen minutes and the bus should have arrived ten minutes ago, I just wanted to get home as soon as possible. I had been watching people come and go from the zoo, but my mind had only been able to focus on the dark shadow that I had seen at the zoo.

I was sure that I had been the only one that had seen that shadow, but I hadn't noticed anything else around me, not even the big pond. I hadn't understood what was happening to me, it didn't make any sense. I saw people going here and there, using the crossing signal, when I caught sight of a man at the crossing signal.

It was the same old man that had been on the bus, it might have been the same one that I had seen at the zoo as well. This was the third time I had seen him today and I had decided that I was going to ignore him like everyone else. I had come to this conclusion because everytime I had seen him strange things happened to me and I didn't want or need any more headaches today.

Despite not wanting to see him, my eyes kept glancing over at him. I noticed that he was passing the signal so slowly that I started to worry that the signal would turn red before he had time to cross it and then it happened. My eyes widened in surprise when I saw this because the signal still had fifty seconds left, yet the moment I thought about it turning red it had.

How was that even possible? How had it turned red? I hadn't had time to think about it as the man was still on the crossing and it was the most crowded signal with many large vehicles passing through it. If any of the vehicles hit the old man it would definitely kill him, but thankfully there were only bikes coming through at the moment, so I ran to save him before anything bigger came.

“HEY!!!” I screamed as loud as I could, running towards the old man hoping that he would hear me and turn around. But he didn't, he kept going without looking back at me. I saw a large truck speeding towards him. It was about to hit him, just before that I managed to grab the man's hand and pull him out of the way.

I couldn't believe that I had just survived being hit and had managed to save this unknown old man. My heart was beating so fast that it felt like I was having a heart attack. I looked at the man who was still holding my hand and had a hood covering his face that was untouched, but the strange thing was that I still couldn't see his face, ther was only darkness.

“Sorry if I startled you by grabbing your hand and pulling you toward me, but you were going to have an accident. Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere? Do you want me to take you to the hospital to have you checked out?” I asked, but he didn't answer me.

I looked at him and remembered that he had been almost bent in half before, but now he was slowly straightening up. I heard the same noise of cracking bones that I had in my nightmare which caused me to immediately let go of the man's hand in panic. He stood in front of me after straightening up as my mouth dropped open when I saw his full height.

He was much taller than a normal person, so I had to step back in order to look up at him, but his face was still covered. Though I had lost all interest in seeing this person's face now as there was no way he was a normal person, was he even human at all?

Suddenly the environment around me changed and I was absorbed into complete darkness. I saw him coming towards me, but I did not dare to run because I knew it was of no use, there was only darkness and I had nowhere to go.

“The time has come,” a familiar voice said. I didn't know why but it sounded just like the voice from my nightmare, the giagtic figure’s voice, but that was impossible.

“What are you talking about? What time has come?” I asked him, but he disappeared before my eyes, just his voice echoed around.

“To enter the world of the undead,” the voice replied. Then everything became normal, the all consuming darkness had dissipated and I found myself standing at the same signal as before. I looked to the left and right of me, everything looked normal. What was going on?

The only thing that was strange was that the truck was at least ten steps away from me. After staring at it I couldn't think or understand anything because it hit me before I had the chance, my body collided with what I had not even seen and my eyes closed.

I felt as if my whole body was a huge ache, I was about to die. My death was certain, but I never thought that I would die like this. I had not wanted to die, I had wanted to live…..

That was my last thought before I died….

*****

In the world of the undead…..undead….undead….

The words echoed in my ears as I immediately began to panic. I was taking long deep breaths as I sat up on the ground. I kept my eyes closed for a few seconds because my head felt like it was being torn apart due to pain.

Why was my head in so much pain?

Was it because I bumped into something when I died….

What? Was I dead?

What the fuck?!!! Was I dead?!!!

No!

As soon as the thought surfaced in my mind I opened my eyes. What I saw before me was another world, this was not my world. I had come to someone else's world.