(In) Another Time, In Another Place

Malik threw his body up, legs slightly shaking, and snarled out," Who the fuck are you?"

There had been a lit fireplace behind him, with an elderly lady sat in an arm chair, drinking a mug of something, who had apparently been watching him the whole fucking time and hadn't said a word.

"My, my, such colourful language. Come closer to the fire, so I can see your face," she requested, a snivelling, conniving laugh in her voice.

She didn't move from her seat, and took a sip from her mug.

Her eyes were beady and small, her nose long and curled like the beak of a crow. She was also dressed in nothing but pink. A pink hat, a pink cardigan, a pink skirt, a pink bag, and pink shoes. She looked as if she was dressed to go and have a walk outside, rather than drinking something warm in the middle of the night.

There was a small glimmer in her eyes, and she looked as if she could see him just fine from where she sat, her irises and pupils raking over him, and always shifting focus.

She could see him just fucking fine. He didn't need to come closer to this creepy, old hag.

"No. Tell me, who the fuck you are. Then, I might," Malik gritted out at the lady, his eyes not leaving her face now.

She gave an over the top sigh and leaned back in her chair, as if she were giving into a fussy toddler than a full grown man, who could and would break her bones if need be.

"Fine. My name is Mary Elizabeth Drumming, and I am dead," she replied, her tone frank and to the point.

"What?" Malik shot back almost immediately.

This lady was not dead. She was perfectly alive and healthy. She was ridiculously fine, considering she was looking down on him now.

She made a mildly offended face, before repeating, once more, "My name is Mary Elizabeth Drumming, and I am dead."

Her tone was more put upon this time, as if she were beginning to lose her patience. Her facial expressions had not changed from smug exasperation, her mouth in a perfectly practised and poised straight line.

"You're not dead," Malik replied, putting emphasis on each and every word.

"Yes, I am. I can even show you the hole that the bullet went through," she offered, her hands placing her mug down on the armrest, and moving to grip the hem of her skirt.

Her face was deadly serious, not a single trace of her previous joviality was present.

"Show me," Malik demanded, pointedly not moving.

If this lady was truly dead, then there was a strong possibility that he, himself, was also now dead as well, and the place that he was in, was some sort of afterlife.

The old lady lifted her skirt up her legs, and there, sitting innocuously, on her outer thigh, just a finger length to her him, sat a hole in her leg. It was not bleeding, but it certainly looked painful.

It was a hollow hole, with red flesh, lining the insides, the crimson glistening and looking that it was just on the verge of bursting and bleeding, but by some miracle, the blood was restraining itself, and was remaining in the woman's body.

"The bullet entered by leg and travelled upwards through my body. I died from internal bleeding in the hospital. My last memories were of my son and daughter, leaning over me and begging me to give them a sign if whether I was awake or not. It wasn't a pleasant death," the lady explained, patiently.

Her voice began to crack when she mentioned her children, and Malik could almost picture the scene before his eyes.

He slowly moved his hand to the back of his head, hoping to feel that nothing was there.

The image he had conjured up, of the children crying over their dead mother, morphed against his will, to the sight of his Grandma crying over him.

He had only ever seen her cry twice before, at Grandpa's funeral once, and again at Ma and Pa's funeral.

He knew how her eyes would puff up and swell, and how the first of her tears always came out of the corner of her right eye, the droplets following a trail around the side of her face, rather than directly over her cheeks.

He could see it all happening as he ran his hand down the back of his head, feeling out the familiar strands of hair and the groove of his skull, until his fingers paused at one spot.

There was a straight line, a cut, running across the back of his head, the length of two £1 coins - a clear, open seam from which Malik could feel under his hair, and touch something horrifyingly smooth, and slightly damp.

He brought his hand away and into his eyes, his fingers a dark, dark red.

Oh.

He was dead.

She was dead.

The old lady was telling the truth.

"If I'm d-dead, when why the hell am I here?" Malik asked, his eyes not looking away from his stained hand.

Maybe he was in shock, Malik thought to himself, feeling seconds away from bursting out laughing and maybe crying.

He had left his Grandma alone. He was dead. He died before his Grandma.

His Grandma had been left behind again.

And she was alone this time.

"I don't know why we are here, but there is a way for us to move on, if we'd like," the old woman explained, patiently.

She stopped speaking to let Malik compose himself a little more. His eyes were wide and his legs were shaking. He had sweated through his white T-shirt and looked as if was about to pass out any second now.

She gestured towards the fire, and the boy followed her instructions.

His eyes were wide, gazing into the crackling flames, and his hands were completely still and listless, hanging by his sides. His eyes were shiny with tears, and now that he wasn't swearing, she could finally see clearly, the glimpse of the lost child she had seen within him, when he first stumbled into her room.