Walking Dead

Melnikova experienced perfect black darkness, and silence to match.

She felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. And yet, she existed. She’d returned to her own body, and in the instant of return, she’d known the body was dead, deactivated on the cusp of the greatest of triumphs.

Eyes, ears, nerves, all lines cut. No breath filled the lungs; no heart beat bravely in the chest. All dead.

I nearly had the earth in my hand, she thought bitterly. But I know where to find the author of my disappointment.

She sought through the blackness and psychically “saw,” as if illuminated by a strange, violet non-light, Maunov, and the room about him, where he worked at a computer. She willed the dead envelope that was her body to move.

Maunov heard a thump in the little chamber where Melnikova’s corpse reposed upon the black recliner.