Her

The very angry woman was about five feet tall, shoulder length brown hair pulled back into a loose pony tail. Her light blue eyes were framed by narrowed lids she put to good effect glaring at him. He had no idea who she was.

“Excuse me?” He was at a loss. How was he supposed to engage this hostile creature?

“I saw you staring at the moon for like five minutes. It’s the fucking moon. You’ve seen it thousands of times before. We have things to do. Now! Let’s go!” She motioned impatiently to follow her as she made to leave.

He raised his hands in a placating gesture to halt her.

“Hello, I’m Tim. You are…?” He wanted to get some sort of grip on this situation, bring order to what was currently a confusing mess.

“Oh. We have to do this…? I’m Rachel.” A sardonic smile was plastered on her face like she was born with it. “I’m here to save your everlasting soul.”

Hit with that bombshell Tim was feeling anything but more normal.

“And mine, I guess. So let’s get going! We’ll talk as we walk.” With that she turned and left. The message was clear, she was going with or without him.

“Ok, ok.” he hurried a few steps to catch up to her back, making a quick assessment as he did.

He appeared to be dressed, that was good. A familiar rectangle weighed down his left front pocket and a quick tap found a wallet in his back right. No keys of any sort.

Rachel pushed through a set of double doors just to the left of the nurses’ station, ones that would normally require a buzz-through. Realizing that, Tim looked around. No one else was anywhere in sight. And he still didn’t hear most of the noises that he normally would. The low hum of elevators and ice machines had begun to creep its way into the periphery of his consciousness, though he still didn’t hear any people or televisions or beeps. The no beeps was the most obvious void.

Rachel walked down a short corridor and took a left. An elevator bank stood thirty feet down the hall from them, across from a small seating area. The couch and two chairs there currently sat vacant. She reached the elevators and pressed the down button. He had surmised they were on the second floor from his view and room number. He ambled up behind her and decided not to speak yet. It still felt eerie in here and he didn’t want his voice to be the thing that broke the spell.

The elevator arrived from below and dinged its doors open. Rachel stepped in when the doors stopped moving and Tim followed, a step deeper into the elevator car then her when he turned to face the entrance. The doors closed and the cables lowered them down to the lobby. Neither of them spoke as they descended. When they arrived at the first floor the elevator deposited them behind the front reception desk. It was empty of both patients and staff, which Tim could not recall having ever seen before. They passed through the equally people-less lobby and toward the entrance doors. Rachel veered to the left of the rotating doors that commanded much of the entrance as she approached them, choosing to exit from a single person door at the far left. They left the hospital and walked into a dawning sun when Rachel finally spoke again.

“The people will reappear. We only had that small grace to get you out of the hospital. It can be hard to get good nurses to look the other way. Happens a lot.”

He tried to decrypt that statement as she kept talking, legs carrying her towards a short-term parking lot directly outside the entrance.

“In general act as you normally would. We interact with this world the same as usual. We have to put gas in our car and pay for food. People can hurt us, they can stop us.” At this she paused halfway through the main street to meet his eyes.

“People will try to stop us. It may not be something that ever comes up, but you need to stay aware at all times.” She must have realized how hard her features had become because they softened, the first glimpse of anything resembling compassion he had seen from her so far.

“I know this is a lot. We’ll have plenty of time to talk in the car.” With that she continued into the short-term lot, eyes scanning slowly.

“Forgot where you parked?” Flippant, Tim was trying to take some control of the situation.

“I don’t actually have a car yet.” She replied coolly, unamused.