Sofia was almost certain she was dead. Except the very fact she could think at all made her far less certain. The painfully bright light shining right in her face hardly seemed like the light of the afterlife she was supposed to be drifting towards by now. She winced feeling something covering part of her face.

She was jerked back into her body like the pull of a bungee cord by movement in her chest. She couldn’t begin to place the feeling beyond how invasive it felt.

Sofia forced her eyes open despite the horrible light. Everything was metal, the floors, the ceilings, the large tray she lay on. It smelled sterile and horrible, like a hospital of decay and death.

She brushed the thing off her face, the large flap of skin falling away. Something clattered to the floor as someone screamed. She tried to take a breath but couldn’t as she stared down in horror. She had no lungs to breathe with. Her chest cavity had been hollowed out, her skin, muscle and tissues now dangled loosely having been cut away. She had been dissected yet she was alive.

Her body did not hurt, no adrenaline pumped through her veins, she was cold and lifeless yet present. She sat up, her intestine sloughing out of her open abdomen.

Movement caught her attention. A figure in medical garbs, entirely anonymous under the gloves and mask. They looked like a butcher, their apron stained with her blood. She could see their eyes though, eyes that stared at her in horror.

She had no lungs with which to breathe, and no larynx with which to speak. She had been hollowed out. Her body was numb and cold… and ever so hungry.

Somehow as the person stared at her their expression melted from horror to peace. Their eyes turned glossy and relaxed. They simply zoned out, their terror fading.

Sofia had no idea what was going on. How had she even gotten here? How was she alive? She knew the answer to the second one already. She wasn’t. Regardless of its possibility, she wasn’t alive.

The figure just stood there staring right back at her even as she slid her legs off the table. She couldn’t inhale, but she could still taste the air, taste their blood and sweat. Hear their pulse.

Hunger clawed at her stomach, presumably, she still had it. She pushed herself to her feet, still unable to look away from the figure that just stood there. She ran her tongue along her teeth in confusion. They were loose. An incisor came loose, falling from her lips, sliding over the flap of flesh before tinking onto the smooth shiny floor.

With a shaking hand, she brought her hand to her mouth. More teeth fell away, slipping free from her gums. She couldn’t properly spit them out, she couldn’t exhale. She was dead yet she was still here.

The coroner’s heart thudded. She couldn’t hear anything else, the sound was all-consuming, alluring, like the call of a siren. They were food, a meal wrapped in plastic. Her hunger urged her to dig in.

Yet she wasn’t standing across from warm cookies fresh from the oven. She was facing off with a person. A middle-aged man.

Eloise had taken her and changed her into something else. Something that hungered for flesh and blood. Something that was cold and dead.

Why wasn't he running? He just stood there with a dumb glassy-eyed expression. So easy it would be to have a bite.

She didn’t want to dig into his flesh though. What she wanted was to be whole, to go home, to get the hell out of this nightmare. Still… she wasn’t sure she had ever been so hungry.

She stumbled forward on unsteady legs. Where were her clothes? Where was her purse, her pulse? How did she even go about dealing with… this? Where were her… organs? How did she get them back?

Her skin was the same shade it had always been but it felt entirely different. Dry and leathery, and underneath ever so pale. Just like Eloise.

She was dripping. Thick slimy purplish goo oozing down her dangling intestines. Blood, she realized. It was her blood. Purplish and viscous. Just like the blood Eloise had made her drink.

Sofia was terrified but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t plead. She had been killed and torn into pieces. She needed to be whole, she needed to be away from it all. She needed to fill the empty ache inside her before she collapsed and really died this time.

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She stumbled to the coroner. He was so alive and warm. She took his gloved hand, he didn’t even react as she pulled it off revealing his arm.

Just a little, she told herself. Just a little blood. She could leave him otherwise intact. She was starving and weak, too much food would make her sick anyway. Or it would if she had still been human.

Her gums were bloody and hollow. She had no teeth to bite with, no claws to cut with. She grabbed a scalpel from a tray. Just a little blood.

She cut into his arm, red immediately blooming from the cut. He didn’t react. She brought her face down to his arm and ran her tongue along the cut.

It tasted… like blood. Metallic and heavy, rich and salty. It should have been disgusting, nothing about the flavour had changed. But it was… perfect. Vitality itself, ambrosia. How easy it would be to lose oneself in this ecstasy.

The coroner jerked from her weakened grasp and fell backward.

“What the fuck! What the fuck!” He yelled as he scrambled away.

Their gazes met and he relaxed again. The stress and fear bled out of him as his arm dripped with red.

“Come,” she whispered, the word paper thin and fragile. Her body was unable to handle anymore.

He obeyed. Never glancing away, never breaking eye contact as he stood and stepped towards her. She grabbed his arm and brought it to her mouth. Running her tongue over the cut. It had already clotted. In frustration she pressed her thumb into the incision, brute forcing her way into his flesh. The blood pooled in the crevice she had carved out.

With a sigh of relief, she began to feed. Lapping at his wrist like a thirsty dog, his blood mixing with her own, breathing a spark of life back into her corpse. When his wrist managed to clot again she released him.

She was still hungry, maybe she would never be truly satisfied but she was strong enough to finally stand on sturdy legs and take a deep breath.

The smells hit her like a truck, simply too much information for her mind to sort through. A wall of messages she could only begin to decrypt. So much sterility, death and decay. People, not just this mortician, but others too, sweat and blood and tears. It was far too much, she shuddered it all away.

Sofia stared at the man still oblivious to the world. Instinct had called him to her, forcing him to obey. Certainly not human instinct but something new, something she could use.

“Where is my phone?” Sofia rasped, without teeth the words sounded wrong. Her cold flesh was still in the process of knitting itself back together. Apparently she could regrow organs. She pushed that thought to the side for now.

The coroner turned and pointed to a clear bag on the counter. Unlike before he didn’t snap out of it from their gaze breaking. She could feel his mind struggling to break free, the effect fading, she pulled him back to look at her before the band snapped.

Sofia was in no position to figure any of this out right now. She needed to get somewhere safe.

The problem was the coroner. She couldn’t kill him. But he had seen her, witnessed all this. He knew too much. If she took all her stuff and left maybe he would just convince himself it had all been a dream.

But it wasn’t like she could knock him out in the meantime, if you hit someone hard enough for that, odds were that they might not ever get up. But if she had some kind of mind control…

“Go to sleep,” she instructed as clearly as she could, her throat struggling to clearly vocalize.

His eyes fluttered and he dropped like a rock. Sofia scrambled to catch him before he hit the ground. She gently lay him down. He had reacted far more literally than she had expected.

How did she turn whatever this was off though? She couldn’t have everyone she ever looked at going all zombie.

“Sunglasses,” she grimaced to herself. Eloise had worn sunglasses, at least up until she didn’t remember anything else. Maybe the coroner wouldn’t remember much of this when he woke up? She had no way to know.

She hurried to her phone. Thankfully it wasn’t dead and she unlocked it. Then she paused, she had no idea where exactly she was. Thank the universe for Google Maps.

She opened up Jackie’s contact but paused. What exactly was she even supposed to say?

It was currently just after 7 PM. That couldn’t be right. Unless… fuck, it had been a whole day.

Clothes, she needed clothes.

Her clothes from that night at the club were in a bag with a big biohazard sign. She didn’t bother opening it, they were soaked with blood.

Anxiously she looked around for something to wear. There were a few lab coats hanging up, one would have to do.

She ran her tongue around her smooth mouth for what had to be the millionth time. It was different now. There was pressure in her gums, new teeth pushing into place. She knew what they would eventually be.

She slipped into the large lab coat which easily covered her whole body. Despite it changing nearly nothing it still felt far safer. The thin fabric offered her comfort.

Unsure of what other options she had she face-timed Jackie, absently tracing the smooth skin of her chest under the lab coat while it rang. There was no sign she had ever been so carved up.

It continued to ring, again and again Jackie did not answer.

Sofia swallowed her growing irritation. Jackie had to think she was dead, she probably wouldn't risk answering a ghost either.

“Answer asshole, I am stuck naked at the morgue.”

The phone stopped ringing, her message was left on read. She called again. After several more rings, Jackie finally answered. Her camera was covered by her thumb.

Sofia held her phone up to get a good view of her. Except her camera showed nothing. Just the wall behind her. She refreshed the camera, but still nothing. It was as if she wasn’t even there. Not her, no lab coat, nothing. Totally invisible.

“Fucking hell,” she growled to herself and hung up. She knew for a fact her voice wouldn’t be recognizable. There was no way Jackie would believe her.

“Never mind, I’ll take the bus or something. I know this seems entirely impossible but I promise it’s actually me and I’m not dead”

Sofia hoped her words would be reassuring. She was already trying to figure out how to walk home from here. There was no way she could call a ride when all she was dressed in was a lab coat. Though walking nearly naked and shoeless through Toronto sounded like a nightmare.

She needed clothes, she needed sunglasses. She really needed to eat something. She had restrained herself but all she had done was toss a glass of water on a bonfire.

Rubbing a hand over her face to try and centre herself she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. At least the coroner seemed to be sleeping peacefully, it was the least she could do.

‘Come and find me in a few decades if you find it in your heart to forgive me.’ That’s what Eloise had told her. She had a feeling those decades would not even graze her. She didn’t need to check her pulse, her body was silent, eerily so. She had lied to Jackie, she was certainly dead. Dead but not gone.