A booming noise reverberating to the crash of rolling thunder, like a rusted steel gate slamming shut by a strong gust of wind. That, if anything else, was what roused him with a start.

The strange falling sensation as your body jumps starts into consciousness jolted him from slumber, gasping in deep a gulp of air.

Leo woke up to a dim gloomy night, cold sweat trickling down the creases of his forehead and instantly felt a strange feeling of dread stirring within him.

“Leo?” A voice called out his name, softly, soothingly, like a snug blanket in winter.

He felt something warm gently brush away the strands of hair clinging onto his forehead and then begin to tenderly caress his face. A small giggle resounded from the same voice shortly after.

“Bad dream?” It asked, lightly stroking circles around his cheek.

Leo’s head laid on something soft. He looked around his surroundings and saw many things. Many familiar things.

This was his room.

A cluttered desk, a dusty shelf lined with books untouched for ages, the carpet on the ground, the age-worn wardrobe he so carelessly stuffed his unironed clothes into. Fading, crumpled posters of shows and idols hung on the white walls, placed way back when he was just a young, aspiring bright-eyed lad.

In prominence, as he turned his head sideways, was the dazzling smile that greeted his sullen eyes belonging to a face that could take breaths away.

As it already had.

Christa looked at Leo with an expression that stared longingly and lovingly at him, her finger still trailing the surface of his skin.

Leo blinked and finally realized that he was resting quite nicely on her lap. But why was he?

The confusion settling on his expression brought another bout of amused chuckling from Christa, her silky red hair pouring onto his face as she bent down to plant a kiss on his forehead.

“There, there… I got you.” She whispered, her breath blowing gently in his ear.

The loving embrace of her arms could not disperse his confusion. The familiar view of his bedroom did not do so either.

Nightmare, she said.

Was dying by her hand in a small deserted alley really just a nightmare?

Was it really?

Everything about the situation at hand dictated it to be so, but he couldn't help but believe otherwise.

Suffocation. The slow agonizing sensation of dying. How could it feel so real if it was just a figment of the imagination?

The emotions he felt from back then were still rippling through him like an echo imprinted on the mind, on the psyche. Clinging on. Whereas dreams would fade as time went on, this one still lingered. Never letting him forget as if it was only moments ago.

Blinding shock as the back of his head bash against the concrete wall behind him.

Paralyzing fear as the breath he tried to take wouldn’t come, the heavy crushing sensation wrapped around his throat denied him of it.

The complete and utter betrayal of a loved one.

A mere dream could not replicate those things as well as it did for him.

Leo looked at Christa now and tried to remember the feelings he had for her. On his bed, on her lap, now, how should he feel?

Love, happiness, bliss… he’d have died for her.

He found that he couldn’t produce those feelings as strong as he had once before.

Leo wanted to ask a question, instead what slipped past his lips was more like a statement.

“You killed me, didn’t you?”

"Killed you?" Christa paused, frowning. “I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

“You strangled me to death. You didn’t even blink.”

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“Nightmares, Leo. I would never hurt you.”

“No nightmare,” Leo sat up, his legs landing at the feet of his bed so he was sitting directly beside her and gazed once more at the interior. “Have I ever told you where I lived?”

“In passing, yes.”

“In passing…” Leo said softly.

He stood up from the bed, his fingers grazing the skin of his neck and felt no pain, no crushing sensation.

A mirror across from him reflected back the image of a man, hair ruffled, skin pale, body thinning to the bone with wide angular glasses nearly slipping off the end of his nose. All had no discrepancy, even the surface of his throat bore no marks of any recent assault, it was all as plain as plain can be.

Nightmares…

Leo turned back and stared at Christa, huddled at the center of the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Where am I?” He asked.

Christa narrowed her eyes. “Your room.”

“Was my room,” Leo corrected. “I haven’t lived here for almost 13 years.”

“Ahh…”

Surprise dawned on her face, nodding her head almost profoundly at the statement but said nothing more. Leo continued.

“This place shouldn’t even exist. It burned down, I told you it burned down… didn’t you remember?”

Christa released a breath. “Might have mentioned it, yes...”

“Christa…” His tone got sharp and his body grew tense. “Where am I?”

When she didn’t answer him. He cracked.

“I died, didn’t I? You killed me. Wh-Where am I? What is this? The afterlife? What is going on… what did you -”

“Shh…” She darted for him, her finger on his lips, a loving smile in the silence that followed. “Let’s not spoil the fun just yet.”

Christa slowly drew back her finger and promptly began to settle herself once more on the rickety single-size mattress. Moonlight from a dust-ridden window basking her figure in a white almost ethereal glow, her gleaming red eyes flushed with amusement.

Dissonance, Leo felt, the throbbing in his head just wouldn’t cease. The confusing blurring his senses, it was all getting too overwhelming for his state of mind.

Questions unending, but only one rose past them all to be heard.

“Why?” He stared at her and felt suddenly - anger, held back tremendously by the tremble of his lips. “Why’d you do it?”

She must have sensed it herself, for her expression immediately softened.

“Dying… it’s… I know it hurts, I didn’t want it to hurt… I just had too much fun with you and before I knew it… I was out of time and my powers were... I had to do something.”

He still didn’t understand. “Out of time for what?”

“Live for as long as I have, you start picking up some bad habits. Getting too involved with the people I choose is one of mine, unfortunately. That’s not to say I regret it happened. I don’t. I genuinely cherish the time we spent together.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Leo shook his head, his eyes cold and empty. “I can’t now.”

“I’m not expecting you to forgive me just like that, but -”

“I won’t.”

A swift flash of lighting gave Leo a clear fleeting image of the sadness that formed on Christa’s face.

“Okay…” she said softly, diverting her gaze elsewhere. “That’s okay.”

Silence came and remained, another rumble of thunder rattled the windowpane and he broke away, opting instead, to examine further the place he found himself in.

Thirteen years ago was the last he has seen of this room. He walked to the study desk and slid a finger on its coarse wooden exterior, accumulating both dirt and filth at the tip of his finger.

Thirteen years of absence, but he felt as if it was just yesterday he was just here. Reading, watching, playing games whatever else kids do at that age. Then the fire happened and that was it.

Everything he ever had gone in the ashes that blew with the wind. His youth reduced to cinders.

Being in here again, In a way, felt somewhat nostalgic and also enlightening to the situation at hand.

He set his sights back to Christa’s dispirited figure.

“Why bother doing any of this? Faking to still love me, remaking my childhood bedroom. None of these things matter if I’m already dead.”

“It wasn’t fake,” Christa muttered, catching his eye through the bright silvery glint of his glasses. “I never faked anything.”

“And I’m dead,” Leo scowled. “So if I sound a little resentful for it, try and forgive me for that.”

A heavy breath escaped her lips. “I wanted you comfortable, I wanted you calm. So I searched around in your head, your memories and - “

“Not human, then?” He interjected.

“Yes, and I fully admit it,” she said earnestly. “I tried to find a place that’ll make you relax and I did. I’d never imagined it’d be your bedroom. I just wanted more time, just one more moment with you... before...”

“Before?”

Thunder and lightning, a crackle and a flash, revealed tears welling up in her crimson eyes and sorrow beneath the smile she wore.

“Why did I choose you?”

He opened his mouth, but no words will be uttered. He placed a step towards but he will take no other. In a moment so swift, so brief, his head twisted in place, and finally with a resounding crack, the snap of bone shot like an echo throughout the room.

Leo, dead once more, collapsed onto the ground, his mangled body still and lifeless, his head swaying freely like a loose hinge, with shock and surprise left as imprints in the cold vacant stare of his eyes.

For the second time in a row, Leo had died. Twice abrupt and twice by her side. Christa planted her feet to the ground and made her way to his corpse, crouching down beside him, as she had done once before.

Again, in spite of herself, she reached out her hand and gently began patting his head, a single tear rolled down her cheek, a single tear fell and splashed onto his, a single moment was all she had.

“I told you I didn’t want it to hurt.”

A single sentence.

Then she disappeared.