234 [Bonus chapter] Impossible You - Part 3

~ ZARA ~ 

I sat bolt upright, sucking at the air, grasping at my chest, scrabbling at the echo of pain and death, of the chill that had sunk deeper than my bones…. Of the distinct certainty that I'd been gone for a moment there.

It was sick, that feeling. Dark. Empty. Hollow. Dead.

But as my thundering heart pounded so that it felt like the top of my skull might split, as I heaved in great gulping breaths, and blinked and blinked and blinked, my heart rose because I was alive.

I wasn't dead.

But I also couldn't understand anything.

I blinked.

Couch. I sat on a blue couch. Simple, a little faded, but in good condition.

My couch.

The couch in my apartment.

What?

I tested my neck and found it would let me turn my head, which was a relief. But what I found when I did only made my breath stop again.

My living room.

The tall, thin window where I'd listened to the wind beat the last night I was here.