SHE DOESN'T FEEL LIKE HERSELF,

Not anymore. She was different once.

Now she was a watered-down version,

pale and thin.

She slips through the cracks.

She fades into the background,

unable to be touched.

She grows sharp edges,

Can't have anyone close to her.

She doesn't know how she came to be like this,

How she ended up here;

She only remembers the way she used to be _Wild and Reckless.

Bold and Unapologetic.

This is the story of Melanie Clearwater, after she died.

~ ••••• ~

AUTHOR'S NOTE_

Text copyright © 2019 by Victoric Val

All rights reserved. No part of this book be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the AUTHOR a.k.a ME. 

P.S. Do not forget to let me know what you think of the story through votes AND comments.

Thank you ;

And Enjoy!!!

_________ •••••••••• _________

CHAPTER • 1

Her weak eyes fluttered open to find herself in a drape-looking room, devoid of any colour. It is not that she doesn't like dull shades; it's just that she'd rather prefer sunny orange to dead maple orange. But it was of little matter. 

Melanie

felt like her eyes were divulging out of their sockets as she tried to adjust with the faint light. Seemed like she was out for quite a while now. 

With groggy steps, she steadied herself on her feet as she looked around the room for a washroom. However, very soon it occurred to her that, she was in fact in a cramped hospital room. Now she was left wondering what might've happened to her for being admitted to one. After musing over the matter for a moment she decided to give up as she could come to no plausible conclusion. What did it matter anyway, she was too tired and ill to force herself to remember and she thought she would find out eventually.

She gave a small mental shrug and made way to the washroom door that stood at a dim corner of the hospital room.

Her lids felt so heavy that she was afraid they might fall out any time soon. Like so kind of metal was glued onto them which were weighting them down. She opened the piston of the tap and gently slide her hands under the rushing water to fetch a handful of water in her petite palms. 

But when she brought it to her face to wash off her grogginess away, she felt nothing. For a moment, it confused her and thus she opened her eyes to look at her empty dry hands. 

‘Well, that was weird.’ She thought.

She brought her hands under the gushing water again, this time with a little awareness to her surroundings. And she was shocked to feel... nothing again. No wetness of the water slipping through her fingers. No chillness of it against the skin of her palms. She could still see it gushing right through her palms, but she couldn't feel it's weight on them. She couldn't feel it’s dampness neither could she feel it sipping throughout her hands. It was like her palms were there but yet they weren't. 

Melanie suddenly felt a chill run down her spine as she desperately tried to touch, feel or catch the flooding pool of liquid with her pale hands. 

But her horrified concentration was broken by the sudden uproar on the other side of the door. Confused and wary, she rushed to the door and opened it in a haste to find a bunch of medical staff rushing into her chamber, clamoring nervously beside her bed. 

It's not like it was an odd scene for doctors and nurses to deluge a room. After all, it was a hospital. But what really irked her were their panicked and anxious faces. And they were hovering over someone in her bed. Hastening around the room making it rather chaotic and lively, but not in a good way. It seemed as if the person in her bed was in a serious condition. 

Melanie tried to gain the attention of one of the nurses to point out that they might've gotten the wrong room because she was already a occupant of the room while also trying to take a peek at the serious patient in question, but she seemed to have dismissed her very airily. Like she didn't exist at all. 

‘Is that even allowed? To treat a patient with such disregard?’ Melanie couldn’t help but frown.

She knitted her brows but didn't press the matter because the nurse in question seemed rather busy and worried over the patient. ‘Is this particular patient that important?’ Melanie wondered, now that her curiosity was sparked to its extreme, she just had to sneak a peek to see if it was the President of the United States of America crammed in that rickety old bed in a vegetative state. 

Crawling and sliding past the wallowing hospital staff, She finally stood at the foot of her bed where this V.I.P patient laid limp on her back. The moment Melanie raised her eyes to see the patient's face, her blood seemed to have frozen. 

Melanie stood there, stump and rigid as a statue as the doctors howled and yelled for the resuscitation device, "Blood pressure is dropping very rapidly and the heartbeat's slowly getting into bradycardial cardiac arrest. Bring on th........." She wasn't listening after that. She just watched in a petrified state as the doctors worked tirelessly on her body.

Yes, you did not make a mistake in hearing, it was Melonie Clearwater lying flaccid and lifeless in a hospital bed as dozens of doctors was hollering and giving me shock treatment. And the real Melonie, as she claims herself to be, was watching herself being resuscitated by the flustered medical team around her. 

‘Just.. what the hell is going on here? I didn't remember of ever having a twin.’ The ugly frown on her brows got deeper and deeper as her state of confusion escalated. 

"Oh God! Is that the legendary doppelganger that everybody is said to have met once in their lifetime?" Melonie wailed in whispers as she staggered back with the shock and distress building up inside of her, her head spinning with the perplexity and confusion of the situation. 

"Excuse me, hey! Please listen, can you tell me who that girl is? She looks just like me." Melanie tried asking one of the people present there, but they seemed to give no heed to her. So, she tried once more, "Excuse me sir, can you please tell me wh...." but then she stopped dead on her tract as the hand she extended to touch the man's arm slide right through him.

Oh my God! What was happening now!

She couldn’t help but take several steps back in alarm and suddenly a cold slimy feeling ran pass her spine as she felt someone passing right through her, again. 

It was a nurse with bright blonde hair. She seemed to be in her mid thirties, dark brown eyes which seemed like she was looking right through Melanie as she elapsed through her rigid body as if she was nothing but air. ‘How the hell is this even possible?’ Melanie stumbled and fell back on the concrete floor while biting her lower lip in distress, she watched in horror the panorama of people operating on her doppelganger's body. 

TO BE CONTINUED..........