The blood-covered hand hung over the edge of the bathtub. A puddle quickly formed on the floor, soaking the bath mat and seeping down between the tiles, flowing somewhere deeper into the building's floors.
How cliché it all turned out to be, he thought.
He had thought about the possible ways of ending his life countless times. Since he was twelve, as soon as he began to understand himself, he thought about it every day, inventing and searching for dozens of ways to do it more elegantly and unusually, at the same time more original than what usually happens and less painful.
Each day was like the one before it, with misunderstandings from others and a feeling of complete alienness to society and to anyone, complete loneliness and isolation, all compounded by the permanent fear of constant attacks at school, on the way home, and from his own family, whose expectations he had never met as far back as he could remember.
All that was left for him was to immerse himself in his fantasies every day on his way to and from school, imagining how he would escape this reality, or coming up with new ways to "leave" it, trying those that seemed the least noticeable to others, while leaving indelible marks of his sad existence on his body for life.
Until one day, he convinced himself that he could turn his dark plans into reality, and he felt somewhat calmer, realizing that when the time came and it became completely unbearable, he could do it. Hoping that he would finally find peace and stop feeling the constant pressure of his own presence.
He didn't worry that anyone would find him; no one had been around for a long time. His family had kicked him out several years ago, when the law allowed them to do so, at his sixteen.
Later, during long working days spent doing monotonous tasks to pay for his small room on the outskirts of the city, which he had to rent since his family gave him no alternatives, he wondered if they had ever really been a family. On the outside, everything seemed quite decent—they traveled together, his parents took care of him, and sometimes even showed interest in what he wanted. However, later, looking back from a distance, he was surprised by how the whole family used him as a lightning rod, venting all their life's disappointments and mutual disagreements on him. Any attempt he made to express himself, any of his secret desires, were immediately ridiculed or devalued, often publicly, without regard for his dignity. So, at a very early age, when children are still in kindergarten, he lost all trust in his relatives and hid everything he could from them, especially his dreams and desires. It hurt him to realize that those he once considered family had never truly loved him and had never given him that feeling. To them, he was always just the strange child who didn't live up to their lofty idea of what children should be. After all, they had "given him everything," except for what he truly needed.
And there he lay, watching with grim satisfaction as life slowly drained from his body.
The pressure and the gray fog that he had felt for as long as he could remember, making his life unbearably heavy, stripping it of any color, any sense of purpose, and rendering him completely incapable of forming any social connections, began to gradually recede. For the first time in his life, his mind felt something like fresh air, starting to more clearly understand where he was and what was happening.
But he decided that it was just a grim satisfaction from what he had planned and the anticipation of the end of his meaningless journey. His consciousness began to slip away, his vision darkened, and with a still grim smile on his face, he lost consciousness, sinking deeper into the bathtub, almost touching the water with his nose.
***
The old, shabby walls of a city hospital on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The sudden bang of the double doors swinging open and the shouts of the orderlies broke the monotonous hum of the hospital.
All the bloodstains, the stretcher raced down the corridors of the old hospital. Nurses and doctors pushed it forward with force, shouting orders to each other. They ran to the nearest available operating room.
If he had been conscious, he would have smiled, his grim smile once again. Unlike in the school novels, he hadn't just injured his hands, but also an artery in his leg. This made his survival almost impossible.
But the doctors, seeing the young age of the patient and the two friends, frozen in the shock that had only just begun to settle over them, at the entrance to the hospital, tried to do everything they could.
They set up IV drips with saline, trying to raise his blood pressure, hastily dressing his wounds.
But he resisted. He didn't want this. He just wanted to be left alone, wanted it all to end. His pulse quickly faded, becoming threadlike.
As in the stories on television, which he had never believed, he saw everything happening as if from the outside. The doctors brought out the defibrillator. And when several shocks yielded no effect, they began performing chest compressions, still holding on to the illusory hope of saving him. By that moment, most of his most severe wounds had already been stitched up by the glowing doctors around him.
However, soon even they gave up. After noting the time of death, they draped a blood-soaked sheet over his body, covering his face, and slowly began to leave the room, leaving only one nurse behind. She was to clean up what needed to be cleaned and prepare the operating room for the next patients before the body was taken to the morgue.
And then, still watching everything from the outside and not yet having time to think about why he remained suspended there, he noticed a dark, swirling haze that had gathered near his head.
The darkness around his body continued to thicken, as if absorbing the light around it, the lamps dimmed slightly, and the nurse, still bustling about, glanced up at the ceiling lights. However, after a small grunt, she went on with her work, not giving it any more thought. Shadows began to seep from every corner of the room, but this was happening on another level, one not accessible to ordinary people, and no one around seemed to notice. To them, everything appeared normal.
Dark, thick mist began to ooze from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, gathering into something sinister above him. As if struggling to escape his body, the mist took on a form vaguely resembling a hybrid of a human and a spider. Several arm-like legs rested on the bed around the body, if such a creature even needed any support. From its disgusting mouth, full of sharp, crooked teeth on the eyeless head, something like saliva dripped. The creature, with a predatory glance, moved its head in a way that resembled a sniffing dog. It was probably searching for its next victim, still alive.
As if sensing something and determining the direction, it slightly recoiled, pulling its hind legs in like a cat preparing to pounce. Letting out a disgusting, satisfied gurgle from its mouth in anticipation of its new prey, it straightened its legs and made a leap that was meant to either end or pass right through the wall.
But then something very bright flashed, knocking the creature off course mid-flight and slamming it aside, clearly ruining its plans. A humanoid silhouette made of light, but with a long tail, took a defensive stance, clearly waiting for the next move from the monster.
Thin streams of pure energy began to stretch from it toward the body of the deceased, enveloping it in a fine net and seemingly probing it, as if to confirm something. The silhouette shimmered at the edges in all the colors of the rainbow, reminiscent of chromatic aberrations, but it was impossible to make out any details or even understand what it was—it all blended into a white outline with warm yellow hues reflecting off every surface in the room around them.
The monster let out an evil, frustrated screech, but after looking around, it decided not to engage in a fight. Becoming less distinct, it scuttled like a spider into the ventilation grate in the wall, where it disappeared.
For the nurse, meanwhile, none of this was apparent. She had already finished preparing the operating room and approached the body, beginning to remove the clamps still hanging from the wounds, disconnecting and extracting the tubes—clearly intending to prepare the body for transport.
The luminous figure quickly turned around as if startled, casting a glance at the body while rapidly contemplating something. Whatever it had in mind, it was clear that time was running out. Then, making a decision and nodding to itself—much like the demonic creature earlier—the entity took the form of a sphere surrounded by mist and shot into the body, spreading evenly across its surface.
The nurse reached for the red button on the monitor to turn off the device before removing the pulse sensors, ensuring they wouldn't trigger an alarm. The screen, which tracked every new change in the patient's condition, displayed the number twelve, indicating that at least twelve minutes had passed since the heart had stopped.
Just as the pad of her finger pressed against the rough plastic button, a sudden sound alert rang out. The once-flat line on the monitor unexpectedly spiked with a single but powerful heartbeat.
She jumped, startled by the sudden sound, and quickly turned to look at the body. It was still covered by the bloodstained sheet, showing no signs of life. Thinking she had imagined it or that the machine had malfunctioned, she turned back to the control panel.
But then, another alarm sounded. And another. And another.
She abruptly tore the sheet away from the body and slammed her hand onto the emergency call button.
-"Get a doctor in here, now!" she shouted into the hallway.
The doors burst open, pushing aside the friends who had been peering through the windows. Their faces were frozen in shock and sudden, desperate hope, tears still streaming from their eyes as they stumbled back to make way.
Several medical professionals burst into the room, disbelief evident on their faces as they hurried to reassess the body.
-"How long was he dead?" asked the one who seemed to be in charge.
-"More than 12 minutes," the nurse replied.
-"That's impossible. Maybe the machine malfunctioned, or this is just a physiological reaction to adrenaline. The brain must already be dead. Hook him up to an EEG."
The doctor quickly examined the body—every visible wound had already been stitched up during the initial attempt to save the patient. The nurses swiftly placed electrodes on the patient's head to monitor brain activity and switched on the machine.
What they saw defied all logic.
Instead of the expected flatline indicating brain death—or at best, a slow, weak rhythm suggesting a coma—the screen displayed something they had never seen before. The activity levels were through the roof, both in frequency and intensity, lighting up the entire brain as if a fireworks display were going off inside.
And yet, outwardly, nothing had changed.
The doctor proceeded with standard reflex tests, all of which confirmed that the brain was still functioning.
-"Give me his medical file," he said.
Taking the folder and flipping through the pages, he raised an eyebrow. "Interesting… He's already experienced clinical death before. To be precise, he was either stillborn or died immediately after birth. Back then, records weren't kept as thoroughly. Two clinical deaths in one relatively short lifetime—that's rare. This case needs to be studied."
He handed the file to a nurse. "Bring this to my office, please. And keep monitoring him."