It took him a moment to regain his composure. The pounding in his skull commanded him to not think so hard, and focus his efforts on his own person for now; the answer would come in due time, he assumed. He chose to head towards a heavy fog that started rolling in. Its apparition didn’t feel random: it surrounded Matt’s house… or its ghostly version, anyway. Perhaps his friend would be there?

Navigating the singular road was a challenging task. Every step felt like it took several minutes to execute, with each command he gave his body being delayed. It felt as if he was in a movie played in extreme slow-motion. Even his sight was blurry, the images were hard to concretize and maintain in his mind, constantly shifting in and out of focus, nothing being quite specific. Seeing was difficult.

As he got closer to his destination, the fog dissipated. Observing his surroundings, it took him a moment to notice that the house, along with the rest of the village had now completely vanished, replaced by an azure wasteland of sand and dirt. No structure nearby, no vegetation, no trace of those potato-like creatures, and nobody else but him around… except for a single person in the distance. As there was nothing else nearby, he chose to move towards the stranger. Perhaps, after all, they had answers for him.

As he approached, his mind raced faster and faster. White and long wavy hair, a small body, slender limbs…

“Is it…?” he muttered to himself.

Now at about 5 meters from her, he stood immobile, contemplating the girl he had murdered a few hours earlier. And again, she was kneeling, facing away from him.

“I was somewhat expecting to find you here...” he said softly, trying to mask the nervousness in his voice. He paused and swallowed his saliva. Although the girl had not said or done anything, he felt his guilt mounting, enough to make his stomach feel like it would come out of his mouth.

Then, he heard voices. Whispers in his ears, reverberated murmurs, cries and complaints both far and nearby. They were quiet, subtle; partially concealed sighs in his head. Sadness and remorse soon gave way to an immense dread, a dark aura coming from the little girl.

He breathed slowly to focus his mind.

“You’re dead.” The macabre chorus of the lifeless suddenly stopped.

“Yes,” the young girl replied. Her voice was innocent, pure, without the faintest trait of malice in it. Somehow, however, it didn’t make Noah feel any better. She was creeping him out. He felt his strength leaving him as he was about to give in to despair.

“Then, tell me. What is this place?” he asked. “Some sort of purgatory? Or is this what the afterlife is?” He spoke louder as if the extra decibels would justify an answer.

“Why?” she asked as she slowly stood up.

“Am I dead, too?” he attempted to inquire, ignoring his own apprehension, this time almost yelling, wanting to know the truth to the question that had been burning in his mind all along.

“Why?” she repeated with more insistence. Despite being a kid, her tone of voice was sharp, commanding and intimidating. She turned around to face him. If everything else there was blurry and vague, the sight of the injury on the girl’s forehead was clear.

It was the same fatal wound he had inflicted her, back in the Jester’s mansion. Where he had delivered the blow, the skull had caved, the flesh torn to bloody pieces. No one could survive that kind of injury, he thought.

He couldn’t know whether he was dead or not, but he was there in this strange reality... and so was she. What could she do to him? He cherished life but, when confronted to extreme danger, he had taken solace in thinking that death was simply ceasing to be, simply not existing. But now, that safety net was torn. What would happen to him? What could happen to him?

He attempted to shift his gaze away, to stop looking at the girl’s forehead – perhaps in a futile attempt to make the culpability go away. But his eyes were fighting his own conscious will. When he commanded them to move, they only did so by a few millimeters before going back before somehow zooming in. There was no escaping it. He had murdered this girl. That was his doing. He had to witness the result of his own crime.

As she approached, he noticed her white eyes, filled with a cold and deadly rage. The closer she got, the more his sight zoomed in on the damaged skull. After a few seconds, it was all he could see. “Why?” she asked once more, yelling.

He was unable to move. He was terrified, wanting nothing more than to run. However, something kept him paralyzed him, something more than raw emotions. A supernatural force which undoubtedly was wielded by the young lady. He didn’t have a choice: his only option was to try to talk to her. He breathed in once, trying to relax before facing the coming storm.

“I did what I thought I had to.” he finally said with a calm that surprised even himself. “We were scared.”

There was a moment of silence. His eyes were so zoomed in that he couldn’t even make sense of what he was seeing anymore. Was she doing that to him, too? Had he ventured so far in the realm of strangeness and bizarre, making it impossible to hold on to what he thought was real?

His vision then switched to her face, which was about five centimeters away from his own. She was right in front of him, screaming, asking once again: “Why?” His heart jumped, and he panicked.

And then, he opened his eyes.