I woke up to the sun peeking through white sheer curtains. I took a quick look around the room to see that the walls were painted a light pink. A crucifix was hanging on the wall over my head and there were biblical passages in frames on the walls.

These people were definitely religious.

I sat up and looked around the room. A white closet was in front of me and a couple white dressers were at the side of the room. I couldn't stop myself from gasping when I saw my reflection in the mirror.

My mess of dark brown curls hung far down my face. My skin was pale, but I had a beauty mark just above my lip. I had on a light blue tank top and a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms.

I flopped myself back down onto the bed and I heard somebody knock on my door.

"Yes?" I asked. I had absolutely no idea who could be on the other side.

"Nicole, are you coming down yet?" a soft woman's voice spoke.

"I'll be there in a minute," I told her.

"Okay, honey," she said.

I looked at the clock to see that it was almost nine o'clock in the morning. This woman sounded like she must be my mother. She's probably calling me down to breakfast or whatever their morning routine is.

I opened up her closet to see a row of dresses hanging beside a couple of sweaters. I reached out and grabbed the soft purple bathrobe hanging in the corner and wrapped myself up in it.

The floor was cold on my feet as I opened the door open and walked down the hallway. I found the stairs that led right down to the front door. The stairs opened up into a large open foyer cover in a delicate wood detail and a large crystal chandelier. These people had a lot of money.

Four people were gathered around by the door. Two boys, with the same curly brown hair as me, were in black slacks and a dress shirt with a tie. Their heads were down as they were scrolling across on their phone.

A larger man with graying hair was in a suit and facing a woman with her curly brown hair pinned up behind her head. She had on a black dress and a pair of diamond earrings. Her jaw dropped when she saw me.

"Nikki!" she yelled out.

The man turned around and the boys looked up from their phones. They all scrunched their eyebrows when they saw me in my pyjamas. I tightened the bathrobe around myself as I stood there awkwardly.

"Why aren't you dressed?" she asked me.

"I...I forgot," I lied.

"How do you forget about church?" one of the boys asked me. "We've been forced to go every Sunday of our life."

The woman, who must be my mother, turned her head to scowl at the boy. His eyes shot right back onto the screen.

"The Nikki I know would never leave her room in her pyjamas," the man, my father, said.

"Oh God." Her jaw dropped ever more and I watched as she grabbed her chest. "What is your name?"

"Nicole," I said, remembering when she had used my full name earlier.

"Nicole what?" she asked back.

My mind began to race. I tried to think back to that room I was in, but I don't remember seeing a name anywhere.

"Smith?" I took a wild guess.

"Nicole Marie Crawford," he said. Dammit. I wasn't even close. "This isn't funny."

"She has it!" the woman yelled out. The boys lost all of their attention on their phones and were staring at me with a terrified expression. "She has the Reaper Syndrome! Paul, we need to take her to a hospital right now."

"No!" I yelled out.

"Nikki, please," she pleaded. "I can't lose you. If you die I have no idea what I would do with myself. You're going to the hospital and they're going to fix this."

They would fix this?

Was that even possible?

I have no idea what has been happening to me for the last month. I wake up in different bodies, but can't even remember who I am. I remember almost every name of those girls who have died, but I don't know what my name is.

A doctor wouldn't be able to fix this. This isn't something medical. No one can just wake up every day as somebody new, yet here I am.

I guess it couldn't hurt to go to the hospital. Maybe they could detect something that I couldn't and finally stop this. Worst case scenario is that I'm Nicole for the rest of my life and have to deal with this woman.

"Okay," I told them. "I'll go."

"Good," the woman said. Her lips curled into a large smile, but her eyes were brimming with tears. She was scared. "We'll go right away. Boys, stay here and we'll call you in a couple hours."

They nodded their heads, and ran up the stairs. Their eyes were wide as they watched me and ran down the hallway and into their rooms. The man went out the front door with a cell phone held up to his face. The woman extended her arm and gestured for me to come down the stairs.

"Nicole, we need to go now," she told me.

I walked down the stairs and felt my knees shake underneath me. I had no idea what was going to happen to me in the hospital. If I could make it to tomorrow in the same body, that would be an accomplishment.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, the woman wrapped her arms tightly around me and kissed my temple. I could feel her body tremble as she combed her fingers through my brown curls.

"It's going to be alright," she whispered to me. "I promise that you're going to be okay, Nikki."

"I know it will be, Mom," I tried to reassure her.

"God won't take my baby away from me."

The door opened up and Paul, the man who must be my father, stood there. Nikki's mother kept her arms tightly wrapped around me.

"Victoria, we need to go now," he told her quickly. He was just as scared as her mother, but he didn't want to show it. "I called the hospital and explained what's going on. They have saved us a room."

"Let's go then," she said, loosening her grasp on me.

They hurried me out to the back seat of a large black vehicle. I took a quick look at the large front yard to see a long cobblestone driveway that led to the road. The houses – let me correct that – the mansions across the street were large and extravagant. These people had a lot of money.

Victoria opened up the door and I slid across the leather seats. I expected her to close the door, but she pushed me further across the seat and climbed into the backseat too. She reached over and clicked in my seatbelt before doing up her own. She laced her fingers through mine and gave my hand a tight squeeze. Paul was in the front seat and he quickly revved the engine and pulled out of the driveway.

I looked out the window and watched the scenery pass by me quickly. We were definitely not doing the speed limit. I didn't recognize anything around me.

When we finally got to the hospital Paul pulled up to the front and Victoria undid my seat belt and pulled me out of the backseat. Paul drove off quickly. He must have to go park the car.

Victoria hadn't let go of my hand for the entire ride. Somehow her grip got tighter as she pulled me through the front doors and into the waiting room. A few nurses in different coloured scrubs were behind a desk and there was a doctor in a long white lab coat standing next to them.

"Doctor Harper!" she yelled out as she pulled us up to the desk. All of the people sitting in the small uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room looked up at us. I realized that I hadn't brushed my tangled mess of curly hair and still had my pajamas on.

"Mrs. Crawford," he said, lifting up a clipboard from the desk. "I heard that your Nicole isn't feeling so good today."

"She has it," she said, stressing the last word. "We are running out of time to cure this."

"I'm aware," he said, looking through the pages on the clipboard. "Alice, can you show Mrs. Crawford to room five please?"

A skinny brunette, who seemed to be only a few years older than Nicole, smiled and nodded her head. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and her green eyes were hidden behind a thick pair of glasses.

I turned around when I heard someone running up behind me. It was Paul. His face was growing red and he was out of breath. He must have ran here from the parking lot.

"They got her a room," Victoria told him.

"Good," Paul said nodding his head. "I told them I'd pay double if they got her a room right away."

"It's right this way," Alice said cheerily. She had the clipboard pressed up against her chest.

Victoria yanked my arm and hurried me down the hallway. Alice led us down the hallway and stopped at a door and held her arm out so that she was gesturing to the room. Victoria hurried me into the room and pushed me down onto the bed. She pulled out the wooden chair beside the bed and sat down. She gripped my hand tightly and started running her fingers through my curls again.

Paul started pacing up and down the room. Alice walked out of the room. There was an awkward silence for around five minutes before Doctor Harper came into the room. Victoria would take sharp breaths and I was afraid she would break down into tears.

I decided that I was going to tell the doctors everything. It was my only chance to stop this. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being known as "The Reaper Syndrome". I want to be me again. Whoever that was.

"Good morning," Doctor Harper said, walking into the room. The fluorescent lights overhead were causing a blinding light off of top of his bald head. His glasses were pushed down to the end of his nose. "So what's the problem?"

"It's the Reaper Syndrome!" Victoria blurted out. I could see the tears glistening in her eyes.

Doctor Harper looked at Victoria before letting his eyes settle on me.

"What's wrong, Nicole?" he asked me.

"She's right. I have the Reaper Syndrome," I started confessing. "For the past month I have been waking up every day as somebody new. I'm not Nicole. I don't know who I am."

I didn't look at either Paul or Victoria. I knew that they would be in tears. Something finally went wrong in their perfect life. Their little girl is dead.

"Where were you last night?" he asked me.

"What?" I asked back.

"Did you go out last night?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"You went out with Claire," Victoria told me.

"What?" I asked again. I turned my head to look at her and see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I don't even know who that is," I said.

"Last night you had a girl's night with Claire and your friends," she told me.

"What did you girls do while you were out?" Doctor Harper asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I wasn't Nicole last night."

"Is it possible that you had a few drinks?" he asked me. "Any alcohol of some sort?"

"No!"

He couldn't possibly think that this was just some drunken binge that a privileged girl went on? I was telling him the truth. I was confessing something that everyone had been wondering about for the last few weeks and he's turning me away. It's true that people can't see what's right in front of them.

"I've been listening to the news and reading about this Reaper Syndrome," he started to explain. "I have to agree it is strange, but it is medically impossible. I'm thinking that you're just using this as an excuse to explain to your parents why you are hung-over."

"But I'm not!" I shouted. "I feel perfectly fine, except for the fact that I don't know who the hell I am."

"You were acting strange when you got home last night," Paul confessed. "You were stumbling a bit and went straight to your room. You wouldn't even talk to me."

"You weren't even awake for church," Victoria added. "What else did you do last night?"

"I don't remember anything from last night," I told them.

"See," she said, "you must have been drunk and blacked out on certain parts."

"No, no, no!" I yelled out. "I do not remember anything because I'm not Nicole!"

"Please lower your voice, Miss Crawford," Doctor Harper said calmly. "We'll keep you in the hospital for the day. We'll run a few tests, but you should be able to go home before tonight."

"Phew," Victoria sighed in relief. She finally let go of my hand so that she could wipe the tears off of her face with her hand. "I knew we were overreacting."

--

My blood tests showed that there was a bit of alcohol in my system, so Nicole must have really had a wild night out. I was so angry for Doctor Harper not even trying to listen to me that I stormed upstairs as soon as we got home. I didn't want to spend the last of Nicole's life with them. I had to check each room in the hallway though before I knew which one was hers.

I was curled up in a ball on her bed and I pulled the comforter over my head. I heard a light knock on my door.

"Nicole, dinner is ready if you want some," Victoria said through the door.

"Not hungry," I mumbled, ignoring the loud rumble coming from my stomach.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

I could hear her as she tried to fiddle with the doorknob. I locked it when I stormed in here. I knew someone would try to come in.

"Leave me alone!" I barked.

"Fine, but we're having a talk with your father later about your attitude!" she yelled before storming off down the hallway.

I lied in bed and watched as time slowly ticked by before my vision started to darken and the pain exploded in my chest.

The whole family ran up the stairs when I started screaming.