"Who are you?" I blurted out before I could think and I immediately cover my mouth with my palm in disbelief at my rude approach. The man seemed just as stumped as I was but I would reckon the question itself confused him more. It was as if the stars had come crashing down and hit his head as he tried to process other hidden meanings to the question.
Who are you? I had asked. At the end of this man's little loading screen, his thought process had began to confuse me more as he forced a smile over the furious look on his face
"Who are you?" He repeated in a strained voice, "Isolde, you think you're so smart now after the Jack O' Lantern case? You sly brat, I dare you to repeat what you said!" Before I could deny his claims, he brought two hands to my face and kept my cheeks in a tight pinch.
"That's...not it...at all!" I try to choke out the words but his hands remain glued to my face.
"Who do you think you are? Is that what you wanted to ask? Huh?" He repeated as my question was, without my consent, butchered and turned against me. Against my will.
"... I'm sorry," Was all I could utter out as a final resort.
That seemed to go well with him as the tension on my face was finally released. I could feel the throbbing pain on my cheeks as I was set free.
"Good thing you woke up when you did, else we'd both be late for work," This man, whose name I have yet to know, began to walk towards the door, "Oh! And I made you a sandwhich in the kitchen. We don't have much time left to finish a proper meal so take that instead. Hurry down when you're ready," Before the door closed behind him, I managed to catch the last sentence he uttered out before he disappeared out of sight. "Euthanasia gets real cranky when faced with tardiness. Can you believe that? When we've both been working here for years."
The door shut behind him and I was left alone in what I could assume to be my room. When I finally managed to gather some sense in my situation, the first thing I ran to check was the mirror.
The recollection of what I supposed to be last night's events resurfaced immediately in my mind but with the presence of that unnamed man, I didn't have the time to think about it. As I faced my reflection in the mirror, I noticed a completely different sight from what I had assumed. The blood that splattered all over me was no where to be seen. The white fluffy nightgown which would have been dyed red with blood had now been switched with a rather plain shirt and long pants that clung to my waist and flooded at my feet.
My pale face from overwork and hours of starving myself to prioritise work, my long, purple hair which matched my eyes, and everything else aside from my clothes had been the same as they've always been.
Which came as a relief. But another reason why I cane rushing to the mirror was to check the reality of this situation. It's as they say, the way to know if something was a dream is to look for a mirror. How much you reflect in that mirror is how real your current reality is.
But as I stare back at the eyes in the mirror which were of my own, there was no denying the truth anymore.
All of this is real.
But if all this is real, then what of my past life?
Had all that been a dream too? A long, painful dream? I spent way too much endless hours working myself to the bone only to never bare the fruits of my labor. That couldn't have been a dream.
Also...it felt way too real, and rational.
Dreams wouldn't make that much sense but that dream did.
"Isolde!!!" I hear the muffled voice of the man from minutes ago call out from out the door. Quickly, without much choice left, I pick out clothes from the closet. A cream white blouse with long, loose sleeves with strings at it's scufffs, and dark, waist high pants secoured with a brown leather belt. With All of them being identical from one another, made it easy for me to dress in a way that didn't seem out o the ordinary for the Isolde of this world.
As I stare at my reflection in the mirror, gathering all my hair into a tight ponytail before braiding them down, I pondered on all the notion that could have brought me to this situation.
Transmigration perhaps? I read a couple novels with this type of plot but usually the main character possesses the body of a character in a book. In this case, I am still who I was before, so this place can't be a book in a story. You may call it a coincidence but the resemblance is far too uncanny.
Then, is it a hallucination? What if the reality of this situation is that I'm actually just admitted into a mental hospital right now?
I shook my head to ward that thought away. That's impossible, that man earlier pinched me too hard, the pain was real. But I wouldn't know what the conditions and circumstances of a person having hallucinations would be.
There has to be some kind of clue.
Or maybe this is just a second chance.
As I slowly step out of the room, my eyes gaze around the walls for any clues of what life the Isolde of this world could have lived, or rather, if she had been real to begin with. But what I found were not the family pictures nor mementos that I had hoped to see when I walked the short trip from the room to the kitchen counter. In their stead, littered more jotted down notes and papers scribbled with information pinned on two large boards in the middle of the living room. Very similar to the room I had woken in, strings were attached in some color code from one paper to another.
From the walls to the table and the floor, it would have been miracle to find one space that these papers didn't touch. I stared with wide eyes at the mess.
Maybe these people were like conspiracy theorists or something. Just what kind of crazy situation did I get myself into?
"Good, you're out. Miss Euthanasia called while you were getting ready, she said they found new evidence from yesterday's crime scene. Let's go and see what's new," The man, who I've yet to know, grabbed his messenger bag, and stuffed a bagel in his mouth as he proceeded to head to the door.
When he saw I didn't move, he raised a brow at me with mild confusion, "What's the hold up? Let's go,"
Let's go? I don't even know where go is! And who's this Miss Euthanasia? A crime scene?? Why are we visiting a crime scene??? Are we detectives or something?
In my state of confusion and distress, I blurted out exactly that question.
"What? Are we detectives or something?" I asked, only then when my words were blurted out did I hear the rude tone laced within, and I momentarily regretted opening my mouth. But the look on this man's face churned as if I had just took a dump on his bed and pissed in his sink.
"Isolde... You're acting weird. Are you okay? Do you want to take a break today?" Despite his rush, he walked right back towards me and stuck the back of his palm right on my forehead when he saw my distress. "You're not sick or anything, though."
I kept my mouth pursed.
If this was an alternate universe of some kind, I could at least have a clue about the people around me, but it isn't. I have no idea who this guy is. The more I ransack my brain for memories of the past, the only thing that comes up is my life of three jobs and classes, nothing else.
Then there was no other choice left.
"Could you please tell me who you are?"