Elle woke up to sunlight warming her cheeks and the faint smell of roasted coffee drifting through unfamiliar air. She hadn't woken to the smell of fresh coffee in years.
Her eyes opened slowly, heavy, blurry. She wasn't dead.
A throbbing headache overtook her senses. Her body weighed down on the mattress as if she'd finished a marathon.
She felt like shit.
When her vision focused on the open window, she blinked. Outside, the sky was clear, and the sun hid behind tall skyscrapers.
She expected to be in a hospital. Instead, she was lying under a soft, dark gray duvet in a small, sun-splashed studio apartment. Odd lookings plants lined across the windowsill. A bookshelf filled with way too many true-crime paperbacks faced her across the room. Then there was a leather couch crammed beside a tiny kitchen counter.
Definitely not a hospital. As long as it wasn't a hospital, she didn't bother questioning where she was. It wasn't like getting kidnapped would harm her.
She shifted and winced at the hot pain searing through her ribs. She wondered if her ribs were auditioning for a percussion band. She swallowed and her throat was dry. These past two days have been the shittiest she's felt in a hundred years.
The soft bed under her was the only comfort she felt. It was the closest thing to sleeping on a cloud shaped bed. Maybe it was the warm crispy smell of it, or perhaps the soft fiber, whatever it was it felt like heaven. She retreated beneath the sheets, searching for coolness over the intrusive sunbeams.
"Ahh Dead Girl is finally awake." She heard a boyish voice drawl.
Daniel.
She remembered the now. The bridge. The cat. The strange beautiful man. And Daniel begging her to stay awake.
"No Daniel I'm still asleep." She curled up tighter under the sheets.
"Come on, wake up we have to go."
Elle peeked out from beneath the sheets, her head barely exposed for the sun to catch the strands of her hair like fire. With her wide purple eyes and messy hair, she looked adorable.
Daniel walked into view, holding two steaming mugs. Behind him followed the Black Cat, unbeknownst to Daniel.
"Morning," he said, offering her a cup. "Don't freak out. You're safe."
Elle blinked at him. "Don't worry I care very little about my safety. Where am I?"
"My place," Daniel said simply. "You passed out. Again. On me. Again."
She sat up and pulled the sheets over her chest, inching her head away from the sunlight.
Daniel saw and reached over to shut the blinds.
"Why not take me to the hospital?" She asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
He closed the blinds and turned back to her, "You escaped the hospital to jump off a bridge, if I brought you back there they'd put you in a straight jacket."
She chuckled sheepishly, "Smart, smart."
He sat on the edge of the bed, scrubbing a hand through his short pretty boy buzz.
Elle sipped on her warm beverage and eyed him suspiciously. "You look like you wanna say something."
"Actually," Daniel opened the cupboard next to him and pulled out a bunch of ID cards. Her ID cards.
She took a long sip.
Daniel looked at her pointedly. "Wanna tell me what these are Ben?"
The corner of her lip tilted up slightly at the name. That was her favorite identity.
"They're fake ID's." She replied as a matter-of-factly.
Daniel was blinked, stunned.
"Right of course." He swallowed, pulling them back to pile them in the drawer.
He thought it would take hours of questioning her for her to admit it and she just admitted it in seconds. It caught him off guard, he wasn't sure how to respond.
She sipped her drink. "Any other questions?"
He closed the drawer shut and turned to her. "Are you some runaway fugitive? Or are you in this District illegally? Is that why you lied about your dad so you could runaway?"
"No, no and no. I'm just a regular girl with suicidal tendencies." She smiled cutely.
"Wha-" He shook his head in bewilderment.
This girl has zero filters whatsoever.
Daniel face palmed, sighing into his palm.
"Look, I need to go somewhere today, but I can't leave you alone or you'll—" he waved a vague, frazzled hand, "—launch yourself off this building or something."
Elle sipped the last bit of her coffee. "You're finally getting with the program. So... I'm a field trip now?"
He weighed it. After a second he nodded. "Pretty much."
"Basically." He stood up, grabbing a stack of folded clothes and a towel. "You're going to shower, because you stink, then we're going to the zoo."
Elle looked down at the oversized T-shirt and snipped the collar.It smelt like musky earth and something else.
She wrinkled her nose. "I get the stink part but why are we heading to the zoo?"
"Because if I don't leave now, the otters will miss their enrichment session and I'll get fired."
She blinked. "...You work at the zoo?"
"No. I just promised my sister I'd take pictures. Let's go."
She stared at him, bewildered. "I honestly can't tell which one you're being sarcastic about."
"Neither."
"Weird."
"Go wash."
And out of sheer boredom — and mild curiosity — she went.
The bathroom was standard for a small studio apartment in the city, except that it had more plants in it. The same odd ugly ones in the living room. They didn't have a flower, just leaves and large stems and bright neon colors. It reminded her of the native plants in Papua New Guinea.
Warm water on her skin brought back flashes of the bridge.
That odd fellow bowed to the cat as though he revered it.
Through the clear sliding door, she watched Black Cat, playing in the leaves of the unusual plants by the door. As if it weren't an invisible animal that defied laws of existence and time. It rolled on its back, big blue eyes diluted as it playfully swatted the leaves.
The stranger had clearly seen the cat. He even gave it head rubs and spoke to it as if it could speak back. Either those were the markings of a lunatic or someone peculiar like herself.
The shock of him being the first person to actually see the cat threw her off balance, but even as she fell back he didn't even try to reach out and catch her like any sane person would; he simply stood there and watched with a bored look on his face. As if this were a regular Tuesday for him.
Her being alive and having time reset itself for her deaths 1001 times now taught her there's no such thing as normal. Maybe for others but not for herself.
Will I ever see him again?
Thoughts of her weird immortality glitch also strayed in her mind.
She couldn't connect the dots with her two near death experiences.
Brushing the thought aside, she changed into the oversized black hoodie with the grey cargo pants that were two sizes too big for her that Daniel had given her.
Walking out, she avoided looking into the mirror as she lazily ran her fingers through her damp hair.
Daniel was sitting patiently in the living room, key in one hand.
He was wearing a hoodie similar to the one he gave her, and black trousers and white shoes. He was the kind of handsome you'd see on Pinterest boards. Not in your face about it but once you looked at him right away you'd notice.
When he saw her walk out, he chuckled.
"You look like a little boy."
"You're the one that dressed me up sicko." Elle fired, tossing the towel at him.
He caught it and stood up, "Well it was the only clothes you could wear. Unless you wanna wear your still wet clothes that smell like tree roots and rain water."
Elle sighed in defeat. "Let's just go to the stupid Zoo already."
This was going to be a long annoying day, she could just feel it in her cold dead bones.