A girl sat alone in a room. Her hair was long and dark, her eyes pools of pitch oil, shimmering under the cold, harsh light emitted from the single bare bulb which hung solitary from her ceiling. Her pale skin was bare of any trace of artificial colouring, her hair lay upon her white robed shoulders, tangled and neglected. She whispered rapidly under her breath, scarred legs pulled up to her chest as if curled upright in the foetal position. The bed she sat upon was a plain metal framed cot with simplistic white sheets and one pillow. Her eyes were covered by her lids and she rocked gently back and forth as she whispered.

The whitewashed wooden door was pushed roughly open, no grace following the entrant. A heavily built woman, with muddy brown hair streaked with grey tied in a tight bun and small, pig-like squinting brown eyes stamped her way across the floor, pulling a metal cart behind her. Screeches of people whose minds had strayed from their own heads issued from the open door, stopping the girls whispering. The woman’s feet, clad in simple white training shoes and skin-coloured opaque tights, trod in a seemingly overly heavy step towards the girl, and the squeak of the wheels followed the rhythmic stomping. Finally the woman stood beside the girl and a white sheet was pulled back, revealing the contents of the top tray of the cart.

The woman removed a pair of sterile rubber gloves from the top pocket of her plain white smock and pulled them over her heavy hands. She picked up a small clear plastic bag with a red label reading ‘STERILE HYPODERMIC NEEDLES’ and swiftly opened it, removing one of the sharp metal pins from the group. She sealed the bag again and dropped in back in place on the tray. She picked up a small vial, again labelled with a red sticker and positioned it in a syringe. She pushed the needle into the base of the syringe and with a proficient effortless movement flicked the vial and test squirted the syringe.

She then opened a pot of antiseptic cream and dabbed a piece of fresh, white cotton wool into the ointment. She neatly wiped this onto a small patch on the top of the girls left arm.

With professional swiftness the woman plunged the sharp metal through the skin on the top of the girl’s arm and pressed the plunger, releasing the clear liquid into the girl’s blood stream. The woman felt the needle break the skin with a strange satisfaction which she could only associate with pleasure at a job properly completed and she felt the same strange sensation as she pulled the needle from the girls flesh. She held pressure over the hole in the girl’s tissue with a piece of clean, white cotton wool for exactly thirty seconds which she timed on her watch, then threw all the used and contaminated items into a bin on the bottom of her cart.

She turned on her small heel and strode from the room, pulling the creaky wheeled cart behind her.

It was with a feeling of relief that the girl noted the absence of the woman and the almost complete silence of her room now the door had once more been pulled shut. She once more pulled her legs; skin etched with long, deep scars, to her stomach tightly and wrapped her arms, also covered in the scars, around the formerly mentioned limbs. She resumed her whispering, quietly uttering the words which formed her personal mantra.

A barely audible creak issued from the bare door that allowed access into the room. The girl internally acknowledged the presence of the intruder, however did not allow the new occupant of the room to notice her realisation. No unwelcome screaming entered her ears. She continued her hurried whispering, her body slowly rocking in time with the rhythm of her quiet words.

The new occupant sat beside the girl on the bed. They lifted their hand as if to touch the back of her head but lowered it again to their lap.

"Hannah."

The person spoke in a low but not deep voice, therefore making it difficult to tell their gender if judged only by the vocal qualities that issued from their mouth. The girl twitched slightly at her name. She did not look up, nor slow her whispering, yet stopped rocking. Her body remained rigid, every muscle tensed as if ready to spring from her position on the bed away from this other person. The other spoke again.

"Hannah? Do you know who I am?"

Hannah finally stopped her hurried muttering and looked at the person. Her dark hair swung into her face and gave the delicate girl a sinister glare.

"Traitor..." She whispered, her voice trailing off into nothingness.

The other person sighed and Hannah clenched her fists, as if readying herself to attack this unwelcome occupant of HER room.

"It's Michael." They whispered.

At this second name mentioned a low growl issued from Hannah's slender throat.
She shifted away from him on the bed and pressed herself against the wall.

"No, no, no." She whispered, her voice slightly hoarse from her uninterrupted whispering which had proceeded for an hour beforehand.

"You're not real." She whispered. "You're not; the doctors said you're not real so you can't be real."

Michael shook his head gently and reached out his hand to her, at which she leapt from the bed and curled up on the floor in the corner of the room. Her legs, covered with their eternal markings, pulled up in front of her, her expression that of a frightened animal.

She began to shake uncontrollably. Michael smiled reassuringly at her.

"I am real, you know I'm real. How could I not be when you've seen me so many times in these years?"

She stared at him in wonder, her eyes widening.

"Michael?" She whispered.

Hannah stood and slowly walked across the room to her companion, her white medicinal robe swaying in time with her steps. She sat beside him.

Hannah reached her hand over to Michael and ran it slowly and lightly down his shoulder, her fingertips delicately brushing the soft cloth of his shirt sleeve.

"See?" He whispered. "If I wasn't real then how could you feel me sitting here"
Hannah laid her arms over Michael's shoulders and he held her tight to him, his arms circling her waist.

“How can this be real?” She whispered. Her voice cracked as her breathing increased and a tear dribbled down her pale cheek, a shining trail left to record its presence. He released his hold of her waist and pushed her slightly away from him, gripping her trembling shoulders with his strong hands.

“I know that it’s my fault you’re here.” He murmured gently, tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear. “I didn’t show myself to people and now they think you imagined me.”

“Why did you leave me?” Questioned Hannah, tears forced back behind her eyes where Michael could not see them, cold unconcern replacing her former sorrow. The male figure held his hand over her cheek and caught the last tear with his thumb before withdrawing his hand to his lap.

“If I had stayed it would have meant the end of my life. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t give up my independence and freedom. I’m sorry.” He hung his head in despair and held out a hand to Hannah. “Can you ever forgive me?” He asked with sincerity. She glared at him.

“You are a coward, a deceitful, spiteful, false-hearted, fraudulent coward, and you deserve to rot in misery, thinking of what I have been subjected to which you have not!” The words struck Michael in the gut with a brute force which made his features crumple.

“Please don’t.” He whimpered pathetically. Hannah leaned her head forward and drooped it slightly, then slowly rolled it around to the right. Her dark hair hung, matted and wild across her face and her eyes seared Michael’s skin with their contradicting searing hatred and icy indifference. She purposefully leant forwards so her cheek was along side his, able to feel his breath on her neck.

"You are not real." She whispered viciously in his ear. "If I cannot live then neither can you. I will not have you wreck my life again."

The moment shattered.

She grabbed his throat and forced him down on the bed, the strength which is only found in the insane and the athletic stopping the air in his throat.

He writhed as he felt his windpipe being crushed beneath her red hot fingers. Her teeth gritted together in fury. He choked, the lack of air to his system shutting down his body.

He struggled, tears forming behind his emerald green eyes and forcing themselves forward to run down his cheeks and stain her fingers.

Slowly his body became still and his chest ceased to move in time with his heavy attempts at breathing.

Satisfied that he would haunt her no more, Hannah roughly shoved Michael's body from her bed. She clutched her legs to herself and stretched them out once more. She looked over the side of the metal bars which formed her bed and her eyes shrewdly scanned the lifeless form on the floor. She reached over and gripped her hands around the edge of the bed.

Unhurriedly she clambered off the low bed and laid her body out beside the fallen man. She surveyed him once more.

Though the motionless figure lay with his body in unnatural angles, violence in the last moments contorting his carcass, his eyes were strangely serene. His hair was ruffled from the struggle and fall, the short dark spikes misplaced. The flesh of his cheeks and face was soft, malleable, not yet inset with the stiff horror of rigor mortis. The soft skin around his shining, tranquil eyes was so tempting for the irrational girl to touch. She wanted to run her fingers along the tiny laughter wrinkles and feel their indentation in his face with her sensitive fingertips.

She restrained herself from this idea; instead she allowed her eyes to drink in all aspects of his cooling body. No blood had been spilt and Hannah found herself fascinated by the simple process of death. He had not been in this position for long and already his skin was paling, for his heart had since ceased to push the blood that coloured him around his body. This body had never before seemed so small and fragile to the nonsensical girl who lay, rather haphazardly, beside it on the cold, white floor.

She looked up at the camera in the corner of the room and smiled. Her breathing slowed and her heart contracted suddenly beneath her chest. She closed her eyes tightly against the harsh white light which shone down on her from the dusty bulb. Through her mind flashed images of her first encounter with the man who lay beside her.

She had been leaving the hospital after she had been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect. Her mother walked ahead, narrow, pale forehead twisted as she ran the doctors words through her head.

“Hi.” He had smiled at her. Such a smile, one, such as every expression that ever passed over his features filled with sincerity. He had walked away and she had encountered him again in a café, twenty minutes after an argument with her mother. She continued to meet him by chance. Once in a nearby park as she walked home after breaking up with her boyfriend she saw him feeding the ducks, another time he turned down a side street as she walked home from a friends house, being told by that friend that her mother disapproved of her and she could no longer be friends.

Finally she confronted him in a library. Another argument having previously occurred with her mother, and the library being her closest form of solitary confinement. She pulled ‘The Crucible’ from a shelf and saw him peering through at her. The library was quiet, silent more or less, almost completely deserted, and she felt no embarrassment at taking out her bottled up frustrations on him.

“Why are you following me?” She growled, perfectly aware of the seething anger in her voice.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He retorted, perfectly calm and composed in the face of her antagonism. She made a noise of annoyance and stormed around the shelves to his side.

“What do you want?” She hissed irately, trying to keep the volume of her voice as low as she could. He smiled at her, the same smile she had seen outside the hospital and she felt her heart skip a beat.

“Come with me.” He whispered. She followed him from the library, down the wide granite stairs which marked the entrance from the street and into a waiting car. They talked together and her trust in him gradually increased. She took to spending more time with him and it was not until the accident that she had been confined in this white-walled hell that she now took residence in.

Hannah’s activities with Michael were wild; she began to steal and stay out for weekends at time, driving her mother insane with worry. One night they lifted a car, and Michael decided to teach her how to drive. All went well until they swerved around a corner. He sat beside her and laughed as she joked and the hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck rose as they approached the turn.

“Something’s coming.” She whispered. Michael had ceased laughing and stared through the windshield into the dark, crumpling his features as he tried to perceive the danger through the darkness. The two were silent and as they turned the corner a huge truck loomed out of the black night and bore down on the small car. The extreme mass of the truck collided with the car and cold shards of glass rained down over Hannah’s legs and arms as the windows and metal smashed from the sheer force. The side of the car crumpled inward, metal folded over metal and crushing the fragile beings trapped inside. Hannah’s arms, already slashed from her vain attempt to protect her face from the falling glass, were crushed and broken as metal fell onto her. Tears streamed down her face, combined with the blood which ran from her broken nose which had popped as her face flew forward and smashed into the steering wheel.

She had been found, alone and unconscious by the driver, and when asked what had possessed her to do such an insane thing, she told them it was Michael. When asked his surname she could not answer and assumptions were made about her mental health.
Hannah’s eyes flickered and opened, the oily black dulled as she smiled at the camera for the last time.

Across the building, a uniformed man sat with his feet up on a desk filled with monitors. A magazine laid on his chest as it moved slowly with the breathing of those who would dream a deep, dreamless rest, one ear closed completely, the other open only for the sound of the bosses approaching footsteps.

In a small monitor off to his right the simple whitewashed door, which led into Hannah’s room, was firmly shut and bolted from the outside.

In a small monitor off to his left a small figure smiled at him, her pitch eyes and long black hair framing her face, her body lying, sprawled beside her plain metal cot with simplistic white sheets, the only other object in the room.