text: It was late and rainy. Verna was hardly keeping her eyes open while swallowing the last sip of the cold disgusting coffee. She knew she should have left the café a long time ago, but she couldn't find the will to do so. She was sitting in the same position Forrest Hayes left her: hands on the wooden table, holding the nicked navy-blue mug, seemingly starring at something only she could see. She wasn't here anymore, she didn't realize how the titter got extinguished little by little or when the laughter turned into silence. She was all by herself in another place, another galaxy or universe most certainly. The dialogue she had a few hours before didn't have any influence on her at all, it wasn't the reason for her roving mind. Just as a hypnotist snaps his fingers and awakens his patient, Verna was taken back by the tapster's shout: "last order!". Those words resonated in her mind for some good 20 seconds until she was completely back into her body. She got up, grabbed her shabby jacket and bumbag from the stool, threw a wrinkled $5 bill on the bar and let the slamming door tell the good-byes for her. Darkness and the remote noise of a car swiftly passing by somewhere around The Mockingbird. That was all Verna could distinguish, but it wasn't getting through her at all. Nothing was. She wasn't scared by the feeling of this continuous depravation of herself. She was falling back into the state she found herself earlier inside the café. She was only the master of her body, but her mind belonged to somebody else, much like a TV set transmitting what someone programmed it to. She wasn't trying to fight it, she didn't feel the need to do so. She was just following her route without giving it a second thought. The Flint Boulevard was as plain and dull as it has always been. Being placed at the periphery of the city, the scenery felt all like a factory exuding a cold sensation, just like all the pipes and scaffoldings were generating the low temperature and somewhat odd feeling of the area. Verna was walking slowly, looking ahead, nothing perturbing her. She was all alone on the poorly illuminated streets. By looking at her from the outside she seemed lured by a siren's song, only she wasn't on the verge of shipwrecking, or at least not that literally. After taking what has to be 50 more steps, Verna suddenly stops in the middle of a crossroad waiting for something. A vernil car with tinted windows recklessly passing, hits her. The impact was real, producing an extremely loud sound. Wilfred Hodges, a 40-some years old bonny man gets off the car to check the body, which once again could no longer be found, not in this universe, at least. SOURCE: my own work, from a few years back, when I was really struggling with mental illness (depression and such), one of the alternative endings of the story being the main character realising all of it was happening after she killed herself, which was making her experience continuous death and alternative lives. It's pretty stupid and I can surely see its flaws now, but writing has been good medicine back then.