Death gazed upon his new creations, sighing at their human qualities. They would soon fade with time, or maybe they would retain them like some of his fellow gods. If that was true, he would have to replace them again. Human traits is what got him screwed over in the first place. He needed new men to help him rule this world. Ones without blight or problems with the other gods. Maybe these would prove to be useful to him. Maybe not...

The nurse lurked around her room for days, waiting for her to speak even a simple word about her death. Joel had only spoken to refuse to talk to any investigators. She figured the nurse was told to keep an eye out, try to pick her patient's brains for any information. Joel didn't utter a syllable to her, not even barely a sentence to her parents. They were almost disheartened by her simple "I love you." They had blood on their minds. They wanted revenge.
The nurse walked into Joel's room today, a fake smile plastered on her face. "Hey sweety, how you feelin' today?" She had a slight southern accent; Joel guessed she was from Georgia or Tennessee, maybe.
The college student stared at her hands, examining her pale brown complexion. It was like the the earth, like the soft clay beneath the surface. "Because of your surprising recovery, we're moving you to a community room," the nurse said as she began unhooking some things from the monitor. Joel's heart raced. Other people? What was this, an attempt on her privacy, on her right to solitude? "It'll be good to be around other patients, honey. I promise." Joel continued to stay silent as they wheeled her down the hall, her neck numb. She could still feel her murderer's hands grasped around her throat, like a noose set too tight and too rough. "All these people are a bit like you, I think." The nurse noted as they rounded a corner. Joel scuffed under her breath. Last she checked, Joel was the first kidnapping-murder case in over 50 years in Renata. Nobody was like her. "They all miraculously survived trauma beyond belief."
Joel's bed could barely fit through the doorway, but the staff pushed her through. The room was empty so far, with only a few slots open for beds. She sat and waited as the staff hooked her wires up to the machine, her arms crossed over her chest. One went and opened the window nearby, saying something about fresh air. The scent of trees and dirt drifted into the room, settling a calm over the young girl's beating heart. Maybe these people wouldn't be so bad after all, whoever they were.

His hand...didn't feel like his own. That was the best way of putting it. There was pain, still, and other sensation, but it was detached, like someone else was feeling the pain. The same was true of his leg. Worse, still, was that he couldn't clear his nose of the scent of his own burning flesh.

Sig looked down at his hand. White bandages covered it, then, but he could remember what it looked like from his daily cleaning. Skin charred black, split like a sausage to expose inflamed flesh, tendrils of ash and crimson twisting around his arm and tapering off near his elbow. It was pretty gross, but he thought the scar might look cool when it healed.

"How is the pain, today?" The nurse's lilted voice came from the door and gave Sig a start.

"Oh," he said, taking a moment to clear his throat. He wasn't used to speaking. After the first couple days of being visited by his cousin, who had ensured Sig's parents that he was okay, he hadn't seen really anybody. "I mean, I was hit by lightning. What are you asking me, here?" He smiled at her.

Sam - that was the nurse's name - looked up and gave him a hollow grin. She was cute, in a way. Blond, a little chubby. He had tried his best to make a connection with her, but it was clear to him that he was just another object of tedium in her day. He probably wasn't looking particularly handsome, anyway. He certainly felt about as gross as his hand.

"Better than yesterday," Sig finished.

"Okay," she said. "How's your walking?" Sam threw him through the usual battery of tests and questions, taking his monitor cables off, and informed him that he would be moved from the resuscitation room into a stretcher bay with other patients. He was happy for the company. Several days alone in the hospital had stretched his sanity and plagued him with nightmares. Even awake, he had sworn he heard voices in the room with him.

Sig didn't see anybody else in the stretcher bay, at first. He was about to open his mouth, a sarcastic thought half-formed on his lips, when he caught a shadow in the corner of his eye. It froze him solid, and the feeling he had after the accident came surging through him. Sheer horror. The feeling that he had died.

His head spun to look at the entity, but it was...just a girl. She looked young, worn, battered. A bruise like a purple snake wrapped around her neck, and she stroked it idly.

Something was seriously wrong. Sig forced himself to look away from her, even as Sam pushed his bed in the slot next to her. Even with a curtain dividing them, the feeling of wrongness permeated from the girl and threatened to smother him.

"Let the nurses here know if you need anything," Sam finished, leaving the room. Sig shook his head. He realized he was almost hyperventilating. It was stupid. There was nothing wrong with his girl, his head had just been a little weird since the accident.

"Hey!" Sig half-shouted, reaching from his bed and throwing the divider curtain open. "Come here often?" It was a stupid joke, but Sig chuckled, desperate to alleviate the tension.

Joel averted her eyes as the staff wheeled in another patient, catching the color of brownish white stains on bandages around the person's arms. It looked like mud had been strained through cloth and slapped onto his wounds, like some primitive remedy to injury. Joel jumped when the curtain between them was suddenly yanked back, almost falling out of her bed.

"Hey! Come here often?"

The girl flinched away from his positive manner; instead of making eyecontact, she stared at the twining white around his arms and legs, like a live mummy come to haunt her. Something about him felt undeniably wrong...As if his existence was against human nature.

"I don't usually find myself in the hospital, no," she found herself saying. Her voice felt dry and trite against her throat. She fought back a wince as the bruises on her neck pulsed, the throb sending an ache to her skull. She absent mindedly gripped the back of her head, the spot still sensitive from the concussion her kidnapper gave her the night she was taken. "What about you? Are you accident prone, or something?" She asked, indicating to the bandages.

Shaun

Shaun twisted and turned into his own bed, so much so that he slightly edged his bed out of place. After a moment his eyes snapped open and his profuse sweat splattering over his clothes. Another nightmare of the same thing... he though, forcefully grabbing his shaking hand to force it into stillness. He hadn't noticed but he was also hyperventilating, as if he's never had a gasp of air in his entire life, he was unable to calm himself down, continuously pinching his arm but it didn't help.

His hyperventilation only seemed to worsen overtime till a woman entered the room. She looked as worse- if not worse off than him, and her very visage calmed him down somehow. He had no idea why but he felt a sort of 'connection' with her, but chose to not do anything- he was just glad he looked like he wasn't dying anymore. His hair was a mess and unkempt, trying a vain effort to keep himself tidier but steadily failing. Shaun still felt a shadow of something wrung around his neck, he gulped but it felt hard to do so. He loosened the tie to basically drape over his neck, and even then it still felt that it was choking him.

He couldn't just sit still on his bed, he had done the tests earlier before he had slept, he was allowed to walk around the room a little bit. Loosening his bones, his bones groaned and cracked all over. His worried visage was slowly being replaced with his natural- scowling resting face. He glanced over to the two having a conversation;

"What about you? Are you accident prone, or something?"

"Hey," Shaun called out, forgetting his conversing etiquette "What exactly did the Nurse mean about 'special cases'?

Sig smiled at the girl's rebuttal. It was what he was hoping for. Despite the circumstance, it seemed her sense of humor was still there. He looked down at his hand, and another foreign voice called out from across the room.

"Hey," it was a young man's voice, coated with the hoarseness familiar of a the other hospital subjects. "What exactly did the nurse mean about special cases?"

Sig paused. Special cases? he thought. Was he referring to the three of them in the room? Was there anything particularly special about being stupid enough to be struck by lightning?

He remembered something, something one of the doctors had told him when he first woke up. It was fuzzy, and he could have been dreaming, but he thought he remembered them saying that his heart had been stopped. It had been stopped for some extent of time.

Over twelve hours, Sig thought. I think that's what I remember, but it doesn't seem right. Is that even possible?

"Did..." Sig said, struggling to finish the thought. "Did you guys die?"

Joel's throat constricted at the sight of the man (@Inertia), something inside her stirring. A connection felt present between them, like a loose cord slowly twining and twining till they would be joined at the hip. Her hand subconciously went around her throat, probing at her bruises.

"Did you guys die?"

Her heart sunk to her toes. She felt like puking, the taste of raw dirt and blood in her mouth. She could still feel the soil beneath her fingernails; it seemed like a permanent line of black and brow would rest above her pink cuticles, no matter what she did to get it out.

Joel suddenly realized these men must not have seen the news yet. She hadn't either, but the last time her parents visited, they told her that the local news wanted an interview about her 'Miraculous return.' She declined immediately, begging her parents protect her privacy.

"Technically," she responded. It felt better to tell these people (did she ever ask their names?) what happened than telling medical staff or her parents. "I was starved of oxygen for a while. Should have permanent brain damage." That's as much into detail as she was willing to go; she didn't want these people look at her with pity and sympathy. She wanted to be treated the way she was before. "I'm Joel by the way."

There was a window some four feet from Jessamyn’s bed. Being on one of the upper floors of the hospital meant she couldn’t see much else than the overcast grey sky that hadn’t stopped her from staring at it nearly every waking hour. There wasn’t anyone to visit her but nurses and doctors and nothing on the T.V. held her attention. She was moping, but knowing it didn’t seem to make a difference.

“Ms. Colmer” Jessa did her best to ignore the voice, but couldn’t hide the involuntary flinch at the sound of the man’s voice. Dr. Holmen, the in-house shrink. It took them all about three minutes after finding out her history to conclude she must have tried to kill herself or at least come totally unhinged, despite having found her car (a total write-off now) two days ago. The doctor knew better than to say anything, but she could feel him staring at her. It made her angry, which he took improvement from the monotonous numb cloud she’d wrapped herself in. She lasted a whole thirty seconds before turning around. Apparently that was enough invitation for him to come and lean on her cot.

“How are we today my dear?” Jessa’s scowl reflected back on his glasses. God she looked horrible, she’d done almost nothing but sleep for three days and yet dark circles had formed blue and sunken under her eyes.

“They’re planning to move you today. With some other patients.” He waited her out again, and won, again.
“I don’t want group therapy” The smile she received told he’d been expecting her to say that.

“No that’s not what this is. In fact the papers are all set up for your release this after-noon, so long as I see a bit of positive attitude. Jessa squeezed her eyes shut and did her best to block out the constant image of a small cold hand grasping her own. It didn’t feel like a smile, and judging from the ill-controlled shaking of the doctor’s shoulders, didn’t much resemble on either. “You’re going to have to do a bit better than that I’m afraid Ms. Colmer. You can start by walking with me.”

Her legs hadn’t been hurt. In fact aside from a mild fever, dehydration, and being totally unconscious nothing was wrong with Jessamyn when she was checked into the hospital. ‘A true miracle, with the storm and all’. Still, lying in bed for three days left her slightly off balance. Dr. Holmen took hold of her arm as the room swayed. After a few seconds, he tried persuading her to continue.
“There’s a nurse with coffee waiting right on the other side of that door.” After three steps she could manage on her own, and shrugged the hand away.
Sure enough a nurse was waiting with two styrofoam cups just behind the door, a pitifully proud smile plastered to her face. Jessa grabbed the cup and kept walking before the woman could make a comment.
“Second door on your left” The doctor pointed to the right as they reach the hallway’s end. Jessa hesitated.
“Who was I meeting again?” His response was only to grin and turn around. She sipped her coffee. Cold, again. Two coffee’s a day for three days and only one of them had been even luke-warm. The door was already open and she could hear voices inside. She checked once more to make sure her gown hadn’t come undone before stepping into the room.

It was unsettling, being around so many strangers, even the air felt different past the door, and her first impulse was to sit near the wall and avoid eye contact. Of course, that wouldn’t really be a positive attitude.
“Hello, I’m Jessa.” She spoke quickly enough for the words to be near unintelligible, then quickly found a seat where she nursed her horrible, cold, coffee. But it was hard not to notice the severe injuries of two of the others in the room. One still in a bed, she craned her neck to look closer, and winced as the sight of IV’s running from the girls arm, and the nasty bruise around her neck. It was hard to tell anyone's age when injured and hooked up to machines, but she looked young. “Shouldn’t there be a nurse in here…?”

---

The light almost blinded her as Betsy slowly fluttered her eyes open, her nose was first greeted by the depressing and stale hospital smell. Her head pounded like crazy as she tried to prop herself up on the bed, nothing like waking up to the worst hang over ever. As she sat by the edge, hair disheveled in all directions, she tried to process where and how she got here in the first place. Still a little bit disoriented brought by the intensity of the alcohol she drank before. She could still taste the bitterness lingering in her dry mouth.

Someone, a nurse she figured by the looks of his outfit, was hurriedly walking past her only to go back and paused the moment he saw the disoriented young woman sat on her bed. "Hey, hey! You're finally awake. How are you feeling?" he said jauntily, Betsy made a barely audible wheeze. "Where am I?"

"Well, you're in a hospital." The nurse held a nervous chuckle at his own joke. He looked young, probably new on the job. "And according to the doctors you barely survived a toxic amount of alcohol in your system. A miracle really."

"What?" Betsy had a puzzled look, trying to recall fragments of what had actually happen. "Oh, I'm sorry. That was a bit direct of me, wasnt it? Aaand I shouldn't be telling you any of this in the first place so..." he shifted himself nervously. "Let me give you a couple of tests and see if you're all good." Betsy wasn't giving him any, but the tests had to be done. It didnt take long to get over the routine "Well looks to me you're all fine and well." The nurse said. "If you need anything just buzz me up alright?" He said pointing at the nurse buzzer next to her bed.

She took the glass of water on the end table and took it all in. "Yeah, where's the bathroom?" "Just over around the corner. Do you need any assistance?" Betsy held up her hand at the nurse sternly giving him a look "I'm good" she steadily stood in her feet but her head was still feeling a bit wobbly. The nurses think she was stable enough so she had been transferred on the far corner of the room while still asleep. Walking up she barely noticed the voices in the room hence to her surprise when a group of people were huddling in the center.

Her vision was still somewhat blurry, probably still having a post drunk moment but she could make out four of the strangers, two of them standing next to the other one who was hooked up to the bed and another who just came in right before she did. Betsy stood there awkwardly with her smudged eyeliner, messy hair and a dumb look, absentmindedly adjusting her gown. She eyed each one, but went pass them unmindfully searching for the bathroom door. It took her awhile to realize she couldn't really find it. With the nurse nowhere in sight, she went casually to the group " Yeah, so." One arm on her hip, her gaze not looking at anyone in particular. "Any one of you could tell me where the bathroom is?"

Tawny awoke, not for the first time, to the sound of voices talking about her. She had no idea what time it was, but judging from the light filtering in through the window in her room, it was daytime. Her healing bones protested as she pulled herself up into a sitting position on her bed, but she did not make a sound. Her doe-like eyes remained glued to the nurses by her bed, and she resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at their indifference. They could at least try to lower their voices - not being able to speak didn't make her deaf.

"It'll be good for her - y'know, to talk to people that have been through the same thing as her." One of the nurses, a pretty Asian girl, finally seemed to notice that the subject of their conversation was sat up and staring straight at them, and lowered her voice so that Tawny could only make out the words 'trauma' and 'too long'.

She couldn't argue with that. She had been here too long - almost a week now. Her seven broken bones were slowly on the mend, and the bruising was beginning to fade. The only real reason as to why she was still in this stupid hospital was because she couldn't talk. So she cooperated, following the nurses along a series of identical corridors until they reached the doors of what they called a 'community room'.

Tawny, feeling slightly dizzy from the amount of painkillers she had been given, glanced at herself briefly in the reflection of a nearby window and sighed. She was a mess, to say the least. Her hair was pulled up away from her face in a severe ponytail, leaving nothing to cover the impressive scape across her cheekbone. Not to mention her sling, heavily bandaged foot and crutches. She looked like a sad version of Mr Bump.

Throwing one last helpless look at the Asian nurse, she was pushed into the room with a sarcastic 'good luck'. Obviously they didn't have much hope for her, she realised, as she looked down at the label on her clothes with her name hastily scribbled onto it. The room she had been thrust into was large and airy and open, and in it seemed to be the world's most depressing group of people. There was a girl with bruises around her neck, a guy with bandages wrapped around most of his body, another tired-looking girl sitting next to the taken beds, a pretty girl asking where the bathroom was, a guy that was seemingly shaken up.

Her gaze stayed fixed on that guy as her vision flashed, causing her to stumble slightly. Something told her that he had just woken up. He couldn't breathe. Asphyxiation. That doesn't make any sense, though, does it? How could she know that?

The old Tawny would have greeted everyone with a warm smile and a friendly introduction - maybe flirting with one of the guys. This Tawny, however, offered nothing more than a small frown while tapping her fingers against her crutch nervously, trying to make her way as quietly as possible to the nearest open window. The group seemed to be greeting each other, sharing experiences. But, of course, she couldn't do that. So instead she sat herself on a window ledge and propped her crutch up against the wall next to her, wide brown eyes watching without a sound.

Joel stared at the new arrivals, examining their bodies for any obvious abrasions or mutilations. "The bathroom's that way," Joel indicated to the door next to the window. "And I'm glad the nurses aren't in here. Won't stop pestering me with questions in all honesty."

The girl glanced at the patient sitting by the window silently, taking in the earthy and balmy air. "What's your name?" She asked.

---

Betsy glanced at the door next to the window, mentally face palming to her self. She took a closer look at the girl only she had noticed the bruises on her neck. Betsy was obviously staring by the way she squinted her eyes at the woman to further inspect. Together with her is a dude wrapped in toilet paper, Betsy raised a brow at him only to realize that it was bandages. Well, duh. Then another dude who wasnt looking so great, looked like he needed to calm down. Then a woman, sat just a bit further from the trio. She looks older compared or maybe that's just how she looks. Another girl in crutches came in, who just look as equally terrible as the rest of them. "Thanks..." she proceeded to walk towards the bathroom.

Betsy proceeded to throw splashes of cool water on her face, she stared at herself on the mirror as everything is slowly taking its place in her mind. The heavy punk music muffled through the small cramped bathroom cubicle, the cool lonely bathroom floor and bottles of alcohol next to her. She felt nothing, nothing but internal pain and misery that she was so desperate to make it stop until one moment she just felt nothing at all. She shook her thoughts out of her head and as she did she still felt the lingering dizzyness. After drying her face and fixing up her hair she came out of the bathroom, and made her way to to a corner not far from where crutch girl was sitting and leaned on the wall, arms crossed into her chest. She quietly observed them one more time "What is this, a part of the Make-A-Wish foundation?" she lightly commented. "Like, jeez, you guys look like you need some."

Shaun

New faced entered, all asking their own queries and questions. Everything looked blurred and foggy, with Shaun only being able to tell their gender from the general outline of the individual. Still, coupled with the muffled music and the voices intermingling he felt very... choked. He couldn't tell who was who, and who was saying what. Beads of sweat began to profusely slide down his face, and maintaining his already sloppy balance proved more difficult as it seemed as if every second etched more slowly than the last.

He opened his mouth to speak however nothing came out but a gasping sound. He tried a few more times and the results were the same- if not worsening with each attempt. Now the world began spinning once more, extremely reminiscent of his first 'death'. The next moment he dropped to the floor, and everything stopped. There was no noise or movement, it was silent and still, deathly so as if he was in space. He scrunched his head upwards, against the deafening silence, and saw people as panicked and terrified as he was. Their mouths agape as if desperately searching for something...

"Oh god, wh-what have I done? What's happening?"

"I'm Joel, by the way," said the girl with the ring on her neck. Sig made to introduce himself but was quickly drowned out by another body entering the room. Then, another. It was quickly becoming crowded in the stretcher bay, each new face sharing qualities with the last, looking beaten, tired. Each of them had an aura of wrongness, something Sig could only compare to a computer glitch, as if the very air around them was broken. He shook his head. Being critically injured made everything weird, that was all.

It was true, it seemed - everyone in the room had been clinically deceased at some point very recent to that day. He thought it was odd, putting everyone in the same room, but he recalled seeing that sort of thing on the internet in the past. Groups of people who had near-death experiences, coming back as different people, some claiming to have visions or see spirits and stuff like that.

One of the other patients spoke, breaking Sig from his thoughts. "What is this," she said. "A part of the Make-A-Wish foundation?" The girl was blonde, with several piercings around her face, looking very punk-rock. Sig barked a tense laugh at her quip.

A pressure on his ears suddenly set them to ringing. An odd sensation crept upon his skin. He realized all movement in the air had stopped, and everything was silent, like a mute button was pressed on life.

He then realized he couldn't breathe.

Sig sat up in bed, mouth agape, desperate for air, clinging to the bed's railing as he tried everything to get his lungs to work. Despite all his efforts, his breath only left his throat in a muffled wheeze, unable to find its way back in. His veins surged with adrenaline. His grip on the railing crested and its steel bars bent like rubber.

He felt a strange sensation flood from his hand. The lights in the room began to flicker. He watched the screens on the vital monitors burn out one after another. Then, all the lightbulbs shattered silently, raining glass and darkness into the room below.

Sig threw himself out of bed, his legs giving out beneath him as he fell to his hands and knees. He scrambled for a way out, a way to get air. Something. Anything.

---

It was all so surreal. In an instant Betsy couldn't breathe like she couldnt feel anything the moment she tried to inhale, only to realize she was virtually choking. As if all the air inside the room has been sucked clean, she tried to say something, shout even but nothing came out as were the sound in the air. Everyone panicked.

"What the fucking hell is happening?!"

Amidst all the fuss and the desperation for air, she could intensely feel the surge of panic as her eyes darted from one person to the other. It's as if everyone of them has some level of emotional magnitude and Betsy has no idea how she could even tell. Her eyes went over to 'under wraps' on the bed as the lights began to fluctuate and a shatter fell the room into darkness. As he scrambled off Betsy has his eyes on this other dude in particular, she doesn't know why but his feelings overpowered everyone elses. There was panic, regret, and a feeling of poignance in her part. It was utterly confusing her.

Eventually she was grasping for air, she tried to open the windows but her weak arms against a vacuum sealed room made it impossible to do so. She was desperate, but her sudden uncharacteristic sentiment towards the guy had made her stir over him. Without thinking clearly of the whole situation she grabbed him by the shoulders gripping them as she gave a moderate shake. What she tries to achieve, she has not a fucking clue but somehow she feels like there was something she could do. As ridiculous as it may sound, her heart was somehow telling her to 'help' him.