Chim - You Only Live Once

Chapter 2

Chapter Two: I Know Why I’m Here

   I heard Cheryl’s words but I don’t think they registered immediately, which caused me to feel as if time had suddenly stopped. In that moment, I was trying to catch my breath but to also make sense of what was happening. The wheels in my head were turning at such an incredibly fast rate but I didn’t have the ability to keep up with them. A part of me must have had some sense of what was happening but the most part of me... well, it was simply lost.

   A warm hand on my shoulder snapped me out of my zombie-like state and I saw Cheryl looking at me with that same worried expression.

   “Maybe you should seat down for a bit, I don’t like your colour,” she informed me and grabbed hold of my hand as she led me towards the couch. Just before we sat down, I caught my reflection in the mirror and noted the paleness of my face.

   ‘Oh, this isn’t good,’ I thought, ‘not good at all.’

   “Do you have any symptoms?” she asked and I barely shook my head. What else could I have told her? I hardly doubt that, I think I’ve woken up in another world and time, would go down well. Could you imagine the headlines if the press got hold of this? Mental Aloud: Kimberley Walsh and the Time Machine? Closing my eyes for a second, I took two deep breaths and opened them again. Cheryl had inched closer to me and her perfume hit me again, making me feel that I had to escape. It was just too much for me, the scent brought back memories that I didn’t need to remember.

   Memories that I didn’t want to remember.

   My legs stood me up automatically; so fast that the brunette snapped her head up immediately that I would have thought she would have broken it.

   “I just need the bathroom for a minute,” and before my sentence was over, I was already walking away from her. If you could call the fast pace that my legs had taken, walking.

   As the bathroom became a step closer, the only thing that was running through my mind was,

   ‘Oh my God.’ Over and over and over again. It had become my litany because, if I’m to be honest, that was the only thing that was keeping me from going insane. Or maybe I was already insane and I just thought that I could make it out alive.

   ‘God, if it isn’t Cheryl that’s driving me crazy then it’s... well, it’s Cheryl and this whole alternate universe!’

   I reached my destination and slammed the door closed, wincing at the noise. I didn’t expect it to be that loud. But maybe noise was good at this point. Or bad, depending on how you look at it. Because hearing noise means that’s I’m here, living this moment.

   Hearing noise and realizing that you are still here and living in the moment, means that you’re not having an awful dream that you’ve been shaken out of.

   I turned my head and I locked looks with the girl in the mirror. My feet – once again on auto pilot – made their way closer to the mirror but this time, they weren’t my friend. This time, they felt weak as my knees buckled and I nearly collapsed onto the floor but my hands reached out and grabbed onto the sink, keeping me up. And I just stared. I stared back at the strange, familiar face that was looking back at me. It was too surreal and I had a hard time accepting the scenario that my mind had conjured.

   ‘How did this happen? What is happening exactly? Why?’ All the basic questions that had complicated answers. Answers that I didn’t even know if I wanted to know, yet answers that I was in desperate need of.