This World Belongs to Us

1: Liara

Liara wanted to believe everything would be okay, yet she felt consumed by the cold indifference of the hospital waiting room.

She was in front of the reception desk, in the process of getting permission to go down to the morgue and identify a body. There was a sign in form in front of her.

Liara had lost all sense of what was normal. The words on the form appeared to be illegible symbols that danced around the page. She lifted the paper up and brought it closer to her eyes. Apparently, she had to write down her name, but there was a space for two names: a first and a last. She couldn't fill in both spaces. Liara only had one name.

She continued to scan the paper. There was a box for her to write what time she had arrived. That was something she could easily understand. It was 8:36. She wrote that neatly on the sheet. Her eyes wandered back to the space where she was supposed to write her name. It was only then that she noticed two tiny boxes next to the space. She made out two words above the boxes: Indicate Species. The boxes held two options. She was to check box one if she was a human, and box two if she was a demon.

Liara put a little check mark in the box labeled demon.

Liara wrote her name and handed the paper to the woman sitting behind the desk. The woman glanced at the paper. She blinked and then turned her eyes slowly upward, regarding Liara in a different light.

"I see," said the woman. Her tone was dull and sterile, but with the slightest hint of surprise. "That may be the first time I've actually seen someone check that box."

Liara said nothing in response. Her thoughts were so far away that at this moment, the words of this woman did not even register in her brain. She swayed slightly on her feet. She could sense the other people behind her, waiting in chairs for help.

"Who are you here to visit, Liara?" asked the woman. She spoke the name as if it was unclean.

Liara couldn't find her voice at the moment. She weakly pointed to the first thing she had filled out on the paper. It was the name of the person she had come here to see. Or no, not person. Specifically, she had been told to identify a body. The woman looked back at the paper. Liara watched her face sink, just a little bit.

"Calin," the woman said. The name sent a shiver through Liara's entire body. "I see."

"How do I get to the morgue?" Liara asked, forcing her voice to remain calm.

The woman pointed to her right. "The elevators are right over there. The morgue is marked as one of the buttons."

Liara nodded and stepped away from the desk. Her pace seemed unnaturally fast as she moved toward the elevator. She tried to slow down, but that started to feel unnatural as well.

As Liara entered the elevator and pressed the button for the morgue, her mind felt like a padded cell of denial. She refused to think that Calin could be dead. When she got down there and they unzipped the body bag, it wouldn't be him. It would be a stranger. Just a random person she had never met. The whole thing had to be a terrible accident. Calin was probably just busy with some project. That's why he wasn't answering his phone.

The floors of the elevator blinked by. The morgue was only three floors down from the ground level, but it felt like a descent into hell.

The elevator came to a silent stop. The doors slid open. There was only one option before her, to follow the signs pointing her toward the morgue. Doctors walked past her as she edged further into the depths of the building. She eventually came to a set of marked doors and gently squeezed her way through.