"Don't worry, you won't grow taller," he says, as he wants me to slip the mushroom into my mouth.

Suddenly, I am more than uncomfortable with the Pillar's suggestion. I still don't trust him.

The Pillar gets the message, but says nothing. He lights up his mini hookah and takes an unusually long and tense drag, puffing it out. "I understand," he says. "If you don't trust me, I understand. Sincerely."

"Really?" I squint. Something is wrong. "You will give up, just like that?"

"Who said I gave up?" he asks as I feel suddenly dizzy. My knees wobble under me and imaginary birds begin tweeting in my ears. I fall to my knees, realizing too late that I've been sedated by the smoke from his hookah.

The world fades to black. The Pillar fooled me. I don't think I am ready for the morgue trip yet.

Chapter 10

Somewhere in this mad world

I open my eyes to an endless darkness. A blinding kind of darkness I haven't experienced before. Many times have I slept in pitch black in my cell in the asylum. This present darkness is different. It seems as if it has a soul, a substance. It feels too close and invasive to my privacy. It's as if I am wrapped between its octopus arms. A claustrophobic kind of darkness.

No explanation comes to my semi-numb mind right now.

Where am I?

My body is numb, enough to chain me in temporary paralysis. Each of my limbs is heavy enough that I don't bother lifting any.

Somehow, I am sure this will subside.

A slow train of memories arrives. It's slow but noisy and heavy, like a locomotive breath.

The Pillar sedated me, and all the kicks and screams in the world are of no use—for now. I will have to face wherever I am.

Shouldn't I wake up in the morgue and inspect the heads of the deceased kids?

As the heaviness in my body subsides, I reach for anything I can get hold of in the dark. The tips of my fingers collide with some kind of a plastic. It's wavy. I can't see it. My mind finally registers a fact: I am stretched on my back.

A surge of panic alerts my weakened body. It's so threatening that my numbness subsides. I start to kick my hands and feet in the dark as unreasonable claustrophobia overrules me. The plastic darkness opposes me in every direction, as if I am imprisoned in an elastic balloon.

I keep kicking and scraping against the surface of this darkness. I need to get out of it before I choke or die from the lack of breathing, but I can't cut through without a sharp tool.

Panic captures me. Until my fingers come across a metallic thing attached to the plastic.

A zipper.

The thought that hits my brain almost puts me back in paralysis. I think I know where I am.

Thin rays of yellow light seep through the plastic bag I am trapped in as I pull the zipper down. I reach out with my hands like the dead out of their graves. Finally, I wriggle myself out of the black plastic bag. I feel like a dying cocoon evolving into a butterfly—it reminds momentarily of the deceptive Pillar.

I straighten up on the table I am on—it feels like a table more than a bed—and I realize for certain where I am.

I'm actually in the morgue. I was tucked in one of those plastic bags the deceased end up in. A body bag. This is what the Pillar meant by a maximum-security morgue that's hard to sneak into. The madman tucked me in a death bag and slipped in among the dead.

Paralyzed on the table, I can't even comprehend my surroundings yet. I do notice the chilling temperature of the room, though.

"Breathe, Alice. Breathe," I whisper as I hug myself, since I am all I have on this side of life. And I thought my cell was the worst place in the world.

The cold creeps up my spine, fluttering like a winter breeze through my blue shirt and jeans. The cold almost bites at the back of my neck. Goosebumps prickle like devil's grass on my skin.

When I am about to move my legs to get off the roller bed I am on, my bare feet give in to numbness. I have no idea where my shoes are. I fight the stiffness in my back and bend over to rub my feet. As I do, I glimpse a rectangular piece of cardboard attached to a string wrapped around my right toe. I think it's called a toe tag. It's how a coroner or mortician identifies a dead person in the morgue. My heart almost stops. Why am I wearing this? I reach out to flip the toe tag so I can read it:

Name: Alice Pleasant Wonder.

Numbness invades my very soul.

Case: 141898

Then it mentions my hair, skin, and eye color. And finally it says:

Condition: Deceased in a bus accident.

The world around me freezes. It's like someone has a remote control for my beating heart and just clicked the off button. My mouth is dry, my skin is cold and numb, and I can't breathe. Why not? I am dead, after all.

And I thought I was mad.

I snatch the toe tag from its string and pull it close to my moist eyes. My mind advises me to blink and read it all over again. Nothing changes. I am still in the mortuary, reading my own obituary.

How can I be dead? The Pillar wouldn't go so far to scare me. Why would he do that, unless I was imagining all of this? How did I die?

The answer hits me like a freight train when I flip the card. Someone has written something in the back:

P.S. She was driving the bus.

My hands cup my mouth, suppressing a painful scream. It's only for a few seconds before I realize how much I need to free the scream inside me. When I finally do, in my loudest screeching voice, no sound comes out. I think I have lost my ability to speak. Why not? I am dead anyways.

Chapter 11

Iain West Forensic Suite, an extension to the Westminster Public Mortuary, London

Speechlessly, I slide out of the death bag, and carefully get off the steel table.

The morgue's floor is cold as ice. I am barefoot, and I still don't know why. Whoever toe-tagged me decided I don't need shoes anymore, that I should suffer against the cold floor.

I hop like a panicked kangaroo for a few seconds before I realize that I will eventually need some kind of shoes.

Rummaging through the plastic bag I came in, I find nothing. It feels awkward and unsettling searching through my own coffin-like bag of death.

Before my mind scrambles for solutions, my lungs screech from the cold. I cough so hard I am sure something will burst out of my lungs into the air. My back bends forward. My hand clamps to the steel table, preventing me from falling.

Why is my body in such pain? Is this what death feels like?

I cough again, my mouth agape it hurts so badly. The clothes I am wearing aren't helping against this freezing cold. It takes a hard effort to lift up my other hand, as if it's tied down to a weight.

My hand is faintly bluish. I shriek—then cough again.

I manage to straighten my back and then rub my hands together for warmth. I rub them on my body as well.

Then I hop like a kangaroo again. Amazing how much unexpected energy your body can exude when you're in danger.

Relax, Alice. None of this is happening. You're probably not dying. It's just part of the insanity you're enduring.

It occurs to me that if I am not dead yet, it's only a few minutes before I freeze to death in here.

See? How could you freeze to death if you are dead already? Let it go. Confess your madness and it will all subside. Just do what you came here to do. Examine the dead kids' heads.

My inner thoughts freeze to the cold of the floor underneath me. I rub my body even harder and do more of my kangaroo dance.

I really need to find shoes now. I haven't looked hard. I need shoes—and a coat.